Try these roasted plums with cream on a savoury bagel

One of my favourite fruit trees is the small dwarf plum onto which five varieties of yellow, red and purple plums were grafted.

I am not a huge fan of multi-varietal grafting, simply because each varietal has different needs, and unless you are on your game always – and I’m not – you miss one thing or another and end up with a gaping hole where a lovely specimen once lived (and died).

So our lone, now four-varietal plum tree lives happily, if somewhat lopsided, in our small orphan garden, surrounded by disparate specimens hastily planted for want of suitable homes.

It is a beautiful mess of a spot just north of a low fence, where the roots of the plum tree stay shaded and cool during false springs, protected from unseasonably warm sun and soil that can fool fruit trees into flower too s