August 21, 2008 | Filed Under staff, Musings, Recipes | 2 Comments
Just before Passo Corese, heading south on via Salaria from Rieti there’s an enlarged shoulder on the left hand side with 3 or 4 local fruit/vegetable vendors. On the way home we bought a 10 euro crate of some of the best white-flesh peaches I’ve ever tasted. Even after eating a handful of peaches every day, we still had a bowl full in the fridge that was starting to get too soft. So Paloma and I set out to make something sweet with them.
First we cut all the peaches and Paloma tossed them in a pie dish. I splashed some white wine and lemon juice on it to bring out the flavor and then we mixed a crumble topping made of flour, raw sugar, brown sugar, some mashed almonds, cinnamon and butter. We smushed the topping on and tossed it in the oven and then went to play with a new “Crime Scene Inspector Kit” that she received as a belated birthday present. As the crumble baked we put fingerprints on glasses and then dusted and removed them, placing the new fingerprints in special baggies marked “evidence” that could be compared with a magnifying glass. We taped off the dining room table as a crime scene while Paloma continued to play Inspector and gather enough evidence to prove that her sister Giulia had drank her juice even though she claimed not to.
I could smell the pie. It looked particularly good and so I asked Paloma to help me remember what we’d put in and write it out as a recipe so we could reproduce it. The following is the recipe in Inspector P’s secret code:
August 9, 2008 | Filed Under Musings, Recipes | No Comments
One of the first cookbooks I ever bought was Patricia Wells’ “Bistro Cooking”. I still have all the tags I put in it to mark the pages of the recipes that interested me. For one reason or another I only ever made about 10% of the things I marked and don’t have any recollection of how they turned out. Mostly I just liked to read her meal suggestions and imagine that I could throw together something similar for a spontaneous picnic. Despite having not adopted many of her recipes to my repertoire, I still use an adapted version of her pâté brisée for quiches and crostate, and I have very strong memories of being deeply effected by her recipe for a fig clafoutis.
Now, I grew up mostly in Colorado. We don’t have figs in Colorado. And we surely don’t eat clafoutis. So I had no clue what a clafoutis would look or taste like and although I knew what a fig was, they were pretty foreign and exotic to me too. Nevertheless I was convinced that I’d love them. They were basic and ancient; pure and sexy. The thought of a fig clafoutis evoked images of an accomplished and sophisticated chef.
I made the clafoutis a few times. It wasn’t bad. I’d buy incredibly expensive mission figs from the Chalet Gourmet in West Hollywood and as per the recipe, the figs were cut in half and sautéed lightly in butter after being dipped in honey and cinnamon, then a pancake like batter was poured over the top and it was baked in the oven until it all puffed up. I liked the dish but never new whether my results were accurate since I’d never had one before. Perhaps I liked the idea of the fig clafoutis more than I liked the actual dish.
Flash forward about 13 years. We have a huge fig tree at home in our garden (that unfortunately doesn’t bear fruit) and a small tree at the Beehive that lately has been working overtime. Perhaps it was the rainy Spring - whatever the case, I pick a bowl’s worth every few days and often find a way to put them in our dishes.
In Puglia, there are so many fig trees just bursting with fruit that there’s no point in selling them at the market. If you want figs, just stick your hand out the window while driving down the street and pick one off. At the house we were recently at for a week’s holiday in July, I’d go and pluck some in the morning for breakfast and eat them on the spot - about 6 or 7 until I’d had my fill. One night we made crostoni (thick, crusty, baked bread) with figs, gorgonzola and walnuts. It was an incredible mix of intense flavors. Another favorite of mine, an idea ripped off from a small vineria near Pienza, Tuscany, is baking the bread on one side, then flipping it over and putting a piece of pecorino fresco (fresh sheep’s milk cheese) and either fresh figs or dried figs, then baking again until the cheese is melted. Fresh out of the oven I drizzle some good honey over the top. With a little salad, this is a meal that I would have drooled over in Bistro Cooking a decade ago.
This weekend we were in the countryside at Monteleone Sabina, hanging out with friends and playing in the pool with all our kids. We came back to Rome for the day, ran some errands, and will go back up tomorrow. On our way home we passed by the Beehive to collect some mail and on my way back outside I noticed a few figs were bursting on the tree, so I plucked about 8 of them and threw them in a plastic bag. The following is a quick dessert I made this afternoon to bring back to Monteleone tomorrow to share with friends. I have no idea what it’ll taste like, but I can tell my love affair with the fig is still strong, even if the mystery is gone.
For the crust:
- about 1/3 cup whole wheat flour and 2/3 cups regular flour in a bowl
- pinch of salt
- couple tablespoons of sugar
- bit of lemon zest
- about 100 grams of butter cut into cubes and worked into the flour mixture until it’s like grated parmigiano
- 1 egg and enough cold water to bring it together to form a dough
For the filling:
- place about 8 sliced figs over the crust, sprinkle on some cinnamon and drizze some honey
- bake in the over at a high temperature until the crust is golden