The Perplexity of Not William Carlos Williams's Plums

This week's column is dedicated to Bonnie Suarez, a dedicated reader, a great cook, and a friend.

Dear Tamar:

Months ago I picked a packet of Umeboshi—pickled lime plums—off the shelf of my co-op, convinced that I would like them. When I got them home and ate one, though, the combination of salty and tangy was too intense for my tastebuds. I still think they’re cute, but they’ve been hanging out in the back of my refrigerator ever since. Should I chalk this one up to experience and consign them to the compost, or is there another lesson to be learned here?

-Not William Carlos Williams’s plums

Dear Not…plums,

William Carlos Williams may have written the final words on fresh plums—"so sweet and so cold”—but Wallace Stevens wrote the pithier ones, more relevant to our circumstances: “The plum survives its poems.”

Do you think he was writing about Umeboshi? Maybe. Or maybe he meant that the plum germinates and sprouts and grows and blooms and fruits, regardless of whether we are moved by it to poetry. That the plum transcends our observations. I don’t know. I, like you, still probably have the first jar of Umeboshi I ever bought. A pickled plum is a survivor.

I have used some of mine. I’m trying to remember the first time I ever ate a maki roll of pickled plum, julienned shiso leaves, rice, and toasted sesame. I half-remember it being at a (now famous?) sushi bar, years ago, when I was alone in Beverly Hills. It was a few months after I’d given birth, and any time alone felt precious and awful. An Omakase meal was one of the few that could absorb me and absolve me—or that was my rationale. I’ve sought Ume-maki at every opportunity, ever since.

I mention Ume-maki first because it’s an exemplar of Umeboshi’s magic. It’s exactly what I imagine you found overwhelming in your sampling of it that makes dishes that use Omeboshi sparingly so miraculous. Once you’ve become skilled at dispensing it, Umeboshi is an ace up your sleeve—just like anchovies, or olives, or capers, or dried or pickled chiles.

Thankfully, Japanese cooks have figured it out for us. The time-honored pairing of Ume and shiso is so established in Japanese cuisine that red shiso—which blooms in June—is used in the pickling of Ume—which ripens two weeks earlier, mid-May. Ume and shiso are like Bert and Ernie. Like Frog and Toad. Like William Carlos Williams and his red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater, brimming with sweet, cold plums.

I rely on Just One Cookbook for many of my forays into Japanese cooking. Its recipe for Ume-shiso rice is simple and enticing, featuring the unimpeachable combination of Ume, rice, shiso, and sesame seeds: Ume-maki deconstructed and undemanding. Also, with the first summer ingredients beginning to arrive at market stands, smashed cucumbers with Umeboshi sound delightful, inspiring me to dust off my own Umeboshi in hopeful preparation. I like this daikon radish salad with shiso, Umeboshi, ponzu, and salmon roe so much I put a recipe for a version in my last book. The Umeboshi recipe of Just One Cookbook’s I find most enticing is one I’ve never tried, for Ume Shiso pasta. If I were to make it, I’d leave out the chicken—maybe even the mushrooms. I’m not sure I will make it, though. Some combinations are so melodious I’m inclined to leave them in the realm of theory. Ume Shiso pasta may be one.

Dear cook, Umeboshi has little of what we expect of plums: their juiciness, their fleetingness, their concupiscence. What it has instead is age and strength. As long as you use it sparingly, and succor its harshest tendencies with rice, shiso, and toasted seeds, you’ll find it has much to give—outliving not only the poem but even the plum.