Roasted Italian Plums

1. Preheat oven to 300F.

2. Wash the plums and remove any stems. Halve them, removing the pits, and place the halves, cut side up, on a foiled cooking sheet.

3. In a spice grinder (or mortar and pestle), grind the thyme and rosemary. Take a moment to enjoy the smell. Combine the herbs with the sugar and mix thoroughly.

4. Sprinkle the sugar mixture over the plums and place the plums in the oven for 30 minutes. After that, raise the heat to 425F and cook for another 15 minutes.

5. While the plums are roasting, prepare the vanilla pudding as indicated on the package, using 4 cups of milk and two packages of pudding mix. When the pudding is nearly set, stir in the liqueur. This fancy maneuver is what allows me to now call it a custard (wink). Chill the custard until the plums are ready.

6. Once the plums are done, remove them from the oven. There should be a good amount of liquid on the foil. That is red gold. Place the custard in serving dishes, arrange plum slices throughout the custard and garnish with that red gold.

I just made this last night, trying to find a way to use up my plums before they went bad, and I wanted something that wasn’t too sweet and had some magical notes in it. The herbs were a brilliant idea. Next time, I think I’m going to add lavender as well, for a more Provencal feel.

Feel free to make your own custard from scratch. I would have, except that today was my shopping run to Trader Joe’s and they had these new preservative-free, additive-free pudding mixes that were begging me to try them.