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yum!

A blog about food

Fanatical for Figs

While I was gone, I couldn't leave all you yum! followers without a new thing to try in your kitchen. I mean - I was out for 2 weeks, but us foodies need to stay creative in the kitchen! So who better to teach us how to quickly whip up "the thing to have"  than Sun Valley Magazine's resident local buzzer, Dana DuGan?!? Here she dishes on how to enjoy the fresh seasonal figs:

 

Oh, heavenly days, it is tomato and fig season. Fat, weirdly shaped and rainbow-colored heirloom tomatoes are ubiquitous in everything from soup to salads.

So too are figs.

For those who only know figs from Newton’s cookie, just one nibble of the real thing can be a revelation. There is nothing like the unique taste and feel of fresh figs. Lusciously sweet with a chewy texture, they can be wrapped in prosciutto, turned into cake, served in arugula salads, combined with almost any kind of cheese, and even whipped into chutneys. Anything melon can do, fig can do better.

Full disclosure: my mother’s family name is Figg, and I was raised to believe figs were to our family as a certain kind of anchovy-laced salad is to Caesar’s brood.

Speaking of Caesar, and I admit this is a stretch, Pliny, the great Roman naturalist, once famously said:

“Figs are restorative, and the best food that can be taken by those who are brought low by long sickness...professed wrestlers and champions were in times past fed with figs."

At a recent wedding, figs appeared as a passed hors d’oeuvres. At the girl & the fig in Sonoma, California, where most things come with figs, we quaffed Fig Royale (sparkling wine with fig extract), a take-off on flavored Kir Royale. Heavenly.

Here’s a quick, at-home fig solution for your late-summer soirees.

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Fig and Roquefort Crostini

5-6 ripe (soft to touch) figs, sliced longwise
Roquefort Cheese (creamy)
Baguette cut into thin slices and lightly toasted

Spread cheese onto toast, top with fig and serve