We had picked up figs the other day at the CSA. These weren’t part of our share; instead, they’d come from the Mission Gardens, and one could buy baskets on a first-come first-served basis. Now, I couldn’t remember if I’d ever had figs before, but, we happen to know that the Mission Gardens are working to grow food that was grown here historically, going so far as to search out abandoned orchards to get cuttings for fruit trees from the time the Jesuit missionaries lived in the area. It’s a cool idea, and we think that buying a basket of figs is the least we can do.
As with many of the food items we get on the spur of the moment, we had no idea what to make using these figs. We just trusted that something would come to mind, or, that we had some fig-based recipe in the overflowing stacks here in the Scratchin’ It library. We looked around; nothing really appealed, but we did find a recipe in Dining In, by Alison Roman, that we’d borrowed from the library. Now, we followed it somewhat, but we changed it, too. The biggest change was that we used whipped cream with our figs in place of vanilla ice cream.
Caramelized Honey and Figs
Ingredients
- 3-4 Tbs honey
- 1/2 Tbs unsalted butter
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 6 figs stems removed and sliced in half
- whipped cream for serving
Instructions
- Cook the honey in a small skillet over medium heat until bubbling and slightly caramelized, about 6 minutes.
- Add butter and lemon juice and swirl the pan until butter is dissolved.
- Add figs, cut side down, and cook until slightly softened and glazed, 3 minutes.
- Remove from heat, flip figs to coat.
- Arrange in a bowl, drizzle with any remaining sauce, and top with a bit of whipped cream.
Ingredient discussion:
Honey is a difficult one for us to discuss. We used to be able to get fresh, local honey that was absolutely, positively, 100% real. Now, we’re left to grapple with the choices at the store, and we’ve read that a lot of honey really isn’t honey, or it’s not pure honey, or …. Well, you get the idea. So, we can’t really recommend anything except trying to support your local apiarists by purchasing local honey if you can find it. Don’t use the bottled lemon juice; it just doesn’t taste good. Figs seem to be quite delicate — we’ve not seen them in stores, so check your farmers’ markets.
Procedure in detail:
Caramelize honey. Place the honey in a small skillet and heat over medium heat. It’ll start to bubble, and the bubbling will increase; just let it. You can swirl the pan, if you want, but. basically, just let the honey cook for about 5-6 minutes, or until it gets darker in color. Go for a dark amber, but it’ll be fine as long as you don’t burn the honey.
Add butter and lemon juice. Drop in the butter — it’ll foam — and add the lemon juice — it’ll spatter — and swirl the pan until the butter is melted and incorporated.
Add figs. Place the figs in the sauce, cut side down, and let them cook in the sauce for about 3 minutes. They’ll release a bit of juice to flavor the sauce, and they’ll soften. They don’t need to caramelize or cook too long, just long enough to heat them pretty much all the way through. We touched the tops of the figs to see if they were warm.
Coat figs. Remove the pan from the heat and simply turn over the figs in the pan. Swirl the pan gently so the other side of the figs will get coated with the sauce. No need to cook them any longer.
Serve. Scoop the figs into bowls, arranging them nicely. We went with something resembling petals of a flower. Drizzle with the remaining sauce, then add a squirt or dollop of whipped cream. Make sure to get it to the table while the figs are still warm.
These figs were delicious as a light dessert. Not super sweet, light, and just plain tasty. Yes, they’d be really good with ice cream, too, but we had them after lunch and using whipped cream was perfect. It stayed cool enough to form a contrast between the warm figs and the cream. Some of the cream melted into the honey, making it more like caramel, and the figs turned out creamy with just a bit of crunch from the tiny seeds. It’s hard to believe that something you can have on the table in 10 minutes can be so good, but it is. Five stars.
