Fig Dessert

İncir Tatlısı

I wrote a little about dried fruit in Turkish culture before while telling about dried figs. We love eating it so much as plain, but I made something sweeter today. I know summer is very close and we’re going to have fresh figs soon, but I couldn’t wait until mid August, when we start to see figs at open markets. So when we still have time, I wanted to use the last dried figs in my pantry. But I must admit my friend’s effect on my decision to make fig dessert today. She loves desserts so much that she always craves for something sweet just after having lunch or dinner. And a cup of tea is an indispensable mate for her dessert.

We decided to have lunch at home together. We quickly prepared menemen (an easy dish of eggs, tomatoes and peppers) and enjoyed it with cacik (a cold soup of yogurt and cucumber). But I wanted to make a surprise for her by this fig dessert. As it’s very easy to make, she didn’t have to wait long for a cup of tea and a portion of dessert. It was the first time for her to have this dessert, but she enjoyed it so much that she got my word to make it again.

Ingredients
-    20 dried figs
-    A little pounded clove
-      ½ cup walnut, cut into four
-    1 cup water
-    1 cup sugar

Wash and clean the figs and soak them in hot water for about 20 minutes.

Drain the figs and insert your little finger to its bottom to make the hole bigger. You’ll fill the figs with walnuts through this hole. Place two or three big pieces of walnut into these figs.

Lay the filled figs in a pot, their stems look upward.

Add clove, sugar and water. Cook it on low heat until it reaches the right consistency for about half an hour.

You can serve it with a dollop of ice cream. As we didn’t have any ice cream today, we ate our dessert plain.

Fig Tree

I want to give another benefit of figs, which I forgot to mention in “dried fig” post. When you pick a leaf or the fruit itself from its tree, you see a white liquid just like milk dripping from it. If you happen to drop that liquid on your body, itching is inevitable for you. So you should be careful if you have that chance of eating figs from the tree. However, there is a secret of this white liquid,  which you may find weird. It is a great treatment for wart on skin. If you have any warts on your body, drop a few driblets of “fig milk” on it, you will see a clear recovery on your skin in a few days time. I took this photo last month for those who have never seen a fig tree. These figs are unripe, and we expect them to ripen in August.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite