Embrace the fig, a seasonal treasure

Possibilities endless; get ’em while you can

A friend sent me a message on Facebook, obviously in response to my recent photographs of summer’s perfect fruit.

“Enjoying fig week? What’s that about?”

What’s that about? My fingers flew across the keyboard as I launched into the story of figs, their history, all the things to do with them, the different kinds, the tale of the woman who once offered me 40 leftover quarts and so on, and then I realized: Oh. I think that was just kind of a hello. I’m definitely returning too much information.

So I deleted it all, but my excitement has only built since then. The figs are in! I’m writing this column a day early so I can take a day off just to pick them. I’ll be hot, sweaty and sticky and there will be flies buzzing around, but it will be worth every miserable moment. I’ll share with friends who aren’t lucky enough to have a mother with a fig tree, I’ll snack on them until I think I can’t possibly eat another fig (never the case), I’ll make loaves of fig bread and toast slices for breakfast, I’ll stuff some with goat cheese and wrap them in prosciutto — dinner is served.

I already have some of the figs and have been eating them all week, sliced over Greek yogurt with walnuts and a drizzle of honey.

The day after we pick, my friend Joel and I will take about half the bounty and make fig preserves and fig butter. Last year I tinkered with an existing fig butter recipe, adding homemade cardamom burned sugar syrup to it, and I ate it on English muffins from Sheri McKelvie’s Cucina Breads (the best, deep nooks and crannies). My mom has habaneros and wants to see what we can come up with combining the two, so we’ll give it a shot. Hopefully I’ll find time to grill kabobs of lamb and figs; I’ll definitely use the preserves with pork tenderloin through the year. In a couple of weeks, I’ll start coming home to find bags of figs at my door because people will be tired of them. Eventually, I’ll freeze the remainder because there will be too many to eat, and they don’t last long once ripe. Around Christmas, I’ll bake fig bread again.

New this year: Fig-infused bourbon. It’s in the recipes and while I haven’t tried it yet, I can’t imagine what there is not to like about it.

However you get your figs, enjoy your bounty. If you don’t have access to a tree, you can find them