Love at first fig

I fell in love with fresh figs this month.  (Fischers ... get your minds out of the gutter.)  I always associated figs with the Fig Newton which I never liked.  But fresh figs are so much better.  I started the battle by buying all the fig choices I had at the store, black mission, green figs and dried.  We came home and margot and I taste tested them.  Black Mission Figs came in first, green came in second (Margot began hiding these under her tray) and dried came in last - there's the familiar Fig Newton taste.  I found fresh figs oddly refreshing, not juicy, but clean in a way that I almost didn't want to do anything to them.  But I did.

So for my battle I went with the crowd favorite, Black Mission Figs.  Friend's of ours invited us over for pizza night this month.  So I decided to do my battle over there (hoping they had not read Megan's Anniversary post on figs and think we were swingers.)

I made a four cheese pizza (Mozzerella, Asiago, Parm and Blue) with prosciutto and figs.  I took the fresh figs and reluctantly cooked them with brown sugar and a bit of water.   The salty, sweet combination was great with the strength of the blue cheese.  Even our host, Annette (Seen below with her husband and fellow Grandview Bobcat Craig), enjoyed it and she is not a fan of blue cheese.   I would say that proves it was a balanced dish.

So I am now a fan and will use these in the future.  Probably raw in salads and on antipasto plates mainly.  (But never near the Fischers.)