Thursday, February 12, 2009

Stewed Prunes (They're good. I SWEAR.)

Ok, I already know what you're thinking: PRUNES? Like GRANDMA ate??

Yes. Seriously. SO GOOD. No lie.

My grandma ate them occasionally for breakfast, mixed into oatmeal, but I like them for dessert.

Yes, really. STOP LAUGHING! ;)

But obviously . . . be careful with these. "Moderation" is the key word here. (Except for me. Curiously, they do not have the "usual" effect on me, but YOU should be careful. Don't say I didn't warn you.)

When you cook prunes this way, they develop a really deep, rich taste, sort of similar to dark chocolate. Do I have your attention now? Plus, they're jam-packed with iron. So here we go:



The Recipe:

Get some prunes. Just toss them into a little pot, like this:


Now add some red wine and some water, in roughly equal parts, to cover the prunes, like this:




If you like your chocolate dark and bitter, don't add any sweetener. If you like sweeter chocolate, add a spoonful of sugar. (I feel a song coming on . . . )

Then put it on the stove and bring it to a boil. When it boils, turn the heat down as LOW AS POSSIBLE, and let them sit there on the heat for, oh, about 45 minutes or so. Go watch some TV or something.

When they're done, some of the liquid will have boiled away, and that's ok. Mine look like this:





Now. The way to serve these is technically over mascarpone cheese. If you don't have that, you can substitute cream cheese or ricotta cheese. Just spoon it into the bowl, and spoon a few prunes and a little juice over the top. But I must confess that one night when I was without any of the above, I just poured some prunes into a bowl and topped them with light sour cream. And they were SO GOOD. The tartness of the sour cream was perfect mixed in with the sweetness of the prunes. I think I actually liked it better than any of the cheeses. YUM. I ate it with a glass of red wine, while watching Law & Order. Like this:




Fantastic.

YES, REALLY. Just try it. ;)

4 comments:

  1. Hmm, sounds like a possibility. Once you mentioned the mascarpone cheese you had me hooked. I'll try this one next week.

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  2. LOL, the mascarpone cheese really DOES make the dish complete. Although cream cheese (the brick kind, NOT the whipped kid) works almost as well.

    But I have to say, I was surprised by how much I liked the sour cream.

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  3. Looks good. At my age I could only eat one, per month or I'd have to be hospitalized.

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  4. POD, I SERIOUSLY laughed out loud when I read that. *giggle* Yeah, most people have that reaction to prunes. But if you eat them with the ricotta or the mascarpone cheese, it offsets the, um, "results" quite a bit.

    ReplyDelete

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