![]() ![]() Mix until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs. ![]() Put flour, butter, sugar and lemon zest in the mixer. Butter (10 Tablespoons or 1-1/4 stick of butter) This recipe also works well with plum jam and I have even made it with quince jam. The Sweet Pastry is based on Tessa Kiros’ pasta frolla for her apricot jam crostata, in Twelve: A Tuscan Cookbook. Despite some ribbing and silly suggestions from my family, I resisted calling it the Flies’ Cemetery Crostata after the Scottish nickname for a dried fruit slice similar to the Fig Newton. I called it the Fig Newton Crostata after those soft fig-filled cookies of which my grandfather was so fond. With a little bit of kitchen experimentation, and keeping with an Italian theme, I came up with a fig jam crostata. It’s great simply on toast or paired with cheese. Oh, yes, instead of adding pectin, which figs need in order to gel, I used a particular British commodity – jam sugar that has pectin already added.Ĭlick on the label for the recipe from the Italian Desserts Blog. Although, since I can’t resist tweaking, I decreased the amount of sugar and increased the amount of lemon juice and added the zest. The fig jam recipe came from the Italian Dessert Recipes blog. Since it was unlikely that I would get another bumper crop for some time, I made the most of the figs I had harvested: lemony fig jam, a few tarts and some whizzed in the blender before freezing the luscious purple-pink pulp for future gelato. So…we now have one surgically pruned fig tree recovering from its trauma in a new roomier pot. I was brought back down to earth when we discovered that the bottom of the oak barrel had rotted out and the moisture greedy roots had managed to find their way through the crevices of the paving stones. I gloated over the wonderful haul, thinking of all the fabulous things I could make with them – jams, tarts, prosciutto wrapped and stuffed with Gorgonzola, or simply puréed and metamorphosed into fig gelato. This year, however, the tree had a significant growth spurt in early spring and by September I was harvesting dozens of ripe figs. Most years I normally harvest about a half dozen or so ripe figs before weather conditions shut down the plant and the fig divests itself of it’s leaves. It was planted over ten years ago in an oak half barrel and placed in a sunny, sheltered spot on our back patio – ideal conditions for figs, even in Northern England. In an earlier post, I mentioned that I have a Brown Turkey fig tree growing in my garden.
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