I just saw the stunning kitchen renovation in Style Blue Print this morning. While sadly our kitchen does not exactly resemble that one, on a very happy note, yesterday I got a brand new stove! This is significant because for the last year or so, the old oven occasionally made it’s own decisions about how to cook. Sometimes the broiler would miraculously engage in the middle of cookie baking, or the bottom element would suddenly decide it was the broiler and would become red hot. The griddle in the middle of the stove would mysteriously turn on, melting or blowing up anything sitting on it. The thing was almost 20 years old. Sammy resisted a new purchase as long as he could, but when I quit baking desserts early this summer, a stove discussion was initiated. It took a couple of months, but yesterday a shiny new stove came to live in my kitchen. It doesn’t have a griddle, but it does have two ovens.
It has a lot of bells and whistles, but so far I’m resisting reading the manual. I can’t wait to try the convection oven while still being quite positive I’ll never touch a setting that disturbingly says, “chicken nuggets”.
At the very same time, as if a new stove wasn’t exciting enough, our fig trees gave up waiting for sun and almost half of the figs were suddenly ripe.
We decided to make a whole fig dinner with our new stove. On the menu was a beautiful salad of chicken glazed with a bit of last year’s fig jelly on garden fresh arugula, with candied walnuts, oranges, fresh figs, blue cheese and a port wine dressing. It was so amazingly delicious, but that recipe is coming tomorrow. The dessert was too beautiful and it did get to be the first dish made in our new oven so it get’s first billing. I tried to recreate a favorite dessert my high school friend’s mom used to bake especially for me, because she knew I loved it. She had lived in Germany as a child and had a repertoire of recipes that were amazingly exotic for to a Nashville girl. My favorite was a fruit tart, she baked using apricots, which are easier to find, when figs aren’t available. She topped each piece with unsweetened whipped cream and it was just the most amazing thing I’d ever eaten. She called it a Crostata. I like that, so this is going be named Fresh Fig Crostata and you will definitely want to make it. It’s easy. Use the food processor to make a basic piecrust – I’ll tell you how. DON’T wash that food processor, just remove the piecrust and make the filling in the same processor. Slice the figs, or whatever fruit you use then put the whole thing together in a free form to bake. Ours came out of the new oven a beautiful golden brown – no burn spots, no limp crust! We topped it with a dollop of crème fraische and it was delicious with a melt in your mouth crust, sweet figgy filling, and a tangy topping. Wow! I love my new stove, but I’m afraid it wants to make me fat!
Fresh Fig Crostada
Ingredients
Dough
1 ¼ cups flour
1 Tbsp sugar
½ tsp salt
1 stick butter, cut in pieces (hint: put in the freezer while you are assembling ingredients to get it really cold)
3 to 4 Tbsp cold water
Egg for brushing crust
Filling
½ cup almonds
½ cup sugar
1 egg
½ stick butter, room temperature
1 Tbsp flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp vanilla * sometimes I use almond liqueur if we have any
1 lb figs or plums (or other fruit) sliced
Juice of ½ a lemon
Directions
Make crust.
Put dry ingredients in the food processor and pulse to blend.
Add butter and pulse until crumbs form.
Add water a Tbsp at a time, until dough just begins to come together, remove from processor and roll in a ball in plastic wrap. Let dough rest in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
Make filling.
Blend almonds and sugar in the food processor.
Add egg, butter, flour, salt, and vanilla and pulse until thoroughly combined.
In a small bowl combine cut fruit and lemon juice.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and lightly flour.
On the parchment paper, roll dough into a rough circle of 12 to 14 inches. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
Spoon filling from the food processor in the middle of the pastry dough and spread, leaving about a 2-inch border.
Top with figs.
Fold the borders of the pastry over the filling, pulling it together to hold in the filling.
Mix the egg with a tsp of water and brush the edges of the pastry.
Bake for about one hour until edges are lightly browned.
Cool 15 minutes before cutting.
Top with whipped cream or crème fraische and enjoy.
(Just discovering how good this is for breakfast!)
Salad recipe to follow.
