I had never eaten figs. When they appeared by the bushel full at the farmer´s market, it seemed time to remedy that.
While sweet and enticingly soft and juicy, I have to say they were relatively flavorless eaten fresh. So, with most of a kilo to get through, I happened upon Rick Stein´s recipe. I´ve seen some of Mr. Stein´s cooking and travel shows and he seems like such a delightfully jolly fellow, curious and enthusiastic about all things edible. I adapted his recipe for a lack of marscapone by substituting cream cheese with a couple of tablespoons of grated lemon zest and some homemade yogurt to fill it out.
I used Smitten Kitchen´s non-shrinking crust recipe, and I did it without so much as a food processor. As you can see, the crust is quite overdone, but in my defense, the oven shut off at some point early in the blind- baking stage and from then on I was improvising. Covering the crust with protective foil during final baking didn´t give results and it turns out the back of the oven is hotter than the front. Live and learn.
V liked it well enough. The lemon cream saved the dessert - again, even after baking, the figs themselves didn´t speak to me. I tried some of the black variety the next week, but still wasn´t bowled over by their flavor. So, now I have two jars of fig compote in the fridge and figs have dropped to the bottom of the fruit tree list.
Hi Coco,
ReplyDeleteHappy autumn equinox to you too (although it is spring here - but feels like the extremes of summer)! Have you tried Fig jam which I make here and it is really nice especially over the depths of winter. The fig tart sounds really nice and I'm salivating thinking about it. Swapping the mascarpone cheese for cream cheese was a good idea although they're not quite the same. Have you ever tried a traditional tiramisu desert which uses mascarpone cheese. Totally yummo!
Cheers
Chris
I am so envious, we have a fig tree that we bought but this year no figs,(it's been a bad summer) We both love frosh figs, but even better is Fig Konfyt, the recipe comes from South Africa, you can use unripe figs to make this as well as ripe ones, we always used to add some grated fresh ginger before capping the jars as we both have a passion for ginger. Fig Konfyt is very sweet and rich but fantastic served with plain yoghurt.
ReplyDeleteMarscapone, if you can find it, is over 3€ for a 250 ml tub, and I´m too cheap to spend that. When I start experimenting with cheesemaking, it will go on the list. (but after clotted cream)
ReplyDeleteIt must have been a bumper year for figs in Galicia. There was a fig tree here, but the neighbor took it out when he started restacking the wall between our properties. Now, having tried them, I´m not so irritated. I put some clove and cinnamon in the black fig preserves jar - smelled like Christmas!