My cousin lived in Coonoor, Nilgiris, for a long time. She's one of the most enthusiastic cooks I have met. By self admission, she's also lazy. (Do I see an older version of myself??) During one trip of ours, I remember we bought an assortment of fruits and brought them home. She made this stew with pears, plums, peaches, pineapples and apples and served it with fresh cream. I made it several times since I learnt it, but hadn't made it in years.
Summer is all about fruits, isn't it? I just love the peaches, pears, cherries, apricots and litchis that wrestle for space along with the mangoes. I'd picked up a kilo of cherries to make cherry ice cream for Meeta's Monthly Mingle, but thanks to the burglary, they just got ignored. I also bought some plums last weekend that were extremely sour. So, I decided that they were all going into the stew.
My cousin used to peel and stone all the fruits before putting them in the stew. I need as much fibre as I can lay my hands on and put the fruits in as they were. I told S that we could have a spitting contest later on for the seeds.
I used:
250g Plums
500g Cherries
1 Green Apple, chopped
4-5 tsp Sugar
1 tbsp Fresh Cream
In a large vessel, I added the fruits along with the sugar and enough water to cover the fruits. I allowed this mixture to boil until the fruits became soft. I mashed this mixture with a potato masher and somehow got the seeds out. (I wasn't planning on doing this, but when they all came out sans the flesh, I decided to remove the seeds and ditch the contest.)
I served this with some cream. The next time, I'm going to add all my fruits. There are beautiful pears and peaches out there that would impart a lovely flavour to the stew.
