Figs!

[Nancy in Pátzcuaro]

My Spanish teacher brought me a bucket (literally) of fresh figs. These are the white or green type, green with a blush of brownish purple. I still have jam left from the last year when she brought me figs, so I'm looking for other ways to use them. And quickly--they're perfectly ripe. I have recipes for appetizers with blue cheese and a fig-walnut tart, but if anyone has a different way to use them, and ideally a way to preserve them for future use, I'd be quite grateful. She has 5 trees, so there's no shortage if I want more. Frankly I don't know what I'd do with 5 trees loaded with figs, and I don't know how she uses them other than to eat fresh and give the rest to the birds.

 

Thanks for your ideas!

 

Nancy in Pátzcuaro

 

 

[Yiannos]

David Lebovitz has a fig ice cream in his book The Perfect Scoop which is pretty good, assuming you are OK with the texture of the seeds as they are sort of tough to strain out of the thick base (I never bother). I also like to just freeze figs whole in bags to eat out of hand, they are really good cold like this if you let them soften just for a minute or two. Also brulee them to use as an accompaniment to desserts. 

 

Edit: here's the ice cream 

Edited August 8, 2018 by Yiannos
Added link (log)

[Nancy in Pátzcuaro]

Thanks for the idea about freezing them whole. And that ice cream recipe looks very good. Yum!

 

N. in P.

[BeeZee]

Nancy, I had bought frozen figs from Trader Joe’s that were bagged and called “partially dried” or something similar...they were not fully dehydrated, but they did remove some of the moisture, and they were great when defrosted. Still soft, but not watery as frozen fruit gets.

[Nancy in Pátzcuaro]

I have a dehydrator, though I think I may have to cut some of these in half--they're huge. I've seen smaller plums.

 

Thanks--N. in P.

[kayb]

I am about to bestir myself to turn 8 pounds of figs into fig jam. 

 

[scubadoo97]

5 hours ago, Nancy in Pátzcuaro said:

I have a dehydrator, though I think I may have to cut some of these in half--they're huge. I've seen smaller plums.

 

Thanks--N. in P.

 

I have a dehydrator and have often found some forgotten figs in the fridge that dehydrated on their own.   Always a treat

[helenjp]

Egulleteer's Kasia has a  recipe for white bean and fresh fig salad that I just had a bunch of students make at a summer camp. They were a bit heavy-handed with the parsley, which was a pity, but also with the blueberries, which work very well in this salad! We served it on a bed of small salad greens.

[kayb]

Out of 10 pounds of figs (including 3 pounds made into puree last week and refrigerated, that I added back into the jam pot today), I wound up with two pints and 12 half-pints of fig jam. I also FINALLY got the gallon of sweet-hot-dill chips (the ones to which @Kim Shook referred recently when she made "pickles out of pickles," and don't knock 'em until you've tried 'em) broken down into pint jars and processed.

 

Tomorrow, peach puree, peach butter, frozen peaches, whatever I take a notion for, and caponata. Then I'm through until the pears and the Arkansas Black apples come in.

 

 

 

[Nancy in Pátzcuaro]

Here's a deliciously addictive recipe I found on the California fig producers website. I suppose it could be frozen but I doubt it would last that long, given how good it is.

 

California Fig Bars

16 oz. figs, stemmed and chopped medium-fine

1/2 c. chopped walnuts

1/3 c. sugar

1/4 c. rum or orange juice (I used rum, of course)

2 Tbs. hot water

1/2 c. butter, softened

1 c. packed brown sugar

1 large egg

1-1/2 c. all purpose flour

1/2 tsp,. baking soda

pinch of salt

1-1/4 c. old fashioned oats

 

Heat oven to 350F. Coat a 13x9-inch baking pan with cooking spray. Combine figs, walnuts, sugar, rum and hot water; set aside. Beat together butter and sugar until creamy. Add egg and mix until smooth. Stir in flour, salt, and baking soda; blend in oats to make a soft dough. Reserve 1 c. of flour mixture. With floured fingertips, press thin even layer of remaining dough on the bottom of prepared pan. Firmly pat fig mixture over dough. Drop reserved dough by teaspoonfuls over top, allowing fig mixture to show between drops. Bake 30 minutes until golden brown. Cool completely in pan. Drizzle with rum glaze. Makes 36 bars.

 

Rum Glaze: Stir together 1/2 c. powdered sugar and 3-4 tsp. rum or orange juice until smooth.

 

In retrospect, I think I could have used less sugar, because these are pretty sweet, partially because the glaze is very sweet. Doesn't mean we didn't want to eat the entire pan, of course. I also think it would have been improved by the addition of an herbal element--thyme perhaps.

 

Nancy in Pátzcuaro

[kayb]

Saving that one. Thanks.

 

[ProfessionalHobbit]

How timely as we had bought some figs this past weekend, plus our farmers' markets are loaded with them

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fig and sweet red pepper salad with mint and crème fraîche

 

Dressing consists of crushed mint leaves macerated in a solution of 1:1 lemon juice and white wine vinegar, into which was whisked some crème fraîche, fruity extra-virgin olive oil, salt and black pepper.

[teonzo]

On 8/12/2018 at 7:37 PM, Nancy in Pátzcuaro said:

In retrospect, I think I could have used less sugar, because these are pretty sweet, partially because the glaze is very sweet. Doesn't mean we didn't want to eat the entire pan, of course. I also think it would have been improved by the addition of an herbal element--thyme perhaps.

 

I would suggest substituting a part of sugar with chestnut honey, it pairs well with figs and being bitter it cuts the sweetness. Also I would suggest using rosemary, I love the combo figs + chestnut honey + rosemary.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[weinoo]

I was reading a piece about the great critic/writer Peter Schjeldahl, who passed away this past week.

 

And as I scrolled down the page, I saw this article...Love The Fig.

 

Pretty interesting stuff:

 

Quote

 

Because a fig is actually a ball of flowers, it requires pollination to reproduce, but, because the flowers are sealed, not just any bug can crawl inside.* That task belongs to a minuscule insect known as the fig wasp, whose life cycle is intertwined with the fig’s. Mother wasps lay their eggs in an unripe fig. After their offspring hatch and mature, the males mate and then chew a tunnel to the surface, dying when their task is complete. The females follow and take flight, riding the winds until they smell another fig tree. (One species of wasp, in Africa, travels ten times farther than any other known pollinator.) When the insects discover the right specimen, they go inside and deposit the pollen from their birthplace. Then the females lay new eggs, and the cycle begins again. For the wasp mother, however, devotion to the fig plant soon turns tragic. A fig’s entranceway is booby-trapped to destroy her wings, so that she can never visit another plant. When you eat a dried fig, you’re probably chewing fig-wasp mummies, too.

 

 

I think I'll go have a fig newton now!

[Anna N]

2 hours ago, weinoo said:

I think I'll go have a fig newton now!

Thanks for this. It made a great read. I think I have only ever eaten a fresh fig once. I guess I was not particularly impressed because I don’t recall it. But I have been a fan of dried figs since I was knee-high to a jellybean. 

[Katie Meadow]

3 hours ago, weinoo said:

I was reading a piece about the great critic/writer Peter Schjeldahl, who passed away this past week.

 

And as I scrolled down the page, I saw this article...Love The Fig.

 

Pretty interesting stuff:

 

 

I think I'll go have a fig newton now!

Also very moving: the June 6 New Yorker article about Schjeldahl's daughter, Ada Calhoun, and her struggle coming to terms with her childhood and her recent memoir. Talk about a long and winding path that loops around Frank O'Hara and returns over and over again to her father. I haven't read the memoir. Yet.  Maybe I'll make the fig bars and dig up my dog-eared copy of Lunch Poems. 

 

[Shelby]

3 hours ago, weinoo said:

I was reading a piece about the great critic/writer Peter Schjeldahl, who passed away this past week.

 

And as I scrolled down the page, I saw this article...Love The Fig.

 

Pretty interesting stuff:

 

 

I think I'll go have a fig newton now!

I'm not sure I wanted to know this...but it is very interesting!

 

I just ate a piece of fig crostata for breakfast....

[Katie Meadow]

2 hours ago, Shelby said:

I'm not sure I wanted to know this...but it is very interesting!

 

I just ate a piece of fig crostata for breakfast....

Maybe the fig-wasp thing is a halloween prank? More than creepy, I'll say. Thank god for short term memory loss. The next time I have some fresh figs I won't remember having read that. At least I hope not.

[Nancy in Pátzcuaro]

1 hour ago, Katie Meadow said:

Maybe the fig-wasp thing is a halloween prank? More than creepy, I'll say. Thank god for short term memory loss. The next time I have some fresh figs I won't remember having read that. At least I hope not.

Nope--it's true. All over the world people eat insects, so this hapless wasp is not unusual. It must be a very small wasp, though, to be able to insinuate herself into what is ultimately a fairly small fruit. The incentive to reproduce is very strong indeed.  Poor wasp.

[dcarch]

Not a fig ment of your imagination.

 

 

dcarch

 

[haresfur]

13 hours ago, weinoo said:

I was reading a piece about the great critic/writer Peter Schjeldahl, who passed away this past week.

 

And as I scrolled down the page, I saw this article...Love The Fig.

 

Pretty interesting stuff:

 

 

I think I'll go have a fig newton now!

 

I knew about fig wasps but it is surprising how widespread fig trees are around the world given how specialised the pollination is. I have a rather sad fig tree in a pot that gets a few figs a year, even though there aren't that many of the trees around. There must be a lot of unsuccessful wasps. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

3 hours ago, haresfur said:

 

I knew about fig wasps but it is surprising how widespread fig trees are around the world given how specialised the pollination is. I have a rather sad fig tree in a pot that gets a few figs a year, even though there aren't that many of the trees around. There must be a lot of unsuccessful wasps. 

 

Perhaps the wasps pollinate some other hosts besides figs?

 

[liuzhou]

Although we get fresh figs in season from street vendors, I've never seen them in a fruit store or supermarket, though. Strange.

 

 

The supermarkets do, however, all stock unappealing-looking dried figs year round. No idea what anyone does with them, though. Must find out.

 

 

Edited October 25, 2022 by liuzhou (log)

[haresfur]

19 hours ago, liuzhou said:

Although we get fresh figs in season from street vendors, I've never seen them in a fruit store or supermarket, though. Strange.

 

 

 

The supermarkets do, however, all stock unappealing-looking dried figs year round. No idea what anyone does with them, though. Must find out.

 

 

 

 

Fresh figs are very delicate and don't stay ripe for long so they are probably best for small local vendors. Dried figs still taste ok and are good for cooking. A vendor at my farmers market sells nice caramelised figs which are a happy medium.

[liuzhou]

1 hour ago, haresfur said:

 

Fresh figs are very delicate and don't stay ripe for long so they are probably best for small local vendors. Dried figs still taste ok and are good for cooking. A vendor at my farmers market sells nice caramelised figs which are a happy medium.

Yes, I know figs are delicate, but the supermarkets stock other fruits which are equally delicate and perishable. I think the main problem is that the supply is extremely low and no one can satisfy the supermarkets' requirements. I see this with other produce, too.

 

I know dried figs are OK. What I meant was that I don't know how the locals use them. That, I will try to find out.