Years ago, I was gifted a tiny fig sapling. Rumor had it that it was the offspring of an old tree that came to town from Italy with an immigrant family and there are figs of its parentage all over Wellfleet. This year, they’re absolutely loaded with fruit. So, the other day, I called Maria Lemanis, whose family grows figs on their farm in Greece and sells them at farmers markets on the Cape, and asked her about ways to preserve this bounty.
She says it’s easier to preserve figs where she lives in Kalamata, Greece, than it is on Cape Cod and the Islands.
“So, for us it's dry,” Maria says. “We pick them from the ground when they've already fallen and started drying, and we just kind of finish out the drying process. It's pretty straightforward and simple. You don't have to do anything special.”
The climate of Kalamata, Greece—where summers are very hot and very dry—is different from our moist, seaside climate. So, to get figs like Maria’s—dry but still sticky and perfectly chewy and sweet—we have to adapt our process.
“You’re either going to have to get a dehydrator or do that method in the oven where you leave it on for 12 hours at the lowest heat and…kind of dry it out that way,” Maria says.
I’ve dehydrated figs before, and because the shelves of my dehydrator are shallow, I cut the fruits in half. This was a mistake—the figs got hard and dry like cardboard, not soft and chewy like Maria’s almost fig-newton like fruits. So, this time around, I’m going to try dehydrating them whole. Maria also suggested freezing figs. Perfect, she said, for when you’re overwhelmed.
“Go straight-out lazy,” she says. “Throw them in the freezer. And as I said, they'll be a little soggy. It's not the same, but it is close if you really want it to be like a fresh fig later on.”
When I went to look up uses for frozen figs online, people suggested making Greek fig upside down cake, serving them on top of oatmeal or yogurt, or even eating them frozen, without thawing—kind of like a fig popsicle. But I think the thing Maria mentioned that I most want to try is cooking the fruits down with sugar into preserves and jam.
“They do it a lot in Greece,” she says. “They take basically the whole figs and they put in…sugar syrup. They'll put it a lot in desserts or on top of yogurt or that type of thing.”
I love fig jam and preserves served with toasted bread and cheese—I think it’s the perfect fall snack. A friend of mine also has a recipe for fresh figs wrapped in prosciutto and grilled. The finished figs are full of amazing contrasts—savory but sweet, soft but crispy. I love fresh figs in an arugula salad topped with blue cheese, with olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. And of course, as Maria reminded me when I asked her how she likes to eat her fig harvest, there’s always the option of just snacking on figs plain.
“We just kind of eat them off the tree,” she says. “I mean, we have a lot. So, you eat as much as you want. The rest, you sell.”
She explains that in Kalamata, after olives, the next biggest food product is figs. During the fig season, markets open in Kalamata where merchants buy and sell fresh and dried figs.
“Depending on the size and the quality, we basically sell them,” she says. “I don't know what to do with my figs cause that's, you now, it's production. So, um, yeah, just basically eating.”
Eating figs sounds like a good plan for fall.
