We Are Never Full » figs

Sweet, Savory and Smoky: Chicken with Figs

Amy — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 02:05:28 +0000

As we mentioned in an earlier post, it’s still fig season for another few weeks. This is a delicious way to eat up those unused figs or to try making this with some dried ones if you have had a hard time finding fresh ones. Believe it or not, this dish tastes delicious with either fresh or dried figs – we’ve had it both ways. We have taken a dish/recipe by Daisy Martinez and, because of time and space, adapted it a bit. In Daisy’s recipe, she makes her version of a Sauce Espagnole, or brown sauce, before adding it to the browned chicken. In addition to adding some smoked pimenton (smoked paprika) to my own version of the brown sauce, I also decided against straining the sauce and, instead, used a potato smasher (my hand blender isn’t in my apartment right now) to create a thick, chunkier sauce. The result is a very satisfying, yet light dish. Ok, so there is some bacon and bacon grease used in the recipe, but it’s only to add depth of flavor. Other than that, this meal is relatively healthy and would work well with dried figs for a fall or winter meal.

I highly recommend trying this dish. It would make a fabulous and cheap meal to make for a big group dinner, as well. Hey, we are in a recession! Gotta get creative!

CHICKEN WITH FIGS (adapted from Daisy Martinez) – serves 4

Ingredients for Brown Sauce:

6 slices of bacon, cut into 1 inch slices
2 stalks of celery, cut into 1 to 2 inch pieces
2 carrots, cut into 1 to 2 inch pieces
1 onion, cut into 1 to 2 inch pieces
4 cloves of garlic, smashed and cut in half
2 sprigs of thyme, leaves off the stem
3 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 1/2 teaspoon smoked pimenton
1/3 cup calvados (or other type of brandy/cognac)
5 cups of vegetable or chicken stock
2 bay leaves
3 cloves

Other ingredients:

6 to 8 fresh figs or dried figs (rehydrated for 20 minutes in hot water), sliced in half
8 pieces of chicken (we used 4 drumsticks and 4 thighs – skin on)
salt and pepper
olive oil

What to do:

Make the brown sauce by first browning the bacon, allowing it’s fat to render. When it is browned, remove with slotted spoon and drain most of the rendered bacon fat, leaving only about 3 tablespoons.
Add the celery, carrots, onion, garlic and thyme and brown them in the bacon fat on medium heat for about 10 minutes. Sprinkle the flour on the veggies and stir until it is all incorporated. Now add the pimenton and stir to incorporate well. Make a well in the veggies and add your tomato paste. Allow to cook for a few seconds then stir into the veggies. Cook for another minute.
Turn down the heat and add your calvados and/or brandy. Allow to burn down until it is evaporated.
Once it has evaporated, add your stock, cloves and bay leaves and bring to a boil. After it comes to a boil, adjust heat so that it cooks at a gentel boil. Stir occasionally.
As the Sauce Espagnole cooks, brown your chicken on medium-high in a heavy-bottomed pan. Add some oil to the pan before you begin and cook, turning to brown both sides – about 10 to 12 minutes.
Once browned, lower heat and remove your browned chicken for a moment. Turn heat up to medium-low and ladle in some of the cooking Sauce Espagnole (it’s not done yet, remember!) and pick up the browned chicken bits from the bottom of your pan. Once it is all incorporated and there are no bits left on the bottom, pour in the rest of the Sauce Espagnole into that pan. Add your chicken pieces back along with the crispy bacon and your figs. Turn heat to medium and allow to cook uncovered at a simmer for about 25 minutes.
After 20 minutes, cover and continue cooking for an additional 25 minutes.
Right before serving, remove figs and chicken pieces to separate pan. Take out bay leaves and discard. Using a potato smasher or hand blender, lightly crush (or quickly pulse hand blender a few times) the very soft veggies down. If you feel it needs a bit more “body”, sprinkle in a bit more flour.
Arrange some chicken and few figs on the plate and spoon some of the sauce on top. Serve with roasted potatoes or a hunk of crusty country bread.

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Figs, Glorious Figs

Jonny — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:05:11 +0000

“If I should wish a fruit brought to Paradise it would certainly be the fig.” - Prophet Mohammed

We don’t really “do” dessert. We really don’t. If we did we’d probably get a lot more hits from Tastespotting and Foodgawker, since they only seem to post chocolate flavored desserts topped liberally with powdered sugar and sprigs of mint. But bitterness aside, and in a kind of concession to both these photo sites and our own heavy bias towards savory dishes, we decided that it was time to make some sort of dessert, and a summery one at that.

Now, because we’re not bakers of any note, we decided to avoid baking, and indeed, cooking altogether, and simply arranged what nature and the bounty of our local grocery store had provided — namely, figs and greek yogurt decorated with honey and crushed pistachios. About as simple a preparation as you could imagine, right?

Serious About Figs

So, because there’s no recipe to speak of, I need to somehow extend this already overly long post, so here are some interesting tidbits about figs that I certainly wasn’t aware of, and I suspect, if you’re honest, you weren’t either.

Figs are the fruit of the ficus plant, or tree, and if you’ve ever had house plants, you’ll probably have had a ficus. While she was a student, my sister had one that survived heroically for six years on a steady diet of the dregs from cold cups of tea before meeting its tragic Waterloo being pulled out of her third floor window by an adventurous and powerful squirrel.

It is thought that figs (or ficus’) are among the most ancient genuses (genii?) of flowering plants being as much as 80 million years old, so it is little wonder then given the scientific accuracy of the Bible (note: this is irony) that they are described in its pages as the first fruit, and that it is with fig leaves that Adam and Eve hide their nakedness from the good Lord in the book of Genesis. In fact, contributors to the holy book were not the only ones to extol the virtues and practicalities of the fig, Roman poet, Pliny the Elder wrote, “Figs are restorative. They increase the strength of young people, preserve the elderly in better health and make them look younger with fewer wrinkles.”

In the intervening years, a wondrous variety of different kinds of figs have come into being — some through mutation, some by the hand of man, but today in the United States a couple of different kinds of fig predominate. The common or mission, fig is most, err common, and though, with its purple skin and pinky-peach flesh and yellow seeds it is at its best when fresh and ripe, sadly it is most often eaten dried. It was brought to North America by the Spanish and first planted in 1759 at San Diego Mission (hence the name). Later, the Smyrna fig variety arrived in California’s San Joaquin Valley from the eponymous town in modern-day Turkey in 1882 and was renamed Calimyrna later this century in honor of its new homeland. Other relatively easy to find varieties include the Kadota and Adriatic figs, the former is the American varietal of the Italian Dattato and is practically seedless, and the latter, well, is a variety originally from the Croatian coast, and is now very commonly made into, of all things, Fig Newtons.

Other interesting points about figs include: only the female fig is edible, and that figs are not really fruit as such, falling into the category of false fruits, (as indeed do strawberries, and many other berries) because the fig is, in fact, the flower and the seeds it contains are the fruit. Like I said, interesting, right? What? oh…

Anyway, it’s fig season right now through the end of September, so go get yourself some and enjoy them as if they were the first fruit! We have entered this simple and easy recipe in A Southern Grace’s Beat the Heat event since this is a great thing to make when it’s boiling hot outside.

Recipe (if you must have one) serves 4

12 ripe mission/common figs, split and spread as above

6-10oz plain Greek yogurt

2-3 tbsp runny honey

2 tbsp crushed pistachios

Assemble all these on plate and enjoy, perhaps with a chilled glass of dessert wine. We think something like a Pedro Ximenez or Moscatell would be rather nice.

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