A Prune by any other name...

The lowly prune plum (prunus domestica) is a fruit I grew up with in the CSSR. These plums were easily available and fixture of Czech cuisine, playing an important role in many fruit dumplings, kolaches and, of course, slivovice. However, the typical and most Czech use for prune plums is in povidla, a plum stew that's used as jam on bread or as filling for cakes and kolaches.

Povidla is one of those things that you just don't find at the local HEB or even at Central Market or Whole Foods. You either smuggle it in from the CR or you make yourself. The problem is that prune plums seem very seasonal here, and only make a brief appearance in September. I missed out on buying some last year, but when I saw Costco carrying them in bulk a couple of weeks ago, I bought five pounds of them.

Now, true povidla are simply plums and nothing else. However, for that you'd need very ripe (or even over ripe) fruit, and the imported and chilled Italian Prune Plums I got a Costco hardly qualified. Luckily I found some recipes that included sugar and after letting the plums ripen as long as possible at home, I pureed them, added the sugar and lemon juice and boiled the heck out of them, reducing them to what looks and tastes like real povidla (it's got to have the texture and appearance of old axle grease).

I ended up canning two jars of that stuff and recently opened one of them to use in a gingerbread I made. It turned out quite good and I plan to make a bunch more next year around.