As abruptly as June turned into July, so did the tomato harvest become the fig harvest. Suddenly we’re down from at least a dozen ‘maters a day to maybe a couple, and up to our elbows in the ancient fruit.
We’re living inside an extended Iron Chef episode (if you’ve never seen the original, famous Japanese chefs “battle” the show’s standard-bearers in a contest to see who can present the best meals, all of which must contain a particular secret ingredient).
For the past five weeks, our secret ingredient was tomatoes. Salsa, pasta sauce, Caprese, grilled cheese samwitches with tomato, tomatoes smashed over hot garlic bread, tomatoes eaten raw like apples, tomato pie. Now the secret ingredient is figs, starting with the ones from the big “new” 5-year-old tree out front, with limbs sagging from the weight of green-turning-yellowish slightly flattened tennis-ball-sized fruit, made all the heavier after three days of Hurricane Alex leftover rain.
These big figs are sweet when very ripe, and make me feel like I’m eating a wet marshmallow. We snack on them fresh, but more and more I cook with them:
Bacon Fig Appetizers
Two nights ago I made crisscross cuts in the eye ends of a dozen, opened them up a little, drizzled a little honey inside followed by grated and mixed mozzarella and chili Parmesan cheeses. Then I cut several bacon slices in half long-ways and wrapped two bacon slices around each fig to help keep the cheesy openings closed.
You broil them, turning as needed, until the bacon has crisped up. We ran out of bacon and made a few more with just the honey and cheese, and it was good, too.
Chicken and Fig Sauce
Fresh figs don’t last, so use ‘em or they turn to mush and you have to throw them away. To prevent that, I made up a fig sauce, added cooked chicken and served it over pasta.
First, I peeled the skin off of nine of the big green figs (it comes off easily, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered). I put the peeled figs in a mixing bowl and poured a cup of Chianti wine over them, covered the bowl with wax paper and microwaved it on high for three minutes.
I sliced an onion fine, smashed and minced two garlic cloves and minced half of a hot Serrano pepper, then added them to a deep skillet in which a couple of tablespoons of olive oil had been heating. Warmed it up until the onion was soft and beginning to carmelize.
Then I poured in a cup of chicken broth and two or three tablespoons of chopped and combined fresh thyme and oregano from out back. After stirring, I added the bowl of figs and wine, and mashed up the figs while the mixture heated up.
I let this boil gently for probably 15 or 20 minutes, stirring occasionally until it was reduced by half or more and had begun to thicken somewhat.
Then I added balsamic vinegar, kosher salt and pepper to taste, and then I stirred in about two cups of chopped smoked chicken and a dozen or so Kalamata olives.
We tried it over pasta and liked it, but rice would work, too.
Outside again, the enormous old turkey fig tree in the back yard also is beginning to produce ripe fruit – small, brown and almost bruised looking when ripe, and incredibly sweet. I’m already fighting the birds for them. Some like the figs so much they refuse to fly off even when I threaten to climb one of the many trunks. They know it’s a ruse. Now I have a little arsenal of throwing sticks lined up along the perimeter of the tree’s lower branches. I go out into the rain and clap my hands at the mocking bird, heave a couple of sticks at the blackbirds, pick about six little figs and eat them on the way back into the house.
The birds tell each other what a jerk I am and swoop back into the tree to gorge themselves before the back door shuts. The tree’s too big to wrap in bird netting; I might drape some over a few favored branches if the sun ever comes out again.
Or maybe what the birds need is a little diversion, courtesy of a few Fourth of July bottle rockets.
