Win Some, Lose Some

Most of my cooking experiences are successes fortunately; however, even a seasoned cook has failures every now and then. This weekend I found black mission figs at the farmer’s market and wanted to make a blue cheese-fig dish that a friend made a while back. It’s essentially just figs cut in half, with a squirt of honey and some blue cheese crumbled on top, then the whole thing is cooked until the cheese melts over the top of the figs. It’s a great combination of salty, creamy, and sweet. Or, rather, it would have been had I figured out how to do it properly.

I mastered the first step, washing and cutting the figs. You know, because a raccoon could do that.

I mastered the next step, applying honey and then topping the figs with blue cheese:

The part that I didn’t quite get down was the melting. I wasn’t sure whether to bake or broil, so I chose to bake. Except it wasn’t melting the cheese. Even after 15 – 20 minutes in the oven, the cheese was still intact. So, at that point I decided to broil. And then my friend Lilly and I wandered away from the kitchen and started watching television, forgetting about the figs until the smoke detector started going off about five minutes later. Yup, you know things are going south when the smoke detector starts screaming at you.

Instead of lovely cheesy fig bites, we had melted molten figs:

I wish I could say that they still tasted good, but they were so over-cooked at that point that they were pretty much flavorless…well, except for the slightly burned blue cheese flavor. Not one of my finest moments in the kitchen.

Fortunately, for every kitchen failure I’ve ever had there have been many times more successes. This weekend, redemption came in the form of fresh plum crisp.

The recipe was pulled from Epicurious, originally in Bon Appetit in May 1993. Here it is as it appears on the website:

Plum Crumble

• 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 cup old-fashioned oats
• 1/3 cup plus 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces

• 2 pounds plums, halved, pitted, cut into wedges
• 1 tablespoon plum brandy or Port

Mix flour, oats, 1/3 cup sugar and cinnamon in medium bowl. Add butter and rub with fingertips until mixture forms coarse meal. Press with fingertips until mixture begins to form moist clumps. (Crumb topping can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate.)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Toss plums, remaining 1/2 cup sugar and brandy in medium bowl. Transfer to 9-inch deep-dish pie dish. Sprinkle crumb topping over. Bake until fruit bubbles and topping browns, about 1 hour. Cool slightly. Serve with ice cream.

**My notes: We didn’t have brandy or port, so we substituted a teaspoon of vanilla extract instead. I also threw a pinch of ground cloves into the topping mixture. It was done after about 45 minutes, not an hour as stated in the recipe (I learned my over-baking lesson from the figs). (You could also use peaches…I repeated it tonight with fresh peaches and it was great!)

It was AMAZING!! The crumble topping was delicious and the fruit was sweet and gooey and warm. With a scoop of vanilla ice cream, it’s the perfect end-of-summer dessert.