This Is Just to Say This Plum Salad Is So Savory, So Sweet, and So Good
I Ate Six Plums in 15 Minutes: A Memoir of a Salad.
“SIX?!” my colleagues yelled out in unison. I had just told them how many plums I ate for dinner the night before. And in retrospect, it did seem a little excessive. But they had never made Chris Morocco’s Plum Salad with Black Pepper and Parmesan.
This new recipe is so simple you could Tweet it: Add a few shakes of red wine vinegar, a squeeze of honey, and a crack of fresh pepper to a bowl. Throw in six ripe summer plums—thin slices and wedges. Add shards of salty Parm. Transfer everything to a new bowl. Add MORE Parm. Drizzle with olive oil. Top with salt and pepper.
And I still have three characters to spare! But what happens to those plums is some Dumbledore-style wizardry. Suddenly a one-note piece of fruit is as complex as a Saturday crossword puzzle. Every taste bud texting this emoji “🚨” to your brain with the slap of Parm, zing of red wine vinegar, and the sweet rush of summer fruit.
It was gone within 15 minutes, the serving size was four.
To learn more about why I ended up with six plum pits staring up at me, I talked to the mastermind behind it all, Chris Morocco. “What makes the fruit go from something you eat standing over the sink to something that feels like it belongs on the dinner table is that balance.” Morocco tells me. “When you add acid and salt, you open up the range of flavors in the fruit.” This also explains why plums pair so well with salty cuts of meat, like in this pork chop recipe from Claire Saffitz. Suddenly it all clicked. The vinegar, oil, cheese, and salt all play off each other, taming the sweetness that would normally inhibit someone from consuming, say, six plums. (Dive into more savory fruit salad recipes here.)
I’ll try not to do it again. Eat all the servings, that is. I will arm myself with a salty main (pork chops!), a few friends (text me!) and the knowledge I learned when I Googled “Can you eat too many plums?” (Reddit is fun!). But if I come across some ready-to-burst plums at the farmers’ market, and it’s a too-hot-to-turn-on-the-oven night? Well, no promises.
Now get the recipe:
Plum Salad with Black Pepper and Parmesan
