Figgy delights
My friend Dorothy was motivated to send in a recipe and pictures for Green Fig Preserve following the recent post on autumn seasonal produce. This recipe is divinely simple, using underripe figs (that means you can pick them before the birds get to them).
She says: 'I have recently made Green Fig Preserve from Claudia Roden's "New Book of Middle Eastern Food". We tried it today and it's very pleasant. The flavour of fresh figs is still there and the figs are juicy and not too sweet. We had them with cheese and bread for lunch with friends, so a reasonably thorough taste test has occurred. None of us could taste the orange blossom water so it might as well be left out. It's very easy to make and is useful because it uses underripe figs which are always plentiful around now'. Here's the recipe, as well as the pictures to illustrate her tale:
The olive enigma
Now, the world of olive preservation is very murky if you ask me, a bit like Dorothy and Peter's olives preserved in ash:
Do you score them, bash them with a jar or refuse to punish them at all? How much salt do you add to the water to leach their bitter taste? Do you add water at all, or simple douse them in a stack of dry salt? When you finally put them in a jar, can you eat them straight away, or do you wait a few months? Myriad recipes abound on the internet, my mother's method is suspiciously vague, and many of my friends are still waiting to see if theirs are going to work (see olives in ash above).
By the time the next blog post comes around, I will have asked around some more in a bid to provide a few tried and true methods so that those of you with a tree brimming full might find some comfort. If you or someone you know has a recipe and story to send in, please do!
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