Fleeting Figs…

A fig in the hand…

Fresh figs are some of the most fragile and fleeting fruits I’ve ever seen. One website suggested you have approximately 12 hours from the time you actually dislodge the fig from the tree before you lose control of it (i.e. it turns to mush).

My fresh figs had a lifespan of about 48 hours all together, but many of them didn’t have that much staying power. I ate them, styled them for photographs, shared them with my family, then hit the fig-wall: time to do *something* with the fresh figs before they liquified and ran out of the basket.

I had dreams of caramelizing them and canning the results: tidy, pint-sized rows of golden-brown goodness lining the shelves of my kitchen, waiting to be opened up and spooned out over fluffy buttered biscuits while snowflakes whirl outside the window…but that involved finding canning jars, prepping figs, and dealing with my mother’s hippopotamus-sized pressure cooker, which I always assume will explode, showering anyone in the vicinity with glass shrapnel and geysers of liquid hot “figma” (like magma, only made of figs and sugar).

Freezing, then, was the best option. This still requires prepping the figs, but has no real opportunity to register on the Richter scale of my imagination. (“Asheville locavore blows a gasket–literally–in freakish home-canning accident!”) The fig-related websites (there are more than you might think) suggest boiling figs in a simple syrup before freezing. Hmm…sounds like I should just make fig sauce (like apple sauce, obviously, but with figs) and freeze that. I could still have the buttered-biscuit-snowfall-fantasy, even though freezer containers are 1) not as attractive as canning jars, and 2) even if they were pretty, they’re still hidden in the freezer.

I begin sorting figs, slicing off the stem end and “fig butt” of all those that haven’t either burst their skins or grown cobwebby white mold whiskers. (A fig is really just a fragile little bag of juicy fructose waiting to become a science experiment–eek!) There are still a lot of usable figs, and the ones that scare me go into a separate bag for the neighbor’s hog Brutus. (I’ve seen how and what he eats; I don’t honestly think he’ll mind a few fig whiskers.)

Once all the figs are in the pot, I add a cup or so of orange juice, the juice of one lime, a half-cup or more of brown sugar, a tablespoon of cinnamon, a teaspoon of dried orange rind, and a shake-shake-shake of an orange liquer for good measure (or “innacurate measure,” if we’re being technical about it). I turn the burner to medium and wait, stirring occasionally.

A couple of hours (and some adjustments to sugar and cinnamon) later, I have a pot full of beautiful fig sauce, boiled down to caramel-thick perfection, with a million golden seeds catching the light. So good, so worthy, as it were, of buttered biscuits on a winter’s day. As soon as it cools, I’ll put it in sturdy storage containers and bury it in the permafrost zone of the freezer. Pure fig heaven, waiting to be resurrected from from the depths of its artificially Arctic interment to live again at the breakfast table!

Big Fig Pig

Fresh figs!

 

That’s me: a big fig pig. Fresh figs call my name this time of year (who knew they could speak?), and they call it LOUD!

I never knew how good figs could be until I tried fresh ones. Until a few years ago, my fig experiences were limited to Fig Newtons and such, which aren’t bad, but not exactly memorable, either, at least to me. (I know there are rabid Newtonians out there, including my dad, and I’m delighted for you. Chew on!)

A friend brought fresh figs to work in 2005. She left them in the copy room, which is what we do with whatever goodies we want to share with the office. (Examples include lots of squash and zucchini in season; chocolate-peanut-butter “buckeyes” when Ohio’s football season starts; King Cake from a co-worker’s family in New Orleans around Mardi Gras; Christmas “thank-you” baskets from vendors–yeeha!)

So I look at the fresh figs with some curiosity, wondering how they compare to (what I consider lackluster) Fig Newtons. They’re small-ish fruit with brownish-purple skins, rounded at one end and tapering towards the stem at the other. Some are slightly cracked, hinting at their juicy interiors. They’re intriguing, they’re something I want to try, so I sink my teeth into fig flesh–

Good golly day! They’re unbelievably good! Like rain and sunshine somehow caught up together in a fragile skin, bursting under the least pressure to reveal their ripeness. No wonder painters are always trying to capture them in still life studies! No wonder Italians are always wrapping them in prosciutto or baking them into once-a-year-fig-delicacies–I, too, could spend the all-too-brief fig season doing nothing but indulging in fresh figs. And I’m supposed to go back to my desk and keep working, as nothing has happened? I want to run out in the streets of Asheville, shouting out my fig joy!

I eventually return to my desk, of course, with my mind full of the possibilities of figs: what can I do that best showcases their character and my newfound admiration for them? Dollops of chevre? Anointment with balsamic vinegar? Carmelization to preserve their perfection behind glass? These are the questions that distract me from PowerPoint and send me into a covert fig-googling operation…