As promised, a recipe for green figs in honey

Swearing at old ladies and my friend Lefteris

As promised, my recipe for honey-preserved unripe green figs, and in addition a confession about swearing at old ladies.

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Dimitra.

Her back was bent over at an astonishing angle of nearly ninety degrees as she poked at her goats with her stick. Her husband I thought had probably been on the receiving end of that pointed piece of olive wood more often than not.

I only think that due to a personal experience (of which more later).

At the end of a small track, dusty, hot, rural. Think pine forests, scrubland and old rock formations as a backdrop, into which I turned from a small winding road if indeed you could call it a road, hours from any town larger than a collection of houses, perhaps the odd taverna.

Rural Greece.

A tiny peninsula tucked away on the mainland facing the Aegean. Mountains, pine forests and beaches are all you’ll really find there. In addition to the sublime nature, there are fierce old ladies who think you’ve come to eat the contents of their larder.

I was introduced to Dimitra by my friend Lefteris, a retired military pilot who flew F2s when flying fighter jets was done with your hands, not a computer. He was a test pilot as well if his manly credentials needed embellishing any further.

Lefteris in his F2 (apologies for the quality)

Lefteris likes to eat and apart from his recipe for pickling foraged beach plants, which I often use, his cookery skills are best left undiscovered. The time for instance a kokoretsi was delivered to us by motorbike from a butcher’s shop high in the mountains. It must have been four feet long (the kebab, not the moped), threaded onto a metal spike, balanced on the rear mudguard of a dilapidated moped driven by the butcher’s son over ten miles of bumpy mountain tracks.

And the young lad got shouted at for being late.

Over twenty kilos of organ meat, cut and salted, threaded onto the giant spike and held in place by the washed intestines (not so much washed, as briefly introduced to water judging by the pong), all bound around the innards like a ball of smelly twine. In fact, the whole thing let’s say had an interesting aroma.

It was for three of us Lefteris confirmed

I would normally like to build a good fire for approaching such a task, letting it establish for a while using a good-sized pyre of embers that would glow white and orange, pop and crackle with enough wood to burn for a good four to five hours. You would need a hot fire to give you a long consistent heat to cook this fearsome assembly of offal before even thinking of reaching for the mustard.

Lefteris has a culinary void in his brain. He can pilot a fast jet, fly in formation, upside down, wing tips merely metres away from his colleagues, break the sound barrier barely a head height above the parade square of the passing out parade of the Air Force school in Athens, shattering all of the windows in the whole complex in front of Air Vice Marshalls, dignitaries, families and ranks of servicemen, but he couldn’t see my reasoning that we needed more than two small logs to cook this telegraph pole sized spit of animal bits, such is the manner in which he guards his woodpile.

And for that I admire him. He’s as stubborn as I am. We argued about the fire for quite a while that afternoon.

In the end, he left me to it and poured us another tsipouro. Then another.

Olive wood

Here in Greece, figs grow wild everywhere, white figs that have a skin the colour of oatmeal, though when peeled the inside is that deep reddish purple that tears away as the structure breaks in your fingers. Black figs that you pick warm from the branches, the little drip of hard amber-coloured sap that collects underneath the ripest of fruits, they say that’s where the wasp found its way in. Then there are the stubborn green ones that for whatever reason refuse to ripen. These hard unripe ones are what we require for the recipe I’ll give you here later if indeed you feel able to read to the end.

Green figs, hard as bullets

My Greek friend has a very sweet tooth, and also an unquenchable thirst for a glass or six of nerve-jangling tsipouro at any time of day, often beginning just after coffee at ten in the morning with a few slices of salted cucumber and a few olives, taken from the one of the buckets in his cellar that he preserves every year from over one hundred trees. Fat dark green olives, pricked with a knife and brined for a few weeks then left to mature for the winter, flavoured with wild oregano, to be decanted into vinegar and oil at Easter. This is how I preserve the few olives I grow here in England. Last year I managed to pot one jar from my tree.

And as there were no more diabetes-inducing, preserved fruits to eat while we waited for the organs of what appeared to be half a flock of sheep to cook, turning it on its spit by the rotation of my hand, as the mechanical chain that usually performed this function would judder as the links had seized fast with rust, and so for every turn, there would be a great clang at three-quarters of the way around, and the meat-induced drama would bounce on its pinions.

In the heat of an Aegean afternoon, it was decided that we must venture out to visit a dear old lady and her husband who farmed goats, grew olives and made sweet syrupy concoctions from fruits, nuts and honey. She also had, it was rumoured according to Lefteris, a pantry full of almost anything you could imagine, either preserved in honey, vinegar, salt or alcohol. My interest was piqued.

We left the clanking spit to clang and judder itself rhythmically in the sun for the afternoon, the glowing embers hissing as the fat and juices from the sheep bits, drip, drip, dripped from above. Best left to it’s own devices that great thing.

The offending bits of sheep, wrapped in intestines

At the end of what seemed like an hour of bouncing down tracks, turning evermore into what seemed like a worsening road surface at every turn, miles from anywhere, and by that I really mean miles. I mean they say there’s a bus service for those that live here but I think the service is measured in days rather than minutes for accuracy. It might come on Tuesday, but it might not. It might come on Wednesday. Though Thursday wouldn’t be out of the question.

Thats rural.

Dimitra’s farm was typically Greek. Huge misshapen tomatoes climbed bamboo sticks next to a stone wall, neatly painted blue shutters and dusty heat, set to the sound of bleating goats, cicadas and bouzouki music on the old wooden radio at full volume. She wore the black dress of the old ladies who still walk for miles with bundles of sticks on their bent backs for the goats. She must have been at least ninety, most likely a lot more.

Her husband sat quietly with thick coffee and a saucer of what looked like walnuts, soaked in honey, next to his cigarettes and worry beads. Lefteris explained to Dimitra that I cooked for a living and that I had come all the way from London to try her ‘spoon sweets’ (the Greek description of anything preserved in sugar or honey and sealed in a jar to be removed with a spoon. In the same way you might remove a pickled egg from a pot. But not the same of course).

The old lady eyed me suspiciously, through an angle of nearly ninety degrees as if I’d been sent to take all of her recipes by force, raid her cupboards and eat all of her preserves in one afternoon. At least she didn’t jab me with her stick.

Unlike the time I was jabbed by an old lady at High Street Kensington tube station in London with the tip of her umbrella in my back, for being in the queue ahead of her. Actually, she poked me three or four times, slightly off-centre from my spine, aiming towards my kidneys, muttering obscenities at me in what I think was a heavily Russian accent, but that’s another story.

We’ll call that one ‘The day I told an old lady to fuck off’ and we’ll save it for another day perhaps. But you get the jist.

After Lefteris had implausibly convinced her that it was me that had suggested we come to visit her, despite me never having met her or her husband before, so I could taste her honey-preserved figs, as it certainly wasn’t him that would wish to impose on an old lady for hospitality, by turning up unannounced at what was approaching afternoon snooze time. The conversation went on in Greek, with me being pointed at by everyone and the only word I could vaguely understand being what sounded like Glykso, which I know to mean sugar. It appeared to Dimitra that I had arrived in Greece driven mad by lack of sugar, had driven four hundred miles from the nearest major airport, driven over a mountain, through miles upon miles of forest and winding barely surfaced roads for another few hours to impose myself on her and her husband and to eat the contents of her larder.

Dimitra seemed suitably convinced, eyed me again suspiciously, and went off to the pantry. Coming back with a tray of little cups of coffee so thick with grounds, that the spoons stood upright, and with three saucers. One of walnuts, one of green figs and the other of what seemed to be small pears, all sat proudly in a sticky puddle of honey.

Spoon sweets.

So sweet that they made your teeth ache, and that after eating two pieces of soft whole walnuts you must then spoon up the slick of honey from the little plate, before embarking out of politeness on the figs. Before moving on to the pears. And another cup of thick, strong coffee. Greeks eat them like this, as something to go with coffee, though I think a chunk of cheese would be very good to assist in coping with the sweetness.

Like Cheddar, Comte or an old Pecorino.

I left Dimitra’s farm that day, my stimulant levels through the roof, but in possession of the briefest translation of how she cooked them. Of course, she was never going to give her recipe to a strange Englishman, but I was grateful I could piece together the process through some badly translated instructions involving the many traps and pitfalls I might come across.

Know that I am not easily deterred.

Here below is what I think might be similar in a way to Dimitra’s preserved green figs. Although she would probably look at them in disgust.

Until next time

William

PS -As for the kokoretsi; crisp organ meat, smothered in mustard, washed down with cold retsina is a decent supper, despite the smell.

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Green figs, preserved in honey with fennel, lemon and mandarin

Not really like Dimitra’s, but close enough

A perfect use for hard green unripe fruits. Other than launching them skywards with a stick, this is the only other thing to do with them unless any of you know of something else, and if that is the case I would love to know.

They are different, very sweet and delicious with cured meats and cheese. They remind me of the Italian mustard fruits but without the mustard.

You’ll need

40g flaked sea salt

500g unripe green figs, (hard ones that you could thwack with a stick are best)

5g bicarbonate of soda

750ml clear honey

1 lemon, juiced and finely zested

1 mandarin, zested into strips and juiced

10g fennel seeds

Cut a cross to release the milky sap

How to

Fill a bowl with water, then stir in most of the salt to dissolve. Keep a little salt back for the next stage.

Cut any woody tips away and then cut a criss-cross on the top of each fruit.

The fruit will secrete a little milk at the cut end, as they’re unripe. Try not to wipe your eyes as it’s a slight irritant and be sure to wash your hands.

Using a small pointed knife, prick the figs all over, then soak them in the salty water overnight.

The next day, drain and wash the figs, and put them in a large saucepan, cover well with water. Add the bicarbonate of soda and the remaining salt. Gently simmer with a lid for about half an hour or so, perhaps a little longer. The figs should be quite tender when pushed with the tip of a knife.

Drain the figs in a colander and then put them back in a saucepan with the honey and a splash of water, the fennel seeds, zests and juices from the citrus, and then bring to a boil. Turn down the heat to a very gentle simmer and let it cook over low heat for about an hour maybe a little more, stirring every so often. The figs will turn slightly translucent, the honey will get thicker and then they are ready.

You should place the hot figs in sterilised jars, pour over the hot honey then close and put away for another day.

Be warned that if you leave your windows open whilst making these, bees will know what you are doing and will come to visit, wasps as well. At least they did for me. Quite a number of persistent insects, refused to leave until they found the source of the hot honey smell.

If you can’t wait for them to mature a little, take one from the jar, slice thinly along with a spoonful of the honey and eat it with slices of cheese on crusty sourdough.

Enjoy

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