BOOK/A TABLE - Plum, Raspberry, and Tarragon Soup

I was fairly obsessed with the sheet of four perforated recipe cards included in each issue of Martha Stewart Living, back when the millennium was still new. These recipes could be made individually or used to compose a full meal, such as this dinner I made from a full sheet of recipe cards featuring chicory salad, chicken livers, polenta with bacon, and roasted pears.

Here I present a fine Plum, Raspberry, and Tarragon Soup pulled from one of the cards dating back to June of 2001—I don’t know what happened to the others that accompanied it, but we recently rounded out our dinner by pairing the soup with fresh corn and Shake ’n Bake pork chops!

Although I haven’t been able to find any good blueberries this summer, strawberries certainly have been fantastic and I hope you can find some juicy plums. Bailey White’s witty commentaries on NPR led to her charming debut novel Quite a Year for Plums, where she wrote of a peculiar cast of small town characters in south Georgia and a bumper plum crop...

“‘Quite a year for plums,’ everybody kept saying, but that didn’t begin to describe the plum crop of that early summer...in every household people were eating plums and baking cakes with plums, cooking up plum jam and plum jelly, or just raking up mounds and piles of rotten plums, and getting stung by yellow jackets.”

When making the recipe, try hybrid plums (such as golden plumcot or plumogranate plumcot varieties). The sweetness of the plums, tart raspberries, and added depth of flavor from tarragon all conspire to make this sprightly soup really come alive. I also recommend making it the day before you intend to serve, and let the ingredients get to know each other overnight in the fridge. 

My comments below in italics.

Plum, Raspberry, and Tarragon Soup

Adapted from marthastewart.com
Serves 4

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs (about 6) ripe red plums, plus one plum, skin on and cut into 1/4-inch dice for garnish
6 oz raspberries, plus more for garnish
1 cup white wine
6 tablespoons sugar (2 tablespoons should be plenty)
3 sprigs tarragon, plus more for garnish
2 tablespoons triple sec, Cointreau, or Grand Marnier (tthis is optional, but I used Grand Marnier. Perhaps try orange zest for something less sweet!)
1/4 cup water

Method
1.  Bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Add plums; blanch until skin begins to peel, 2 to 3 minutes. In the meantime, fill a large bowl (a metal mixing bowl witl help keep the water cold) with ice and water; set aside. Remove plums from boiling water; place in the ice bath until cooled. Once cool, remove plums from ice bath, reserving ice bath.

2. Peel plums, remove pits, cut into chunks, and place in a medium saucepan. Add the raspberries, wine, sugar, tarragon, triple sec (if using), and add 1/4 cup water and another 1/4 cup of the water used to blanch the plums to the saucepan; cover, and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Reduce heat to medium low, and allow to simmer until plums are falling apart, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from heat, transfer to a clean bowl (again, using a metal mixing bowl will help with the chilling process), and place in the reserved ice bath, stirring occasionally, until cold.

3. Remove tarragon sprigs from cold mixture, and transfer mixture to a blender. Puree, working in batches if necessary. Strain mixture with a fine mesh strainer into a bowl to get rid of those pesky raspberry seeds. Serve (in your favorite soup bowls, glass mugs, or tall glasses) and garnish with diced plum, raspberries, and tarragon.