In the summer, when stone fruit is abundant, mountains of plums, peaches, nectarines and apricots fill the markets and you can buy them by the bucketload for next to nothing. It’s an age old tradition to make jam from the overflow of too much ripe fruit, especially if you happen to have fruit trees (every summer my brother-in-law’s mother, Ariana, is busy making enough plum jam to keep the pantry stocked for a year), but sorbetto or sorbet is another wonderful way to preserve ripe, seasonal fruit. I have always loved Artusi’s recipes for gelato and although he does not have one for plums, he does have simple recipes for other stone fruit sorbetti, such as apricot or buttery white Florentine peaches known as pesche burrone, an heirloom variety that’s hard to find today. But it’s the bright colour of damson or blood plums that I really love about this sorbetto, and the beauty of this recipe is that is it so low maintenance – throw the plums in the pot, skins, pits and all. Strain them later.