Fig-tastic

I am always sad to see summer start to fade away, but it also marks the start of fig season. Figs are an amazingly delicious fruit, but unfortunately they can be incredibly expensive. A few years back I discovered that a friend has a giant fig tree that, at this time of year, is laden with more fruit than he (and his family) can consume. Enter food-obsessed-friend desperate to take as many figs off his hands as possible. Saturday afternoon was spent braving the constant rain, clambering under the tree looking for ripe figs that the rosellas were yet to get to. Figs don’t ripen off the tree so you need to make sure that you only pick those with a bit of give. These ones also stay green when they ripen, rather than those that turn purple. Also watch out for the sap it can be quite itchy!

This week I have two recipes to try out; the first is a very simple starter and the second is inspired by the fantastic sounding galette on the delicious days blog.

Goats Cheese Stuffed Figs

Ingredients

• Figs (bigger are easier to stuff)
• Soft goats cheese (we used a chèvre, but a curd would be easier to stuff)
• Proscuitto (thinly sliced)
• Few sprigs fresh oregano or rosemary
• 3 tbsp Honey

This is not really a recipe with quantities, it really depends on how many figs you have. For each fig you need approximately ½ tbsp of goats cheese, and 1 slice of prosciutto.

Heat the grill section of your oven.

Slice the top of each fig into quarters, and push the goats cheese into the cavity.

Wrap each fig in prosciutto; we used a skewer to make the figs easier to handle, but this isn’t really necessary.

Place the figs on a baking tray, sprinkle with the fresh oregano leaves and drizzle honey over the top.

Grill the figs for 5-10mins until the top of the prosciutto is crispy.

Fig Galette

Ingredients

• Galette Dough:
• 175g plain flour
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• ¼ tsp fine sea salt
• 100g cold butter diced
• 1 tbsp sour cream
• 50ml ice-cold water
• Pinch of salt

Fruit Filling:

• 400g figs (or any other fruit) thickly sliced (we did sixth’s)
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp butter

Method

If you have a food processor, simply add your flour, caster sugar, butter and salt to the bowl and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs.

If you don’t have a food processor, grate the cold butter into a bowl and then quickly rub it using your finger tips until it reaches the coarse breadcrumbs stage.

Add the sour cream and water slowly until the mixture comes together. You may not require all the liquid – if it gets too sticky just add a bit more flour. Roll into a ball, cover in glad wrap and cool in the fridge for an hour.

After an hour, pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees, roll-out the dough into a circle that is 3mm thick.

Scatter your sliced fruit leaving a 5cm gap around the edges. Sprinkle the brown sugar over the top and dollop the butter on top.

Bake for 30mins or until the pasty starts to turn golden and the fruit is soft.

Serve with cream or you can try King Island vanilla bean yoghurt to cut through the sweetness.

Happy Eating!

Glutton

Slow Roast Lamb Shoulder

It’s currently 28 degrees in Melbourne, not quite slow-roast weather, but oh well! Having grown up in a tropical climate I got used to eating all kinds of meals whilst ignoring the suffocating heat and humidity.

This is a meal I like to make on a Sunday as you can simply put it in the oven, hours before guests come over, and then spend the afternoon relaxing.

Have a read, cook it yourself and let me know what you think. I’m unable to cook a recipe the same way twice, so would love to know what changes you make – even if it fails! 

 Slow Roast Lamb Shoulder

1.5kg deboned lamb shoulder cut into 3cm chunks (you can get your butcher to do this for you)
1 head of garlic
1 red onion
4 vine-ripened tomatoes
Dry white wine
500g bread torn into small chunks (I used ciabatta, but you can use anything is dense enough to hold its shape)
100g grated parmesan
Few sprigs of thyme or rosemary or any herb you enjoy with lamb

Heat your oven to 170°C - 180°C (mine is a gas oven so I tend to have it a bit hotter), add some oil to a roasting pan and heat it in the oven while you do your chopping.

Roughly chop the tomatoes and onion into quarters and separate the cloves of garlic (you can leave these unpeeled for now).

Mix and coat the bread with the parmesan.

Into the hot roasting pan put your lamb shoulder chunks fat side down and scattering the onion, garlic and bread on top.

Pour over a solid glug of white wine and toss all the ingredients together.

Put the tray back into the oven for 2-3 hours. Check it every now and again, add more wine if the top looks like it drying out, turn the lamb a few times to help crisp the outside.

Service with couscous or with a nice creamy mash and some green beans with flaked almonds.

Delicious with a nice Riesling (ours was Bay of Fires) or a Pinot Noir.

Glutton

Blueberry Crumble Slice

Well here it is, my first blog (I’m Glutton – the recipe queen and Lush is the resident restaurant reviewer).

 
Summer is my favourite fruit season; I love all the berries and stone fruit. This year I took a trip up to Milawa and came across a fantastic berry farm called Blue Ox Berries (on my way to the amazing Milawa Cheese Company) where delicious blueberries were only $9 for 500g.

Of course, having bought my half a kilo of blueberries I now had to find something to do with them. After much scouring of blogs for inspiration (I wanted something pseudo healthy) I found a recipe on Farmgirl Fare and with a few tweaks of my own came up with the following...

n.b. I re-used the same bowl for each layer; just wiping it out after each, but if you wanted to make all the layers at once it would be better to have 3 decent sized bowls.

Blueberry Bonanza Recipe

Ingredients:

Bottom Layer
2 cups wholemeal oats (not quick oats)
¾ cup spelt plain flour
¾ cup brown sugar
¼ tsp baking powder
175g butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla essence

Middle Layer
500g fresh or frozen blueberries
½ tsp almond extract
½ white sugar
3 tbs spelt plain flour

Top Layer
1 ½ cup spelt plain flour
½ cup light brown sugar
100g butter melted

Method:

Heat the oven to 180°C. Line a lamington tray with baking paper.

For the bottom layer
Combine the oats, flour, brown sugar, baking powder and a pinch of salt. Add in the melted butter and vanilla essence and mix until combined. Line the bottom of the pan with the mix.

For the middle layer
Toss the blueberries with the almond extract and pour over the bottom layer in the pan. Combine the sugar and flour and sprinkle it over the blueberries.

For the top layer
Mix the flour, brown sugar, and butter. It should be quite a dry mix forming crumbs for a crumble. Sprinkle the crumble over the blueberry mixture.

Bake at 180°C for 30mins until golden, serve warm with ice cream or cool and have as a morning tea snack.

Glutton