Public-access figs

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Having complained here about having (in succession) too many avocados, too many apricots, too many peaches and too many plums, it’s a bit embarrassing to confess that I have only myself to thank for having too many figs. See, there’s a tree in the alley behind my house that no one seems to pick from. The fruit, circled by drunken insects, ferments on the tree.

Meanwhile, a friend, Sally, who was our house guest during peak stone-fruit season, sent me a dehydrator as a gift. When it arrived, I had finished canning the last of the plums (as plum butter) and wondered what I’d possibly do with it. Then the figs started ripening so I put found fruit and gifted tool together and tried drying the figs.

The hydrator, it turns out, is kind of hilarious -- a humming box that might as well be sending messages to Mars as slowly sucking the moisture out of whatever you put into it, but after 24 or so hours,

the results are kind of cool. The fruit isn’t like the commercial stuff and I can’t yet tell how long it keeps, but it’s flavorful and intriguingly textured -- somewhere between chewy and crisp. And the process keeps the fruit’s colors so there’s a pretty Dutch still-life quality to the figs. I dipped them in honey-water before drying for a little glaze.

Anyone out there an experienced dehydrator? How long will these figs keep now? How best to store them?

-- Susan LaTempa