Umeboshi for all

So here's another Ohme made japanese food production... made in Italy. It's the cosmic appointment that was already set since last year. Slightly delayed following the weather and adjusting a better timing for this harvest, today we stocked about 10kg of umeboshi, the salty plums that are the base of many traditional dishes.



Yesterday we went to pick them up from a native tree in a park nearby, so they're basically organic wild crafted since the tree is totally abandoned to itself. It's been some sort of homeschooling practice with my son, so that he can learn how to prepare food he likes by himself. 

Today we started carefully washing and selecting the plums, one by one... Every batch of washed plums needs to be well dried before getting in contact with salt.

       

This time I was lucky enough to find a perfect container for this purpose. A quite big barrel that my father used to make salty olives with. It's been unused for many years now.

   

Here is my precious helper selecting plums and milling coarse sea salt into fine salt. Each layer of plums is well covered with salt all the way... until the last usable fruit.

Many plums are set aside when they're damaged, even for a tiny little crack spot on the skin. They're firm and sour in a pleasant way when eaten raw, but they are do not get much sweeter at all. We've been very picky in this job.

As soon as all the good plums have entered the barrel... it's time to put it all on a scale. The net weight is just a bit more than 10 kilograms, 4 of which it's sea salt. 

All our best wishes are packed in together for the next month. Then the next process will kick in, when the plums will be taken out, dried and mixed again. Hold on and wait till you see...