Roasted Fig with blue cheese

Passport & Plate - Roasted Fig with Roquefort

South Africa | Friday, March 6, 2015 | 5 photos

Ingredients
6 figs, such as Bourjassotte noire, Noire de Caromb, Noire de Barbentane.
400 ml red wine or Porto
1-2 tbsp of chataignier honey (2 if red wine, 1 if Porto)
100 g Roquefort cheese
1 Madagascar vanilla pod
3 cardamom pods, seeds removed

 

How to prepare this recipe
This is a simple, yet elegant starter for autumn meals. The key to delivering the best possible service is finding figs that cook well and can concentrate sugars. While the large, red figs from Turkey look beautiful and are fine options for other meals, they are too large for this dish and usually don’t have the concentrated flavours that you will find in other varieties.

Remove the stem and cut a small “x” on the top of the fig, so that it will open up enough to fill with your Roquefort cheese later. Poke a few holes in the bottom of the figs so that they absorb the wine during the poaching process.

Simmer the combination of wine, half the honey, scraped vanilla and cracked cardamom pods for 15 minutes. Place the figs in a saucepan over medium heat until it just starts to boil. Reduce heat to a low simmer for 15 minutes, until the figs are soft. You want the figs to exchange juices with the wine, which will add more flavour to the sauce.

After poaching your figs, remove from heat and let cool to the touch. Pre-heat oven to 200C while the figs are poaching in the wine. When the figs have cooled, stuff each fig with the Roquefort and roast in oven with just enough liquid to keep moist. Roast for 15 minutes or until the Roquefort is fully melted.

Take the remaining poaching juice and heat over medium high, adding the rest of the honey or sweeten to taste. Reduce the juice until it thickens.

When the figs and Roquefort are ready, place on serving dish and drizzle with reduced juice and serve.

 

The story behind this recipe
I had left Paris eight months earlier, backpacking around Southeast Asia and Central America. After weeks of lush countryside and seaside views, I was hooked on South Africa. But crossing into the Karoo was just another experience completely. The arid countryside and absolute quiet, even by South African standards, makes it special. The rock formations of the Swartberg Pass take you back in time, with each layer of geological history on display.

The small towns such as Calitzdorp and Prince Albert are like stepping back in time to the late 19th century. Back in the 19th century, fortunes were made in places like Oudtshoorn, which is still the called the ostrich capital of the world. The old houses have a special charm, with their covered porches and white paint to reflect off the heat.

Following a day of exploring, we dropped into a local restaurant and there it was. The starter that I’ve since embraced and evolved to my home surroundings. Roasted fig and blue cheese, with a red wine sauce is now my own signature dish that I cook when figs are in season. An instant classic.

One great advantage of coming from a country that is traditionally not a food powerhouse is the openness to new ideas with food combinations. There is no denying the depth of quality food in France, but the obsession with tradition denies many new tastes, such as fig and Roquefort.

What’s great about this is that you can scale it up or down, depending on the number of people you’re having for dinner. If you’re doing a party with multiple couples, it’s something that you can mostly prepare a day in advance and then add the cheese and roast the day of your dinner party and quickly warm up the reduced sauce.

For me, this is the perfect starter that combines so-called New World innovation with Old World produce and products. It’s also an ideal gateway fruit for doing more meals using fruit.