Pick of the Plums

Plum Event, Dressing Crab & New Bakery

I once overheard a snippet of conversation which has lingered in my mind; "Well, you know what sort of woman she is - she never could go past a greengage." In which case "she" would be in heaven on Saturday 15th and Saturday 16th August at the Bluntisham, Colne & Somersham Plum Event.

The full programme has yet to be unveiled, but two of the confirmed events have really caught my fancy. The first is at the wonderful Heath Fruit Farm at Bluntisham, where Eric Wallis grows at least 19 varieties of plums and 9 sorts of gages and damsons (to say nothing of 31 varieties of apple, 13 different pears, plus apricots and peaches.) There will be two guided walks, at 11am and 2pm on the Saturday, led by Bob Lever of the East of England Apples & Orchards Project, with the opportunity to buy fruit.

This is a beautiful, 60 acre heritage orchard, with many trees over 100 years old (and with views over to Ely Cathedral). The range of fruit is just stunning. Forget supermarkets and their limited choice of fruit - go to Heath Fruit Farm and indulge, indulge. You never know, "she" might be there too.

The second deeply fanciable event is a chutney making workshop with Lynn Davies, from 11am to 2pm on the Sunday, to be held in the kitchen of the village hall. Obviously places are limited, so must be booked in advance on ecologie@aol.com or on 07767 250 825. The cost is £5 a head, to cover the ingredients, and participants will need to bring some simple equipment with them. I don't know what Lynn plans to make, but I do know that damson pickle and pork pie is a marriage made in Heaven.

There are more events to be confirmed, and if you notify your interest to the email address above, the full details will be sent to you .

How to dress a crab
One of the best meals on earth is dressed crab. But it must be fresh - there is nothing more dismal than preparing a crab and finding that the meat is stale. The white meat should be fresh and sweet and creamy and utterly delicious.

The trouble with ready-dressed crabs is that there is never the right amount of white meat because picking out the body can be fiddly - i.e. time consuming, uneconomic, and/or the claws have been sold separately. Even worse, sometimes the white and brown meats have been mixed - a crime against good food. So you should prepare the crab yourself - but where to buy a really fresh, ready boiled crab?

At last I have come across a good source of truly fresh crabs - Anchor Smoke House from Lowestoft, which attends each of the Farmers' Fayres in Linton (1st Saturday of the month), Burwell (2nd Saturday), Impington (3rd), and Great Shelford (4th). See www.farmersfayres.co.uk

Always ask for the crabs which are the heaviest for their size. Preparing a boiled crab is fairly easy, but takes a bit of time, so allow an hour. You need some thick layers of newspaper, a small hammer, a heavy knife, something to winkle out the white meat - a skewer or the end of a tea spoon perhaps, plus a bowl each for the white and brown meats. And now, in easy stages:

1. Pull off the articulated tail flap from the underside.
   
2. Scrub the crab under cold running water.
   
3. Lay the crab on its red shell, legs uppermost, with the smallest legs nearest to you. Put your thumbs near the middle of the edge of the shell nearest to you. Prise up the undershell - which is now on top since you've got the beastie upside down. Put the undershell aside.
   
4. Take the red shell; remove the little digestive sac, located just behind the eyes, and bin it.
   
   Scrape out all the rest of the contents into the brown meat bowl. There are pretty curved lines running around the underside of the red shell, between the aperture and the outside edge of the shell. Tap towards them gently with a hammer and break along the curve. This gives you the classic, wide shell in which to serve the meat. Scrub out the shell and put aside.
   
5. Pick up the undershell - pull and twist the legs and claws off, then, using newspaper and hammer, break the claws and tap open the legs. Dexterously extract the white meat, into a separate bowl.
   
6. Identify the so-called dead man's fingers on the remaining piece of the body sitting in the undershell - greeny grey, triangular gills, with a gritty texture. Remove and bin.
   
7. Spoon out the brown meat in the depression between the two sets of legs, then cut down the middle of the depression, to give yourself two symmetrical chunks with matching leg apertures. Winkle out as much white meat as you can. Stand the two chunks up, with the chain of leg apertures facing the ceiling. Cut downwards through the entire length of the chain, and then tease out the remaining white meat.
   
8. Mash up the brown meat with a fork, adding in fresh breadcrumbs to make the mixture stiffer, and plenty of chopped parsley.
   
9. Riffle through the white meat with your fingers to find and remove any stray pieces of shell. Mix up half a teaspoon of English mustard and then mix with 2 tablespoons of Hellmann's mayo. Add just enough mayo mix to moisten the white meat. Don't skip the mustard, as it really brings out the flavour.
   
10. Spoon the white meat into a broad band in the centre of the shell, with the brown meat tucked into the two outside corners. Serve with plain boiled new potatoes (or brown bread and butter) and a green salad. Fit for a king.

New bakery
A new artisan bakery has opened in Cambridge, specialising in sour dough breads. These are made in broadly the way all British bread used to be made - with a proper fermentation before baking. The result has so much more texture and character than most loaves.

Dovecote Bakery produces a range of breads, including wholemeal with or without multi-seeds, rye and light rye (also with multi-seed option), and the naturally low gluten spelt bread, plus a variety of different rolls. Currently Dovecote loaves are on sale at Daily Bread and the Larder at Burwash Manor.

Image of Greengages by zoha_n courtesy of Creative Commons