Fall Figs

Fall has landed in the Midwest with a pumpkinny thump. Halloween is still over a month away but every sort of pumpkin, squash and gourd has arrived at the grocery stores and farmer's markets like some sort of freakish, lumpy orange flood. Plenty of time to play with pumpkins, this week was meant to enjoy another fall favorite, the fig. Now if you're like me, the only memory you have of figs was this:

Fig Newton cookies. You know, the depressing cookie you got instead of the fun cookies like Oreos or Chips Ahoy. Some sort of weird cake thing with supposedly fruit filling except it had little crunchy bits that had a mouth feel like beetle carcasses. So no generational fig dish recipes for me to dig through. Luckily the internet and Epicurious had a lot of great choices for what to do with figs.

First, of course, was to caress them with my camera. They are incredibly beautiful. There were three types of fig available at least in my neck of the woods. The black Mission figs were the most abundant. Why called Mission figs? They were cultivated by Franciscan monks in San Diego back in 1768. There are also the brown turkey figs and white figs (actually more green than white) but for the recipe today the Mission figs will do.

The recipe I chose was very much in the theme of the traditional salty/sweet treatment of figs. Fresh Figs with Bacon and Goat Cheese. Really very simple, fry some bacon, cut your figs, brush with a good quality balsamic vinegar, put little chunks of bacon on top of the fig and then add a nugget of goat cheese and pop them in the oven so the figs roast just a bit and the cheese gets toasty. This recipe suggests the herb infused goat cheese but I got the plain and mixed up a little clover honey to add a little more sweetness to the layering of this recipe.

Sweet ripe fig with savory smoky bacon and sweet goat cheese make a great quick appetizer for a crisp fall evening.

Cauliflower Gratin

As we know from earlier blog postings, I like cauliflower. Not everyone shares my love and that's a shame. One who is not shy with her cauliflower affections is Dorie Greenspan. If you're not familiar with her excellent cookbook work or her website, I highly suggest you visit. Her latest posting is a Cauliflower Gratin. With bacon. And cheese. You know what's coming next.

This is the cauliflower I purchased. It is an orange cauliflower. I didn't buy it because it was orange, I bought it because it was on sale for over a dollar less than the normal white cauliflower. Why did they develop an orange cauliflower? Apparently we can blame Canada for that. An orange breed of cauliflower was discovered in a Canadian marsh and the smart Canadians realized that Americans, being the doofuses that we are, would just love to have orange cauliflower for dinner. It was like striking orange gold for those wily Canucks. There's also a purple cauliflower. I don't know if the Canadians had anything to do with that variety. If the scientists combine the two into some freaky purple and orange combination then I'll know they are just messing with us.

Back to Dorie's recipe. She's not only making a gratin but she's expanding her use of a Bram, which is a large clay baker. I do not have a Bram but I do have a clay baker I bought for five bucks at an antique store. The clay baker was not an antique but for five bucks I didn't care. The two major differences between Dorie's Bram and my clay baker is that her Bram is large and upright and more importantly is glazed inside. I mention the glazing because much like a wok imparting a flavor of wok hei on your food, so will a an unglazed clay baker impart a flavor (let's call it clay bak-hei) on food.

Still it's bacon, cheese and cream oozing throughout tender chunks of cauliflower. What's not to like?

What rhymes with à l'alsacienne...?

Since our dear sweet southern Aunty is having a limerick contest, and since we think there's nothing that bacon can't make better, we've happily combined the two. Enjoy! (Click on Aunty's link to enter the contest!)

We revel in all things porcine -
of it's virtues we just must opine.
If you'll cook up some bacon,
we're yours for the takin'
for pork on a fork is sublime!