This post has been long overdue…I made those plums in fall, so when they were in season, then never got the chance to post it. With my trip to France and work schedule, everything got delayed and now it’s November and the plums are no longer in season. I figured I would still post it and not wait for one more year.

I love all poached fruits, they end up being such a delicate and light little treat. I make those quite often when I can find plums and you can complement them with all kinds of dried cookies, biscotti, madeleines, anything you can dip in the syrup. Needless to say this dessert is very quick to make, and “unratable” (that you cannot fail).

The first step is to make the tea. I used green tea in which I added fresh mint leaves and dried verbena leaves (I could not find any fresh ones). Don’t make the tea too strong or the syrup will end up bitter and unpleasant.

Ingredients

• 1.5 cup green verbena-mint tea
• 1 star anise
• vanilla bean, cut lengthwise
• 2 tbs honey
• 6 red plums, not too soft
• 2 tbs macarpone
• 2 tbs Plain greek yogurt
• 1 tsp powder sugar (optional)
• zest of 1/2 Meyer lemon
• pistachios, roasted

Preparation

First make tea, letting the mint and vebena infuse for 10 minutes in green tea. Drain and add honey.

In a pan, cook plums with tea, then add star anis and vanilla bean. Let the plums cook until soft but not mushy. At this point the syrup has thickened. It should not be too thick, add water if too thick. Remove vanilla bean and filter syrup if necessary. Let it cool.

Mix mascarpone and yogurt until smooth, add 1 tsp of powder sugar or more if you like it sweeter and add lemon zest.

Serve plums in cups pouring syrup around and 1 tbs of mascarpone cream on top. Sprinkle with pistachios.

I just adopted the most adorable white parakeet and named him Pépito (named after some chocolate cookies in France when I was growing up called Pépito, they were cookies covered with milk chocolate and all the kids were going crazy for them)…so Pépito must have flown away from a cage somewhere and ended up on my stairs, good thing I found him….because he could have been the happy breakfast of the neighbor’s cat! So here it is, Pépito has been adopted.

I was reading that those little birds need a quite balanced diet, not only made out of seeds but also with vegetables, fruits, greens and other type of food humans eat. He eats from my hands now, and sits on my finger, but he is still afraid, if I move to quickly, he freaks out and flies away. So I happily got up this morning and prepared him a nice mixture of honey, corn flakes, cinnamon, peach, sesame seeds and millet…he stared at it for a while but did not touch it. I tried to made him accustomed to that mixture but nothing worked, so I gave up and was trying to find on the web what do those birds like, other than millet seeds. It seems like they love a bunch of mixtures, but apparently not mine.

So in the middle of my parakeet menu thoughts, I decided to make something for my tea time, and went for those green tea bouchées. Bouchée means morsel, those are so small that they can fit in any size mouth. I will share them with Pépito, if he ever decide to stick his beak in there, but I doubt it.

I don’t know why I am not crazy for green tea as a drink, I know it’s full of anti-oxydants but I its bitter flavor in the drink bothers me, but I love green tea flavor in desserts. Matcha green tea has been quite popular in France recently, probably because Japanese cuisine has been on the top of the trend for restaurants. Paris has tons of them now (something never thought of 10 years ago) and even Nancy my home town which is a town of about 300,000 inhabitants has three of them! the French are not too keen on raw fish, so I am stunned they’re starting to go crazy for Japanese food.

Those bouchées are great with a cup of strawberries and cream, with some mint tea, or just as is. They’re easy to prepare and to bake, overall time is 25 min!

Ingredients for 12 bouchées

• 2.8 oz (or 80 g) butter
• 1.7 oz (or 50 g) white unbleached flour
• 3.5 oz (or 100 g) powdered sugar
• 2 1/2 tsp matcha green tea powder
• 2.7 oz (or 75 g) almond powder
• 3 tbs coconut flakes
• 1 egg
• 1 egg white
• 1/3 tsp of baking powder

Preparation

Pre-heat oven at 365-370F.

Cut butter in pieces and melt butter slowly in a small pan. Do not melt until the butter turns brown.

In one container, mix flour, sugar, green tea powder, almond powder, coconut powder and baking powder. Mix well. Incorporate egg and egg white. Add butter and mix the batter to obtain an homogenous paste.

Place in individual mini molds (I used silicon molds, that I can’t get enough of) and bake for about 15 minutes, check to see if they’re cooked around that time and continue baking if they’re not cooked in the middle.