ASMR Baking a Plum Pie on an Autumn Evening 🍂 ~ cozy kitchen ambience ~ softly narrated

Let's light a candle in a cozy atmosphere. I'm baking a pie, not a simple pie, but because I love fruits that have a combination of sourness and sweetness, like mandarins. Even my favorite apples are the ones that are slightly sour, slightly sweet. They are the juiciest ones. You know, it may be hard to believe, but I never ever ate a plum pie, and recently I learned that in the 20th century it was really popular, thanks to the New York Times. Well, when I say the 20th century, you may think of the early 20th century, but no, I'm talking as of quite recent. In fact, in 1983, food writer Marion Burroughs, I hope I'm pronouncing her name right, she published a recipe for a plum tart in the New York Times, and it was remarkably uncomplicated. Powder, sugar, flour, eggs, some baking powder, a little salt and, well, plums. When the New York Times published it, the readers became unusually enthusiastic, so the newspaper began receiving requests, letters, to print the recipe again. So it did, the following year, then the next year, the year after that, for several years, and the plum tart would appear in this newspaper around September, because that's when Italian plums were available, while my plums are authentically Armenian. Eventually, I think the editors decided that enough was enough, because this went on for many, many years, and in 1989 they announced that the recipe would be printed for the last time, and they put it inside a decorative order, essentially encouraging readers to cut it out and keep it, and that was a very good idea. In fact, I remember when I was little, my mom would buy these magazines, and on the last page they would have one single recipe, and it also was framed so that you could cut it out, and recently I found it. I found all of these little cards that, as a kid, I took the scissors and cut them and kept. I remember that my mom made a salad by one of those recipes, and maybe something else I should find and share that with you too. It was like a little blast from my childhood, very sweet. The recipe, their plum pie, was very simple. I decided to elevate mine with some milk, and even though theirs is considered one of the most famous recipes ever published by the New York Times, just felt that with milk it would be much softer and less sweet. I always put a little less sugar than the recipes recommend, because I don't have a sweet tooth, and to me it's just too, too, too, too sweet if I follow the original sugar recommendations. These days there are hundreds of cultivated varieties of different plum pies. The internet is flooded with them, but honestly I feel like I want to experiment and find my own plum pie, because when I do, I know that will be one of my most favorites to make. Since I already told you, I love the combination of sweet and sour, and the sweetness of the dough and the sourness of the plums would make it perfect for me. These plums that I'm using in this recipe are this purple or blue plums. However, if you have seen my video from my Patreon and YouTube members club VillageFlock, there I showed you little yellow plums with yellow cheeks, pink cheeks. They are so delicious, I actually prefer them to these ones. My mom makes compote with these ones also, and with those ones she made Georgian sauce. That sauce with some garlic and spices, again, is a perfect combination of sweet and sour, and it's one of my favorites to have when I'm eating meat, and my mom makes it, I feel like, the best. And that sauce is called Takhemali. It's a sour, sweet sauce, traditionally served with savory foods, and the combination of tartness of the plums, the herbs, the garlic, is so different from the sweet plum desserts of the Central Europe or America. And then there is, of course, the question of nutritious value of plums. In fact, fresh plums provide fiber, of course, like so many fresh fruits and vegetables, vitamin C, vitamin K, and potassium, as well as various antioxidants, of course. Plums also contain sorbitol, which is a naturally occurring sugar alcohol, and that is the reason they have long had a reputation for helping with digestion. And I have definitely heard recommendations to use plums, even actually dry plums, for digestion. When they are dried, of course, these compounds become more concentrated, and that gives us the prune. Not every plum makes a particularly good prune. You have to remember that when you want to dry plums, or even any other fruit or berry, you should not use fruits and berries that are too ripe. When they're ripe, they're softer. When they're softer, they have higher sugar concentration, and that just completely ruins the process. I've tried it not, I mean, I've tried not listening to this rule, and I tried to dry ripe apricots, they all turned completely brown. So, do not recommend it. Isn't it amazing that I would never even try making a plum pie if I didn't learn about this famous New York Times plum torte that was first published about 40 years ago? That is quite an achievement for just a dessert made from flour, butter, and seasonal fruit. It's so simple when you think about it. And perhaps the strangest part is that there was never anything particularly mysterious about it. It wasn't an invention of a famous chef, it wasn't based on some secret pastry technique, it wasn't expensive to make. It was simply a good recipe published at exactly the right time of the year. The rest was done by the people who kept baking it, and that is probably where I'll leave the story. Because the interesting thing about food history, when you look at it, is that famous dishes, they don't always begin as famous dishes. Sometimes they begin as something somebody makes because there are too many plums in the kitchen. Sometimes they just begin because someone made an actual accident or forgot something. Then they got this amazing meal, amazing dish that ended up being famous all over the world. Let me know which are your favorite pies. If you have some secret recipe or someone in your family has a secret recipe that is absolutely delicious, please share with me. Whether it's a pie or something else. Especially now that we have rainy days ahead, my favorite thing to do is staying in and making something delicious in my kitchen. But back to my pie. This is what it looks like freshly out the oven. It looks so delicious and the kitchen smells so nice. The little plums, the plum pieces have almost drowned a little bit and they look like craters on the moon. I have to say I loved this pie and everyone who tasted it liked it too. However, I will keep looking for other recipes to find my own very special recipe of a plum. And when I do, I will absolutely share with you. Bon Appetit!