Fabulously Figgy

Figs are the fabulous feature for this month's Sugar High Friday over at Creme Puffs in Venice.


Calimyrna Figs, also called the Green California Fig
Last year researchers from Harvard found a handful of fossilized figs, estimated to be between 11,200 and 11,400 years old, at an archeological site in the Jordan Valley. The figs were a domesticated variety propagated thanks to human intervention, which made them one of the very earliest examples of agricultural efforts, predating cultivation of other early crops, such as wheat or barley. In among the fossilized remains of acorns and other gathered plants, the fig stood as the only fruit these ancient people intervened on behalf of, making sure that they would be able to continue eating figs in the future. And figs, my friends, are worth intervening for.

I imagine that in a past life I may have taken part in efforts to ensure the future of the fig, or more to the point, my future eating of figs. Fresh figs are a new discovery for me. Despite my varied fresh fruit and vegetable experiences growing up, the fig was simply a thing of cookie fillings to me, à la Fig Newtons. I’m fairly sure I had no idea what they even looked like until rather recently.



Above: Calimyrna Figs stuffed with vegan cream cheese, sprinkled with fresh cracked pepper and salt, topped with a drizzle of good olive oil. This is the fanciest, most delectable appetizer you can make in less than 30 seconds. You get the soft sweetness of the fig with the tang of the cream cheese and the bite of the pepper. It's rich and sweet and perfectly delicious. I highly recommend using cold cream cheese and room temperature or lightly pan warmed fig for this to play up all of the contrasting elements even more. A sensual bite for sure.

My first fresh fig experience was a sensual one as well. It took place last October (the scene: Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, the dish: the best salad of my life featuring a mix of baby lettuce freshly picked from the Green Gulch farm, perfectly toasted walnuts, a dazzlingly tart/rich vinaigrette, and the show stopping fresh figs—lightly grilled with a drizzle of beautifully green olive oil and a sprinkle of course salt complementing the light sweet of the fruit, the sponsor: my good friend Laura, thanks again and forever! My smattering of bourgie tastes tend to outpace my smattering of bourgeois means…) Anyway, I’ve been passionate for figs ever since.



The fruit salad above is a completely different fig centered salad than the one I had at Greens, but it makes for another list topping salad in my book: for each bowl, a few heaping spoonfuls of unsweetened soy yogurt and chopped fruit (try 1/2 a peach, 1/2 a kiwi, 2 green figs, 2 dates, 1/4 cup raspberries) and top with 2 tablespoons toasted almond slices.

Sadly for me, my first taste of fresh fig came at the end of its season and I've had to wait all this time for them to come back around. Maybe they start appearing in California and the like earlier (most sources seem to say the season is June-October), but it’s only been in the past month that they’ve been popping up intermittently in the shops here. Since they’ve begun appearing, I’ve been duly overloading on them and experimenting whenever I can.

There are many, hundreds even, of different kinds of figs in the world. In this post I can showcase three varieties, the Calimyrna, the Brown Turkish, and the Black Mission. They are the only kinds of fig that I’ve been able to try, as figs can be hard to come by and there are limited varieties on offer, especially in areas like Massachusetts where they are not grown. Each is remarkably different in both appearance and flavor, though I’m not so fig experienced that I can share wisdom about what situations their unique flavors are best showcased.


Brown Turkish Fig

If you’ve never had a fresh fig before you will likely be surprised by the delicacy of their flavor which is nothing like the dried fig. They have a sweetness that is supremely light and clear, but it’s like a quietly beautiful song in that way, something that will not demand your attention, rather it gently captivates you. There’s also microscopic burst of almost nutty flavor from the tiny seeds that dot in the inner landscape of the fig and a clean earthy finish that the trickle of juice will leave behind. The textures are all part of the experience of eating fresh figs too, a flavorful skin with bite, soft decadently dense flesh and the poppyseed crunch of the seeds inside.



They caramelize nicely and are perfect for something like this sedately luscious upside down fig cake with a creamy vegan lemon anglaise sauce. The figs transform an otherwise simple nutty afternoon tea cake into something really special. This is from the Artful Vegan cookbook, which I seem to not be able to get enough of lately. I had to fuss with the sauce for a goodly length of time until it was tangy enough for me, but once it was right, what a treat. The figs were deliciously crisp on top and soft and gooey underneath. With the cake served warm on top of a cool swath of sauce, it's next level tea time fare or a lovely not too sweet dessert option.


Black Mission Fig

I think the Black Mission might be my favorite fig. It's certainly the boldest in flavor of all I've tried and it strikes me as the most beautiful of the lot with the deeply colored skin and the gorgeous beige-pink inside. I saw a picture of a tart using fresh mission figs in the first Millennium cookbook months ago and had been waiting ever since to make one.



Crusts are my Achilles heel when in comes to baking, but I'm working on them. These came out pretty well, but were a little too hard, crunchy and thick. I may have fumbled by adding too much almond meal. The recipe tells you to make almond meal from whole almonds, but I already had meal and so just went straight to it. Fortunately, they were still delicious and the toasty nut flavor was a perfect complement to the rich pear cream and the earthy sweetness of the figs.



The finished tart with red pear cream, almond crust and black pepper blackberry coulis:



Again, a recipe in which figs benefit greatly from contrasting flavors with the tart berries and spicy kick of pepper in the coulis.



Of course, not all fig dishes need be desserts. They provide a great soft-sweet note in main dishes too. I loved using the ends of the mission figs that didn't make it into the tarts in a quick garlicy fresh fig and faux chicken dish served onto of Lebanese cous cous (which is the biggest cous cous I've ever seen, really, it almost looked like Kix or some other kind of breakfast cereal puff). The dish is simple though very richly flavored and intense. I began by sautéeing a goodly amount of garlic in a generous pool of olive oil and then adding a package of Morningstar Farm veggie chicken strips, a handful of de-pitted kalamata olives, 2 chopped garlic scapes, half a cup of fresh peas and about half a cup of fresh fig, chopped. Topped with chopped fresh basil, it was a Mediterranean feast.



A slight variation the dinner above featured pasta instead of cous cous, farm-fresh kale rather than garlic scapes, green figs instead of black mission and had the addition of caramelized shallots as well. It was equally delicious.



Figs also grill outrageously well, their warm caramelized juices lend an amazing flavor to everything they touch. Simple skewers of salt rubbed eggplant, red pepper and fig make for a beautiful meal when paired with good bread and a garlicy hummus and salad.



Just marinade the skewers in 1/2 cup white wine, 2 crushed cloves of garlic, 1 teaspoon ground cumin, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and freshly ground black pepper for an hour and then grill until everything is nicely soft.



And that represents my experiments with figs thus far. I hope they inspire you to try using fresh figs sometime soon.

I leave you with these five figgy facts to further educate and intrigue you:

1. On fig trees: Figs come from trees that are descended from a wild tree, the caprifig, which is known colloquially as the goat fig because the unripe figs that fall from it are eaten by goats, which (are adorable and) will eat anything. Commercial figs now are grown on ficus trees. I have a miniature ficus in my living room. It does not produce figs, however, once several years ago I was playing a promotional Star Wars/Burger King online game (I know—terrible!) in which you were supposed to think of something and Darth Vader would ask you questions about it to determine what you were thinking. I thought of my ficus. He asked three questions and then apropos of nothing, he was like, “is it a ficus?” It fundamentally freaked me out. There is no way he could have ever guess that! I still suspect foul play and mind reading.

2. Though an ancient fruit with a proud and even sacred history, the fig has probably gained the most notoriety through its inclusion in a cookie, namely, the Fig Newton. There’s some debate over this, but apparently, the cookie was so named for the town of Newton in Massachusetts, which is a neighbor to the Cambridgeport location of the original Kennedy Biscuit Works (now Nabisco) where the cookies were made. The cookie could by this logic just as easily have been the Fig Cambridge or the Fig Somerville. Since my homebase of Somerville is known for being the birthplace of Fluff though, I guess we can gracefully share the junk food wealth and let this one go to Newton…

3. Fresh figs are not very commonly found in stores…yes, yes, I know, thanks for stating the obvious. Dried varieties are much more popular because they have such a longer shelf life. The shelf life of a fresh fig is very short because they must be picked ripe from the tree (many more commercially viable fruits are picked before they’re ripe and left to ripen in the store or at people’s homes). The fig is also very fragile, making it hard to package and ship without damage.

4. You’ll have the most luck finding fresh figs from mid-June to mid-October. They will keep well for about a week if properly stored. For the best results, figs should be stored, wrapped well or in a covered container, in the refrigerator. You can also freeze them whole, sliced or peeled in a sealed container. When selecting fresh figs pick out figs that are dry and do not have sticky residue. Give them a sniff and choose figs with a lightly sweet scent, avoid any that are sour smelling. They should have a smooth round shape, unbroken skin, be densely heavy, and yield slightly to your touch. Take your time and select the best figs on offer because, seriously, you’ll be paying for it. Figs, in my limited experience, cost between fifty cents and a dollar each.

5. Figs are good for you. They have more dietary fiber than any other fruit, are rich in calcium and high in antioxidants.