When life hands you unripe figs, roast them. Then make this fig sundae

I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you’ve probably never had a perfectly ripe fig.

It’s not your fault.

Figs, unlike bananas, avocados and many stone fruits, do not keep ripening after they’ve been picked. Superbly ripe figs are also very soft, delicate and fragile. That means that the only way for you to have enjoyed one of life’s most luxurious sensory pleasures — a fresh, absolutely goo-ified fig — is if you picked it straight off the tree, got it from a careful and risk-taking farmer or were served one at a very thoughtfully-sourced restaurant.

Otherwise, unfortunately, you’ve probably only had kind-of-ripe figs. Which is tragic. I love figs. So much. They are my favorite fruit, and perhaps my favorite food.

I fell in love with them from the very first one I tried, picked off a tree in Sardinia in 2012. It was still warm from the sun. Floral, sticky-sweet and basically liquefied inside. It rocked my world.

That fig kick-started a (so-far) lifelong obsession with the fruit.

By now, a lot of people have heard that factoid about figs and wasps (though it is, I think a bit overblown — not every fig has a wasp inside it), but there is something about figs that I find much more special and beautiful: figs are not so much a fruit as they are a fleshy sack filled with hundreds of tiny flowers.

And, at their best, they kind of taste that way, don’t they? Delicately perfumed and irresistibly sweet.

When you get an underripe fig, those flowers are still formed into somewhat distinct grains or filaments. They might taste vaguely floral, but somewhat green and not so delicious. This is not the true experience of the fruit.

When they’ve reached peak ripeness, on the other hand, sometimes they’ll weep honeyed syrup. Inside, you’ll find the filaments juicy and engorged, slicked with their own liquor and nearly translucent. Other times, the insides will have alchemized into a thick fluid or gel, as if someone had piped them full of raspberry jam.

These are the kinds of figs I like the most.

Figs have walked me back from panic attacks, the trees have shaded me during some of the more important conversations I’ve had in my life, I have fig art hanging around my house, I’ve made it my mission to hunt down roadside trees in whatever town I’ve lived in, and I’ve even started growing my own at home. I have become a freaky little fig boy.

You are probably most familiar with the common varieties of fig available in grocery stores: Brown Turkey (fat purple teardrops, red inside), Black Mission (darker purple outside, darker red inside) or maybe some green variety (either golden or pink on the inside) or perhaps a striped variety.

But out in the wild and across the world, there are several hundred (perhaps thousands!) of varieties.

I love how different figs can taste from tree to tree — flavors can range from dark berry to the amber sweetness of dates to a bright fruit punch. At home, I grow about six or seven varieties, all started from cuttings I’ve taken from trees around the country.

Last August, I walked several miles every day, scoping out new trees all over town. By the time the fruit was ripening, I could harvest about a quart every day for a few weeks.

I’d eat so many on my walks that I couldn’t even think of buying them from the market.

That has not been the case this year.

It has been a weird fig season in Los Angeles. Some combination of a hot spring and summer heat waves, the ever-annoying-and-present fig beetle and a more recent infestation of the Mediterranean black fig fly (this one is a bit terrifying) means that my favorite fig trees around town have scarcely put out any ripe fruit.

The selection at the farmers markets has been spotty too.

One week, I was lucky enough to get a handful of exemplary specimens from Terry Ranch Farm at the Santa Monica farmers market. The following week, however, the farmers said the season was almost over (already???), and I could only find about a pint’s worth that were anywhere close to being ripe.

Most of the time, I like my figs raw. But when I can’t get perfectly ripe figs, sometimes I do like to roast them the way I learned how to at Chez Panisse.

I would slice them each in half and arrange them in a single layer on top of fig leaves, thyme and bay. Then, I’d splash the whole tray with red wine, red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar and olive oil, give them a little salt and pepper and then bake them in the ripping hot, wood-fired pizza oven until they were just puffed and starting to caramelize around the edges.

Prepared this way, even underripe figs come out luscious, soft, bright and sweet. We’d serve them in salads or leaned up against a grilled quail, but given how hot it’s been recently, I decided to make a roasted fig sundae so big and decadent, it looks like it belongs in a Renaissance painting.

You can find my recipe below, and if you want to cook along with me, you might want to check out the video of me making it.

As for getting figs of your own … it’s possible there will still be a late summer flush, so keep going to the market and keep going on walks around town. If you look hard enough, I bet you’ll find what you need.

Take care, and I’ll be back next week to talk about cooking with stainless steel (DO NOT BE AFRAID!!!).

Yours,
Cody

Roasted Fig Sundae

I learned this process for roasting figs at Chez Panisse. We’d cook them in the big wood-fired pizza oven, use the remaining liquid as a base for a vinaigrette and serve the figs leaning up against a whole grilled quail. I’ve adapted that recipe to be made under a hot broiler, and — since it’s so dang hot out these days — used the roasting juices to make a sweet, summery sauce that’s drizzled over each layer of a cartoonishly large roasted fig sundae.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 45 minutes. Serves 6.