This Week is Fig Week at Central Market!
Written by Austin M., Central Market Produce Inspector on Monday, August 09 2010
Fig season is upon us, and we’re ready to bring it in with a bang this week! With five (and maybe more) varieties to choose from, now is the perfect time to give this exotic fruit a shot. Here’s a quick guide on what’s available:
Calimyrnas are a flat green fig that tastes a bit more “figgy” than the others . They are the most popular fig for drying, but work out great in salads or compotes.
Brown Turkeys are the standard fig you grew up on, and perhaps the most useful for cooking due to their massive size. Their exterior color is a mixture of purple and yellow with a dark ruby interior.
Black Missions are another old standby. They’re perhaps the best balanced fig with a nice flavor and excellent sweetness that doesn’t vary much throughout the season.
Kadotas, a yellowish fig, are the hardest to grow of modern commercial varieties, but they’ve stuck around for a good reason! They are easily the sweetest of the bunch with a gooey, honeylike center.
Sierras are perhaps the first successful shot at using modern breeding techniques to perfect this ancient fruit. Sweet as the rest of them, this fig should hold up a good week in the refrigerator, which, for a fig, is pretty amazing.
So what do you do with a fig? We generally just wolf them down throughout the day, but they work phenomenally in salads, compotes, pastries or sauces. When I really want to impress company this time of year, this is what I do:
Stuffed Figs
Ingredients:
10 or so medium-sized figs (Brown Turkeys or Kadotas work well)
10 large slices of good prosciutto or jamon. (Don’t be cheap; this stuff is the star of the show.)
10 sprigs of rosemary
Toasted walnut halves
A small block of dry aged bleu cheese (I like to use St Pete’s)
1. Halve each fig vertically leaving a bit of the stem intact to hold the fruit together. Press the flesh down on either side of the interior to make a little pocket.
2. Fill the pockets on either side with a half of a walnut, and a marble-sized chunk of cheese.
3. Peel the majority of the leaves off each sprig of rosemary, leaving the tip of the sprig intact. It will look like an arrow. Wrap the figs in prosciutto, and use these arrows as “toothpicks” to hold the meat in place. These look sharp on a plate, and add a great undertone to the dish.
4. Bake at 400 for 10 minutes or so; right when the cheese starts to melt and the prosciutto gets nice and crispy.
5. Serve and enjoy.
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