Whatever You Do – Be Passionate About It!

This post is about food, cooking and a recipe, what did you think?

There is a fig tree in our garden, I planted it some 15 years ago, it was a tiny weeny thing, proudly demonstrating ist first leaves.

It has become a gorgeous tree tending to ignore neighbour boundaries. Each year it carries sweet yellor fruit.

Each year? Not really, that is what it looked like last year:

In early summer it showed promise of a rich harvest but the fruit did not mature.

And that is how it looked in November – so sad!

Interesting to hear the comments of people passing by: my fig tree is much bigger, this year it yielded 3 (three!) harvests! It reminds me of Mark Twain (a stone age ago I wrote a paper on Tall Stories but this is another story all together!).

I have always wondered what to do with all the figs (make a dessert of figs, double cream, cane sugar and brown rum?, jam?, give them away?).

And then I was invited to a friend’s place for an outdoor lunch in the countryside one early autumn day and she served cheese with fig mustard bought at the local butcher’s. Delicious, it goes well with pot-au-feu (poached beef) too, or use it as a bread spread, or eat it by the spoonful.

Splendid idea, I started to google, read tons of recipe and started to cook experiment.

Enjoy the result, I am fairly pleased with it:

Recipe

1 kg figs (ca. 20 % waste = > 800 g)
2 chili
ca. 5 cm ginger
4 TS Coleman mustard powder
1 lemon (juice and grated peel)
1 TS corn starch
3 TS sugar
1 TS mustard seeds (toasted)
1 TS white balsamico
1 pinch sea salt

Basilicata Figs

Method

Peel figs, puree in food processor

Add grated ginger, mustard powder, sugar, juice and grated peel of lemon and mix well

Bring to a gentle boil and add the other ingredients

Cook to desired consistency

Fill in sterilised jars and sterilise in steamer (12 minutes at 100°C). Cool the jars upside down. *

Jars on their heads

* Does anybody of you now what good it does to the jars or its contents cooling upside down (except making them dizzy)? I appreciate your suggestions, comments and stories!

I stopped doing it , also for the reason that sometimes due to the consistency the sterilised goods maintain their cooling position!