In praise of figs

I feel like I hit the jackpot this summer. Not the kind of jackpot that would make me rich, but I honestly think I am just as happy, if not more, with the one I've won: I've come into a windfall of figs. And not only are they gorgeous and exotic, delicious and hard to come by, but they happen to be my favorite fruit to cook and bake with.

We bought a rental property --a major fixer-upper--one year ago and we've been rehab-ing it all year so we could rent it for extra income. It was a huge project and D. has worked so hard and it is finally (almost) complete. It will all be worth it eventually, when we start to recoup our investment in the form of rent. But for now, I feel like we've gotten the biggest return on our investment in the form of sweet, juicy figs. You see, the property has two huge, old fig trees on it --so big their thick roots are almost fused together and the canopy reaches into the sky and down to the ground, laden with plump, juicy figs, ripe for the picking.

Last year we owned the property but had not started working on it in earnest when the figs started coming in. On top of that, the house had been empty for several years prior and in much need of some attention. The day I went over to harvest all the figs I was met with an empty tree--someone had brought in equipment overnight and harvested every single one of them. Thieves of the worst kind! So this year not only do we have renters in one of the units already, but I put up a no trespassing sign and placed this intimidating security guard on duty.

We have been harvesting them almost every day for over a week now. There are more than we can pick with only a ladder to get to the top of the tree. But it's been so much fun to go over there with June and show her how good just-picked fruit can be. We pick and eat until our grocery bags are full or the mosquitoes start to eat us alive, whichever comes first. Then I get to work on canning, freezing, baking and otherwise trying to preserve these beauties as best I can.

I have an Italian friend, Elisabetta, who is from Rome and I've known her for 15 years. Her mom, Ignazia Mancini is one of my culinary inspirations and makes the most delicious "marmellata di fichi" (fig jam) I've ever tasted (in Italy fig trees grow rampantly throughout the Southern regions).  She always gives me some of her jam when I go visit her and it's been a while since I've had that tasty treat in my fridge. Last summer, upon purchasing the property and discovering the figs, I asked Betty for her mom's recipe. This summer I finally got the chance to make it. It is a wonderful combination of figs with a little dark cocoa thrown in to give it that extra depth of flavor and dark color. (Recipe below).

I've made two batches so far and gave some away to friends and stashed a couple of jars for us for the winter.

Last weekend I made a beautiful fig tart that I plan on making for the open house at Lockeland Table next Monday night. If you're in the neighborhood, stop in for some yummy apps and a bite-sized version of this super-local (as in 14th street y'all) fresh fruit tart.

And for a dinner party on Sunday with friends, I stuffed fresh figs with bits of smoky bleu cheese and drizzled them with honey and a sprinkle of sea salt. To.die.for.

Call me crazy, but I can't get enough of this amazing fruit! If you know of any other great fig recipes or ideas, please send them my way. I've even tried freezing some by laying them on a baking sheet to harden and then packing them into a plastic freezer bag and sucking out all the air with a straw. I've never tried freezing fruit, but it will be interesting to see what shape they're in when I pull them out in January or February for a little taste of summer.

Marmellata di fichi (recipe courtesy of Ignazia Mancini) 

about 1.5 lbs of figs (750 grams)
1 and a 1/2 cups of sugar
1/4 cup of dark, unsweetened cocoa powder
juice of half a lemon (optional)

Wash and remove the stems of the figs then put in a large stockpot on med. heat and cook, stirring frequently so they don't burn, for about 30-45 min.  Remove them to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Put back into the pot and add the sugar. Cook on low, stirring occasionally, until thickened and the consistency of jam (about 45-1 hour). Add the cocoa powder and lemon juice (if desired--I always add a bit of citrus to any jam to bring out the flavor of the fruit and add acidity) and stir until blended. Turn off the heat and prepare your jars according to most canning recipes. Fill jars and process using the boiling water method for at least 15 min. Place on a towel to cool and let the tops seal. If any do not seal, place in the fridge and eat within two weeks. Processed jars will be good for at least one year.

my tribute to Julia

I am not a French cook and I don't rely heavily on Julia Child's recipes in my own kitchen. But the 'Julia hype' was all over the blogs, the magazines and the airwaves this month and for good reason. When I got to thinking about how she influenced me just by who she was and what she did, I realized I, too, just had to pay tribute.



After all, she didn't start to learn to cook until she was 37 years old and when I read this in her memoir two years ago, it is one of the things that motivated me to start this blog and devote so many hours to learning and cooking and experimenting over the last two years in my own kitchen. That summer I also read Julie Powell's book, Julie and Julia, and loved it. She seemed like a girl after my own heart.

Julia's birthday was on Aug. 15, coinciding nicely with the release of the new film Julie and Julia, based on these two books. I went to see the movie on the afternoon of its opening day. I took myself as a treat and sat there in the overly-air-conditioned movie theater on a hot summer day, smiling and crying and thoroughly enjoying myself. I loved the scenes shot in Paris in the markets and Meryl Streep's impersonation was almost as good as watching old footage of Julia Child's early TV program, The French Chef. I watched those, too, last week on PBS, experiencing her for the first time in the original format and fell in love with her all over again.

So, I decided since I was having people over for dinner one night last week, why not combine our dinner party with one of Julia's menus for a celebration in her honor. I used the recent bon appetit article from the August issue as my inspiration (with links to those recipes here). Even though I have Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I seem to read it more like a textbook than actually cooking from it. There is something about it that is so technical but also so accessible and I can see why it was such a seminal cookbook that enjoyed 47 editions!



This menu started out with this beautiful, flaky tart, a pissaladière nicoise. It really was a delicious crust and the salty anchovies, black olives and sautéed onions were a classic combination. It was a basic pate brisèe tart crust, but in addition to the butter, there were 2 tablespoons of chilled vegetable shortening--not my usual fare, but it really did make for a flaky and beautiful tart crust.



The main course was poulet sautè aux herbes de Provence. In true Julia form, I bought a whole organic chicken from the market and cut it up into eight pieces myself. I was proud of myself for doing that, as if it were some major accomplishment. But really, growing up in the age of ready-made and plastic-wrapped everything, it makes me feel self-sufficient and somehow cool to be able to save money by buying a nice chicken and cutting it up myself. It came out great. As you can probably guess, the distinguishing factor of this preparation is the use of traditional herbs like thyme, basil and fennel seeds, plus garlic, and sautèeing the chicken pieces in a whole stick of butter. It was delicious, subtle in flavor, moist and had good color due to the browning in butter.

The sauce was a little too French for my tastes, combining egg yolks whisked with wine and lemon juice over low heat while adding the reserved pan juices a little at a time. It tasted and looked heavy to me and I ended up serving it on the side instead of pouring it over the chicken. But everyone loved it.


(photo courtesy bon appetit, because mine didn't look that pretty)

I also made Julia's Ratatouille recipe (above), which involves more steps than the one I usually make, but it was nice and fragrant and more of a stew than usual. I liked it, but it was no big revelation. The season is right for it though, and I just happened to have a large purple eggplant, peppers and tomatoes from the garden and I used yellow squash instead of the zucchini the recipe called for. I don't think it would have made a big difference.

I served a simple green salad with vinaigrette and a basket of crusty French bread on the side. We drank a lovely French chardonnay and I served a sample of locally made artisan chocolate from the new Olive and Sinclair chocolate company for dessert.

It was a simple and fun meal, one that I am not likely to make again soon, but a fitting tribute to a woman who certainly inspired me and who, almost fifty years later, continues to inspire so many cooks around the world. Thank you, Julia!

Slow Bake Sale

Our "Great American Bake Sale" sponsored by Slow Food Nashville and held last Saturday at the Nashville Farmer's Market was a sweet success! We raised almost $900 for Share Our Strength's campaign to fight childhood hunger.



Thanks to all of our local bakers and pastry chefs for contributing their delicious baked treats to our sale. So many beautiful items graced our checkered tablecloth, arriving throughout the day at the market for folks to drool over. And drool they did. But they also threw down and spent money, some even donating money on top of their purchase, giving me hope that people do care. And they also love sweets.

Who wouldn't love baked goods made by professionals using mostly local ingredients? Who wouldn't love these...


peach-almond tarts made by Tom Huber for Marmellata


fresh fruit tarts made by Bacon and Caviar Catering


peach danishes made by Provence


peach cupcakes with blackberries made by Martha Stamps


'chocolate sin cake' made by Zola, pecan tarts by Bacon and Caviar and buttercream cupcake by Sweet Honey

And so much more... coffee cake from F. Scott's, a local harvest cake and vegan beet muffins from Fido, beautiful little linzer cookies and chocolate-ginger cookies by Rebekah Turshen of the Union Station Hotel, cheesecakes by Nashville Cheescake, brioche from Patterson House, and 'crostata di marmellata' and peach-blackberry cobbler made by yours truly.

Thanks again to all who baked, helped and ate. I'm proud of our Slow Food Chapter, our local chefs and our community.

Rustic plum tart

What do you call plums cooked with a red wine (or port) and brown sugar syrup scattered over a simple rolled out pie dough and served with vanilla ice cream? A perfect summer dessert.

This was a breeze of a thing, thought up after seeing it in bon appetit recently. Plums have just made an appearance at the local market and I bought some hoping to do something like this with them (although I love plums eaten fresh on their own too).

I took it to a father's day dinner party and it was enjoyed by all. It's no 'knock your socks off' crazy dessert; just a simple and easy thing to whip up that tastes homemade and makes good use of a seasonal fruit. It could easily be done with peaches (also in season now) or cherries. Yum!

Rustic plum tart (adapted from bon appetit, june issue)

For the crust:

2 cups a.p. flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c + ice water
1 + 1/2 sticks of cold butter

For the filling:

about 6 ripe plums, seeded and quartered
1/2 c + 1 T brown sugar
1 T flour
a dash of maple syrup
2 c port or red wine

Make crust: put flour and salt in bowl and cut in butter with a pie cutter or a fork. Add cold water a little at a time and mix with fork until it comes together with small lumps of butter. Divide in half, make 2 discs and cover with plastic. chill for at least one hour.

Make filling: Boil wine or port, brown sugar, maple syrup until reduce to about 1/2 cup of syrup (10-15 min). Cut plums and put in bowl, sprinkle with flour and toss to coat. Drizzle syrup on them and let sit until crust has chilled.

Roll out crust on a parchment-lined baking sheet til about 10-11 in. in diameter. Put plums in the center and drizzle with remaining syrup, if any. Fold edges of dough over and brush with water. Sprikle edges and plums with brn. sugar and bake for about 40 min., until edges are golden brown.

Serve at room temp. with vanilla ice cream and lick your plate!

Seasonal dinner #3

I wrote previously on the seasonal cooking club that I started this year with some friends interested in learning about what is in season when. We then look around do see what we can find here, prepare our parts of the meal, and get together for a dinner party based on seasonal ingredients. It can be hard sometimes to figure out what produce is in season locally, though eating locally and seasonally are two different things.

For example, right now in some of the cooking magazines I read they have recently started including a section on seasonal ingredients (see bon appetit's new "at the market" section), a general indication of what's in season generally and some recipes on how to prepare those things. Early Spring brings us asparagus, artichokes, carrots, peas and lettuces. Whether they are grown here in Tennessee is another story. This is where the difference between buying seasonal or local comes in.

I, like most people I know, was so eager to see the first signs of Spring at the grocery store in the form of lovely green asparagus and artichokes! They were practically falling off the stands at Whole Foods, abundant in all their glory. But come to find out, they're not local at all--these came from California (the asparagus) and some varieties came all the way from Peru! But I learned that they're on their way here in our gardens too, for those of you who have the patience to grow them--it takes 3 years before you even see the first crop!

I learned that last bit at an organic gardening workshop I attended at Eaton's Creek Organics on Saturday. We talked about composting and worm castings, beneficial bugs and how to till the soil with manual tools (all really cool stuff), but the best part about it was seeing what was actully growing right now, which wasn't much. But the first few asparagus stalks were starting to come up like triumphant symbols of Spring and fortitude. Tana, the farmer, went around and pulled a few out of the ground and handed them to us to eat. I have never tasted anything so good and so fresh in my whole life! It was literally like a bite of Spring.

When I got home to prepare my dish for the party with the asparagus I'd bought at W.F., the taste test yielded a predictable result: there was no comparison between the flavor of the one picked in Calif. --who knows how many weeks ago-- and trucked across the country, and the one I had eaten right out of the ground yesterday. I realize this might seem obvious, but experiencing it first-hand instead of just reading or hearing about it was very enlightening.

Back to my dish. After much deliberation and changing my mind at least six times, I decided to try a recipe from the april issue of bon appetit. It was an asparagus-ricotta tart with comté cheese.



It called for one sheet of frozen puff pastry. You may think it's strange that I use that store-bought stuff, being a pastry geek and all, but that is one thing of the frozen variety that we use from time to time even at the restaurant because it is so very difficult and time consuming to replicate all those flaky layers of thin pastry. And, I'm told it isn't any better than the frozen stuff. So I bought a box with two square sheets in it and used them both to make two tarts, one with the soppressata the recipe calls for, and one without for the vegetarians at the party.

Both were equally yummy and easy to make and I will definitely make this again. I may even try it with fruit or other veggies and different cheeses. The comté (a french gruyere) was perfect on it, and the skinny little asparagus looked pretty. The soppressata was a bit too oily though, and next time I would use a dry salami.

The main dish at the party was a braised chicken with artichokes and mushrooms made by Amanda and a first course of parsnip soup with garam masala made by Catherine; and dessert was a gingerbread with vanilla ice cream and rum sauce made by Laura. We drank our share of good wines--mostly whites from Austria (Grüner Veltliner was the winner as it goes really well with green vegetables).

So I stocked up on artichokes, asparagus and big, beautiful radishes in anticipation of some Spring cooking. More on what I'll do with them soon!

Snow and savory tart

Friday evening and a nice quiet night at home. The weather calls for snow and though I laugh at the local news reports around here when it comes to forecasting winter weather (I'm from Colorado)--getting the salt trucks and the chains out, school closures and general hysteria--all for just a couple of inches! Still, I am hopeful that this time could be 'the big one'.

What to make for dinner? Something warm and comforting, simple but fun. We have all night and nowhere to go, so time is not an issue. I think about the savory tarts at work that I see being put together with all kinds of leftovers--veggies and combinations of things like sweet potatoes, kale, mushrooms, onions, peppers--anything that happens to be lying around. What a perfect winter dish...

So I get in the kitchen and make a quick tart dough. I used Alice Waters's recipe but it's just like any buttery pie crust really.
2 c. AP flour
1 c ice water
1 1/2 sticks of butter

Get your ice water ready (about a cup but sometimes you need more), and cut your cold unsalted butter into small cubes, then put flour in a bowl, get out the dough blender (I used mine for the first time- much easier than getting out the mixer for such a small amount of dough), and cut the butter into the flour until it's almost like cornmeal, leaving some larger chunks of butter intact (this will produce that desired flakiness when rolled out). Then add your ice water pouring slowly with one hand while mixing with a fork with the other, until dough comes together enough to handle. Push it togther a bit and wrap in plastic, flatten into a disk (or two--this is enough for two 8-in. tarts, or one with a top) and chill for about 1 hour.


While the dough was chilling, I made my filling: carmelized onions, diced potatoes and rainbow chard with garlic. I sauteed each one separately in my skillet, then combined it all in a bowl, seasoned with salt and pepper and left it to cool (if it goes in hot it could make your tart soggy on the bottom).


(Drink some wine, talk on the phone to my friend in Napa who's gettting married in May, drink some more wine...indeed it is snowing!)

The dough is ready. Roll it out into a jagged-edged circle about 1/4 in. thick ...

and place it in a pie shell, load the filling and fold the edges up and over. I egg-washed the rim of the tart so it would be nice and golden, then pop it in the oven for about 45 min.

(oh, and when it's 10 min. to go, you could add some shredded mozzarella to the top for extra goodness).

I love the anticipation of opening the oven door to see what you're going to get. It's like a little experiment each time and every time is slightly different with these rustic savory tarts. You could put anything into them and the crust is so reliable and yummy, very buttery and flaky--the perfect compliment to those bright and beautiful veggies. It's savory cooking and baking all in one! My perfect combination.





And this morning- Snow!!!

Imperfect pear-lemon tart

Last night I was invited to a dinner party and asked to bring a dessert. My day was busy and I did not have time to think about a complicated recipe, nor did I feel right bringing a store-bought dessert as everyone at the party knows I bake for a living! (It's one of my part-time jobs). So, at 5:00 I had less than two hours to get something together and get myself ready to go. I had three d'anjou pears lying around ripening which immediately came to mind. Thinking of a pear tart, I happily discovered I had some pie dough left in the freezer from the last time I made a pie about a month ago. I pulled that out and set it on the hot stove where I had been cooking down some homemade chicken stock all afternoon. That did the job and the dough was ready to roll out in almost no time. It wasn't enough dough to use my 10 inch tart shell, so I put the unevenly shaped dough in a flat-sided springform, the smallest one I had. It came up the the sides and there was enough to fold in, gallette style,  which would have been nice, but I forgot to fold it in, and ended up with a high ringed tart resembling a queen's crown. Cute. I filled it with the pear slices and sprinkled some sugar and cinnamon over them. Then I added the lemon curd I had left in the fridge from last weekend's dinner party. Yum! I placed a few more pear slices in a fan around the top, and in a frenzy of creativity, added a cut-out piece of dough in the shape of a pear in the middle. Now I really was getting carried away. I popped it in my 400 degree oven, and waited. 45 minutes later, it came out perfectly browned on the edges and a lovely yellow and golden color on top from the cinnamon and egg wash.  (Egg wash, a pastry chef's trick, makes everything look perfectly browned).  I was so proud of my last-minute, recipe-less pear and lemon tart. Now here's where things went wrong--pride cometh before the fall. I left it on the counter to cool while I got dressed. When I came back to the kitchen my dog, Olive (you can see her cute face at the bottom of my page) was up on her hind legs her paws on the counter looking like she'd just done something very bad. I ran to the tart to find it with a hole in one side, looking more like the crumbled colisseum than the perfect golden crown it had once been. At least she didn't eat the whole thing! That was all I could think about, that and something I'd recently read in Julia Child's biography, My Life in France. My normal reaction would have been to hurl curse words at the dog, screaming at my bad luck and cursing the fates for allowing me to stupidly leave a tart unsupervised on the kitchen counter. But I remembered what Julia had written about a bad meal she once cooked for a friend. At times things would fail, she said, and a meal would not turn out well. If this happened "then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile--and learn from her mistakes." Imagine Daniel's surprise when I said nothing and walked away from my fallen masterpiece in silence. I took it to the party and instead of apologizing, made light of the imperfect "rustic" pear tart as they devoured it with pleasure and compliments.

(note: I forgot to take a picture! Next time I'll remember...)