Bubble Gum Pink Sous Vide Plum Curd

We are obsessed with lemon curd. It’s sour, sweet, creamy, and so, so delicious. We love it so much that we’ve taken it to having it for breakfast- a couple of slices of toasted milk bread, with golden lemon curd spread over it, topped with fruits, honey, some of our homegrown herbs, sea salt and a few guilty slivers of blue cheese. Indulgent? You bet! Delicious? Beyond a doubt!

So when Marc brought home more plums than we know what to do with, it only made sense to try our hands at making plum curd. Why not? After all, we’ve run out of lemon curd. Besides, we’ve been itching to try out our Anova sous vide precision cooker on something other than meat, so this was the perfect chance to experiment. After some tweaking of the recipe, we attained plum-p success!

Cooking with the sous vide is so simple, all you need is time. No more slaving over the stove, and no more massive washing up after. Can it get any better than that?

Ingredients

• 200g black plums, chopped (regular plums, not to be mistaken for the jamun fruit)
• 6 large blue berries (just to enhance the colour, but not to add to the taste)
• 63g caster sugar
• 63g butter, cubed and slightly softened
• 1 large egg
• 1 yolk from large egg
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• Pinch of salt

Instructions

1. Heat water bath to 75°C
2. In a pan, cook down the plums and blueberries with a tablespoon of the caster sugar and lemon juice, until the fruits become really soft and their juices run out, almost like a jam.
3. Mash the fruit mixture and strain the purée to remove any skin and lumps [You can make the purée ahead of time and store till ready for use].
4. Set aside about four cut cubes of the butter, and put the rest into a ziplock bag, along with the remaining caster sugar, salt, the cooled down plum purée and the eggs which have been loosely mixed together.
5. Give the contents of the ziplock bag a stir, and using the water immersion method, slowly lower the bag into the water while removing the air, seal the bag and leave in the water bath to cook for 45 to 60 minutes.
6. Once done, remove the bag and blend the contents while incorporating the butter you had set aside, once cube at a time. You will notice the colour of the mixture changing to a delightful pink hue.
7. Once done, place cling film over the curd to present it forming a skin, and leave to cool completely. You can use a water bath for this.
8. Once cool, transfer the curd your storing container. Tap the container over the counter a few times to remove any trapped air, seal and refrigerate.
9. If you can stop yourself from finishing this up with a spoon, you can use the curd as we have, over toast with fruits, or you can use it for any number of desserts.

Note

With this recipe, we got enough curd to fill out a 212ml jar. But this may vary according to the size of the plums you use. Store it in an airtight jar in the refrigerator, and you should be able to keep it for slightly longer than a week.