The Fig Is Your Just Desserts

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

Writing a column on meals that can be made in under 30 minutes always seems to come up dramatically short in one area of the meal: the end. Dessert, arguably the best and most memorable part of dinner, is certainly the most difficult to make from scratch in a limited time frame. Yes, there are many shortcuts one can take, from dressing up store-bought pound cake to outsourcing the entire dessert from those pastry chefs who really know what they are doing. But at the end of the day, there is nothing like serving the icing on the cake for a perfect meal, made all by yourself.

When you're in a pinch for dessert in a hurry, there is nothing like seasonal fruit prepared simply to put an elegant end to a fabulous dinner. It'll take you a fraction of the time you will spend eating your main course. Berry season has pretty much come and gone and apple season has not quite arrived. But the fruit of the moment, for another month at least, is the fig.

Yes, folks, a fig is more than a Newton. Figs have been lauded for their saccharine essence since Babylonian times. Unfortunately, until recently fresh figs used to be fairly hard to come by for the average supermarket-goer in the United States. Not too long ago, if you told your dinner guest you were making a dessert with figs they immediately thought of the dried variety. Although dried figs are quite nice in everything from sauces to a cheese plate, the fresh fig is a beauty all its own. Sliced down the center a black fig reveals a pinkish pulp of a flesh, which tastes as sweet and juicy as the luscious center implies.

The fig tree is a late-summer-to-early-fall producer. Although considered a fruit, the fig is actually an inverted flower of sorts; the seeds on the inside are the real fruit. But like any fruit, the fig can still be found in a range of levels of quality, from the large and pricey white figs I picked up recently at Bristol Farms to the far more accessible Mission Figs sold by the quart for a mere pittance at Trader Joe’s. Lucky for us, the Spanish missionaries who settled in California in the 1700s brought with them black figs (where Mission Figs got their name). These took perfectly to the hot California climate and are by far the most common variety grown in the United States today.

When it comes to turning this fruit into dessert, the good news is a) you have several preparation options and b) nothing could be simpler. I like to roast the figs briefly; it warms them up and quickly caramelizes their natural sugar. One can also poach fresh or dried figs as one would poach any fruit in either alcohol, wine or simple syrup with a variety of aromatics. If the figs are tender, they can actually be eaten raw, removed of their stem and sliced in half or quarters. Poached and roasted figs are lovely with ice cream, divine with sweetened marscapone or crème fraiche, and without fail serve as a perfect complement to a tray of pungent cheeses.

Often at a meal, a bad dessert can ruin the whole feast while a surprise sweet finale can bring home a perfect score for an otherwise bland dinner. If fruit makes for a fast and fabulous finish, then figs are the flawless crowning achievement. No matter the pairing or the preparation, a fig truly is a real meal’s just desserts.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 1 quart black mission figs
• 1/2 cup Grand Marnier
• 4 ounces creme fraiche
• 2 tablespoons honey