In spite of the recent weather snarling Thanksgiving traffic a few weeks ago and the upcoming winter holidays this week (Oy! Chanukah starts tonight! gotta get candles!), we still have plums in the market in southern California even now that it’s late December. Which adds a strange twist to the dessert I was going to post about belatedly, because I realize that’s probably not true in the rest of the country, so what now?
I first meant to post this recipe for a svelter pastry way back in October, on the heels of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, when plums are usually in season.
Zwetchgen, sometimes spelled zwetchken, or “quetches” in French, (could this possibly be the origin of the famed Yiddish word “kvetch”?–probably not, but it’s fun to think about it) are the elongated, blue-black Italian prune plums, which were in at my local Armenian corner grocery in September-October, along with the divine yellow-green sweet plums for eating raw. Unfortunately, most standard supermarket chains in the US don’t sell either fresh prunes or the yellow-green kind of plum in their produce sections, to say nothing of dinosaur plums (green and brown speckled outsides, variously pink and yellow insides, telltale dinosaur logo on the sticker) or Santa Rosa plums (pinkish-red outside, deep rose-pink insides), so it’s a good argument for seeking out your local mom-and-pop ethnic corner grocers wherever possible.
But my lightened-up method for a plum tart is still pretty adaptable to other fruits you probably do have–apples, pears, thickened berry jams or canned cherry filling, mincemeat, or even, dare I suggest, canned pumpkin? (green tomatoes? even rarer than plums unless you garden, like my in-laws.)
So it’s not that you absolutely must have plums (only for a plum tart, it’s kind of required) nor that you should do the (nearly) unthinkable for a plum tart and use dried prunes somehow. Which, I promise, I am not doing here. Well, maybe they’d work in mincemeat, preferably a vegetarian version with no suet involved. Actually, someone back in the old days of the nursery rhyme probably was using prunes and it understandably fell out of favor when fresh fruits became available more widely during the winter months. Or when some bright young thing started selling premade mincemeat filling in jars…
This lightened-up European-style tart for a holiday or other party tastes good, makes the most of end-of-season fruit, and isn’t overwhelmingly rich or oversweetened. It’s got a thin, delicate crust, an almond filling, and tart, substantial wedges of fruit. The almond extract or amaretto (or you could use rum or brandy or kirsch, or orange liqueur, or orange blossom water if you’re going nonalcoholic) gives it something most American desserts these days sorely lack–not the alcohol, which quickly bakes out, but a depth and complexity of flavor that don’t depend on sugar or butter. Continue reading
Filed under: baking, Desserts, fruits, holiday cooking, Revised recipes | Tagged: baking, food, Jewish holidays, recipes | Comments Off on Zwetchgenkuchen: a lighter holiday plum tart
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