Philosophy
Why did we put these ingredients together? As you look over recipes we post here, you need to keep in mind why we choose to put together the ingredients for a particular dish. Usually it’s because we either found them fresh at the Farmers Market, or to make them Cajun. Let’s take a look at this fig recipe.
The bread we used is something we found from our local Farmer’s Market, it could have been almost any fresh specialty bread found locally. It just so happens, Cajuns cook a lot with cornmeal, so we thought it appropriate. Even though the heart of the dish is figs, it could have been a different, local, in-season fruit. The cheese we used was produced locally as well but could have been blue cheese or many other types. We selected Andouille because we wanted the Cajun connection. Chorizo, several types of Italian sliced meats, bacon—anything to add that salty taste with a bit of spice. We used honey to sweeten it and because it’s another local product.
What’s my point? Use ingredients which are local and which make this yours, either individually or culturally.
Enjoy! Mais C’est Bon!!
Honeyed Figs with Andouille
As you can see by the ingredient list, you can make a couple slices or 30 for a party. We begin with slices of bread on a pan. We added three fig halves (because that fit on the bread slices). Then we flattened each fig half to make it a little more stable for the other ingredients to sit on. To each fig half we added a small dollop of butter, small chunk of cheese, and andouille slice. Finally we drizzled honey on top and baked them in a 325 degree oven for 12 minutes.
Ingredients:
Several slices of specialty bread (We used cornmeal bread)- Fresh figs
- Butter
- Cheese (goat curd)
- Andouille (sliced thin and slighted rendered in a skillet)
- Honey
Thanks for the lovely blog, even though it took quite a long time to complete reading. (English is not my first tongue) May I ask where you got your information from? Thankyou!
Meggs:
From the time I was old enough to pull a chair up to the stove and cook, I did. I learned more basic cooking skills in the Boy Scouts when I was a teenager. If you can cook a complete meal on an open campfire, you can cook almost anything, anywhere. During our married life Laurie and I have enjoyed cooking together (40+ years). Ideas come from all over the place. Sometimes we purchase a meal, see a dish, or watch a cooking show and say to ourselves, we can take that basic idea but we can do it a whole lot better. Most of the time it does come out better and we’ve succeeded in making it ours and making it Cajun. There are those rare time, however, that we decide that the concept was good but the execution did not come up to expetations — we either begin anew or scrap the attempt. Thanks for your comment — Bon Appétit!