Caucasus x Appalachia | PLUMS
Fun topics below: wild plums, Georgian ketchup, plum cookery
I’m doing this Caucasus x Appalachia series because nothing tickles my brain more than taking comparative looks at regions of the world with similar edible plants. Georgian walnuts vs. American pecans. Georgian grapes vs. American muscadines. There’s a sort of equivalency at play. Two separate regions taking sibling plants and doing similar things with them such that they become foundationally embedded in culture and cuisine. But when it comes to plums, there is no such equivalency. Despite both regions having their own palette of wild plums, Georgians have embraced their plums. We modern Americans, not so much. And I find that utterly fascinating.
When I was visiting Georgia back in 2019, I witnessed a lot of plum pride. Seeing as how plums have been domesticated in the Transcaucasus for centuries, that sort of pride makes a lot of sense. Witnessing a human-plant connection that is deep-rooted in this way will always be alluring to me. Perhaps in a world full of change and cultural diaspora, it’s nice to spend time with those who have been so cellularly sculpted from the land around them. Maybe that’s why I spend so much time doing these comparisons. Because when I study and commune with those who are tied to their land, I’m inspired to come home and find my own sense of belonging. Learning about plums in Georgia has certainly set me on a quest to learn about the wild and domesticated plums growing around me at home. Let’s take a look at plums found in the Republic of Georgia and here in the United States. And then we can get inspired by the varied ways in which Georgians process their juicy, yummy plums - hopefully reinvigorating our appreciation for American plums.
PRUNUS PROFILES - American vs. Georgian Plums
Plums belong to the genus Prunus, which is a large group of not only plums but loads of other fruits as well. This includes cherries, peaches, apricots, and even almonds (which is technically a drupe and not a nut, but my head is already hurting, so let’s not get too technical). The main point is that the Prunus group is a beast to categorize. The plum-type species alone are numerous and varied.
In North America we have a lot of Prunus representation. When it comes to plums, we have roughly 30 native ones. Some of them cover vast swaths of the continent, while others have a smaller endemic footprint. BONAP has a great visual reference for this. Some of our wild plum species include the American plum (Prunus americana) as well as the Chickasaw plum (Prunus angustifolia) and the Hortulan plum (Prunus hortulana). There’s a wild plum specific to the Appalachians, and that is the Allegheny plum (Prunus alleghaniensis). These wild plums have a range of flavors - sweet, sour, bitter, and everything in between. Even within a copse of the same species you can find variability of flavor. Such is the nature of wild fruit. That is why we humans select for the traits we like, domesticate those selections, and create stable cultivars and varieties.
Despite having our fair share of native American plums, they haven’t made a huge impact on the modern American food landscape (Native Americans being excluded from this statement). The plums that most Americans grow and consume are the cultivars, varieties, and hybrids hailing from Europe and Asia. These yield tasty and reliable fruit. However, American wild plums do come into play with their genetics. Those genetics are mixed with European and Asian species to offer ripening control and disease resistance. So maybe we do value American wild plums, just in a more roundabout way.
In Georgia, wild and domesticated plums make an impact on the culture more directly. As mentioned earlier, plum domestication can be traced to Georgia and the Transcaucus (and China, although another species). In fact, plum domestication is one of the earliest examples of fruit domestication! Suffice to say, Georgians and plums go waaaay back. The humble common plum (Prunus domestica) had its start in the Caucasus. Scientists believe it is a hybrid of Prunus cerasifera and Prunus spinosa. Prunus domestica is now grown all over the world and accounts for a large portion of commercial supply. Given that there are several subspecies and many cultivars, anything derived from P. domestica is classified as a “European” plum. This distinguishes them from Asian type plums.
Prunus domestica is entangled in the foodway histories of so many peoples that the connection to the Caucasus is somewhat lost. But other plums, like the alucha plum (Prunus vachuschtii), are Caucasian specific plums that seem to have never escaped the fertile, sequestered lands of Georgia. Those plums have stayed the not-so-secret secrets of the Georgians. I was told of the glory of the alucha plum while I was in Georgia, and I’ve wanted to try growing one here in the states ever since. It is a smallish tree with fruits that stay green even when fully ripened. They have therapeutic amounts of vitamins B and E and are used in Georgian folk medicine to combat afflictions such as constipation, vitamin deficiency, high blood pressure, and headaches. Alucha plums are a mix of sour and sweet, juicy yet firm. This is a choice plum for making tkemali.
TKEMALI
Tkemali is the quintessential Georgian plum sauce. It’s a condiment in the same vein as ketchup. It can be made from sweeter ripe plums to create a milder sauce, usually red or yellow in color depending on the plum variety. Or it can be made from sour unripe plums to create an extremely tangy sauce, usually green in color. On its face, it might seem strange to enjoy a sour unripe plum. It might also seem strange to eat cooked plums. In my childhood home, plums were only for fresh eating, and you’d only want the sweetest, juiciest ones. No green, no sour. That was what the crabapples were for. It wasn’t until I visited Georgia that my idea of plum as an ingredient really started to be change. That is the beauty of traveling and expanding your world and palette.
Mariam, my host in Imereti, showed me how to make tkemali. Her plum tree was not an alucha plum but some type of cherry plum with petite oval fruits, probably a Prunus cerasifera. Some of the plums had a tinge of red, but otherwise they were green. If I remember correctly, they were riding the middle line between sweet and tart. We were picking in June. The making of the tkemali was straightforward enough, and so were the ingredients, with the exception of ombalo. Ombalo is the Georgian word for the herb pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium). Mariam told me that ombalo means “special herb,” and she would point it out to me on our hikes. It grows wildly in Georgia and is used both as a culinary and medicinal herb. I’ve tried growing pennyroyal in years past, but it doesn’t overwinter or re-seed for me like it seems to at the lower elevations of the Caucasus. Pennyroyal has a pungent, mint-adjacent taste. I think a decent substitute for pennyroyal is mountain mint (Pycnanthemum spp.). Other herbs with a similar flavor to pennyroyal include lesser calamint, spearmint, and ground ivy.
I’ve tried recreating tkemali here at home since visiting Georgia. You can find the recipe here. I use locally grown plums and pennyroyal substitutions as mentioned above. Perhaps that makes my tkemali less than authentic, but the cleverness to come up with substitutions is valuable in its own right. Using what you have right around you is a human experience to which many Americans have lost a connection. We have become quite inflexible, depending wholly on standardized food distribution. Georgians don’t rely on big box grocery stores like we do. Be it in a country home or fancy city restaurant, I never saw or tasted any mass-produced, commercial tkemali. That’s not to say they don’t exist, but all of the tkemali sauces I had were made from scratch. With that comes variations and preferences based on what the maker has access to. And so, “authentic” tkemali is quite hard to nail down as it is.
This leads us to the variability of plums used to make tkemali. Alucha (P. vachuschtii) and cherry types (P. cerasifera) are the most traditional. However, cherry types, especially wild ones, are highly variable. The fruits can be small, large, soft, firm, red, yellow, purple, green, and everything in between. Additionally, these characteristics evolve throughout the growing season. This means a single plum tree can produce a sour green tkemali or a sweet yellowish-red tkemali colored by the ripe fruits’ skin. A green tkemali doesn’t always equate to being the most tart because some green plums, like the alucha, stay green even when ripe. Because of these factors, tkemali doesn’t have the same level of homogeneity as say, American ketchup. If we started making our ketchups from scratch we’d start to see the same kind of diversification.
MORE GEORGIAN PLUM DISHES
Tkemali has been getting all the love so far, but I’d also like to briefly shine a light on other ways plums are used in Georgian cooking. Sour green plums can be found in a popular spring stew called chakapuli. Whole plums float in this stew alongside lamb or veal and lots of vernal aromatics like tarragon, spring onions, and coriander. Chakapuli is traditionally prepared for Easter occasions. Sour plums, especially the wild ones, are also used and preserved in the form of fruit leather (tklapi). It’s a marvelously clever creation because it is shelf stable and has the capacity to enhance and acidify a dish with just a small piece (see kharcho, the classic Georgian beef and walnut stew). Sour plum fruit leather is also used medicinally in treating sore throats and other ailments. Sweeter plums are made into fruit leather as well. Georgian plums are also candied or strung whole to dry in the sun.
As I think about it, perhaps the American equivalent of a Georgian plum is not an American plum after all. Perhaps it’s a tomato! Everybody and their mama grows a tomato in America, right? Well, everybody and their mama grows a plum tree in Georgia. Drop in at an American farmer’s market in the summer, and you will see stacks of colorful tomatoes, from unripe green to the sweetest reds. The same can be said for plums in Georgian markets. Plums offer a lot of versatility in the Georgian kitchen. I reckon the same can be said for tomatoes in the American kitchen. I think about good old-fashioned Southern cooking and my mind goes straight to the tart, crunchy bite of a fried green tomato. Sour plum gives me the same vibe. And I’ve already waxed on about how tkemali is the Georgian version of ketchup. It would be even more so if we made our ketchups from scratch…Maybe this comparison is a bit wobbly. I hope at the very least you are beginning to better understand the plum eaters of the world.
Why Georgians use plums the way they do is a result, I think, of both necessity and culinary genius. Culinarily, it’s skillful to use all types and stages of a fruit, whether that’s sweet, sour, bitter, etc. It’s also wise to value such versatility in a natural resource. When times are hard - and Georgia is no stranger to political and economic hardships - you want to get the most out of your natural resources. A single plum tree might provide a harvest of sour plums in the spring and a harvest of ripe ones in the summer. It’s a great thing when a plant resource has extended harvestability like that, especially one that is naturally abundant and is easy to grow in your climate. Georgia is not the only country that uses plums in this way. Tart spring plums are also utilized in other cuisines, such as Persian and Japanese cuisines. But you’d be hard pressed to visit Georgia and not encounter a plum tree or plum dish. They are simply that intrinsic to Georgian daily life. Maybe all that plum love will rub off on us Americans, and we can grow to love our native plums just as much. Maybe I should get off my bum and start planting that orchard I’ve been musing over for too many years. What a curious experiment it will be to make tkemali from native American plums. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes!
|| Wander here for more Caucasus x Appalachia series information ||
SOURCES & FURTHER READING:
https://heppy.org/wild-plum/
https://plants.sc.egov.usda.gov/DocumentLibrary/plantguide/pdf/pg_pram.pdf
https://homegarden.cahnr.uconn.edu/factsheets/plums/
https://georgiaabout.com/2012/08/29/about-food-tkemali-georgian-wild-plum-sauce/
https://folkways.today/tkemali-georgian-sour-plum-sauce/
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6437e6b5f3e62c001361a607/15_Tkemali_ტყემალი_Other_products_of_Annex_I_of_the_Treaty__spices_etc___PGI_.pdf