The Great Beast - 11:31 am PDT - Oct 11, 1999  - 

Plum Liqueur

My homemade plum liqueur is simplicity itself. Fill a glass jar with pitted Italian prune-plums, about a gallon. Add the peel of an orange and a lemon, a big stick of cinnamon, a vanilla bean, two cups of sugar, and 60 ounces of vodka. Leave for three months, tightly sealed, inverting a couple of times a day till all the sugar dissolves.

Strain into a decanter, keep the plums for flambees (they freeze beautifully) and discard the rest. The liqueur itself is plummy, exotic and . . . sort of wistful: summer trapped in rich, heavy liquor . . .