I confess to having never tried a fresh fig before. They’re ugly little fruits, aren’t they, and I’d never before felt the need to try them. I’ve had them in biscuits; I fondly remember fig newtons as a child while growing up in Canada (were there really figs in the fig newtons?), but good golly fresh figs are ugly and unappealing! They are expensive too, but the embarrassment of admitting to my fellow foodies that I’ve never tried a fig was just too great so I took the plunge and bought some. I found a palatable sounding recipe (read: I knew I liked the rest of the ingredients) from Delicious Magazine which I slightly adapted to use ingredients I had on hand, namely, a 64 g circle of Cornish goats cheese and half a bag of peppery watercress.
The ingredients were laid out on some small salad plates as artistically as I could and I set one down in front of a very reluctant other half. Apparently, he confessed later, he was making faces at his food when I couldn’t see! He wasn’t that keen on trying fresh figs either. Sometimes this food adventure I am on doesn’t particularly appeal to him.
My, what a surprise! Fresh figs, especially with this combination of warmed goats cheese, walnuts, pear, peppery watercress and honey mustard dressing, were wonderful! They’re sweet, with a lovely texture and moreish exotic flavour, which I’m sure would be reminiscent of a times in the middle east, had I ever been there. Both of us cleaned our plates. Figs are now going to make a regular appearance in our shopping trolley. I shall have to experiment more!
Moral of the story: Never judge a fruit by its cover, er… skin… um, inherent ugliness!
- 2 figs, quartered
- 25 grams walnut halves
- 64 grams goats cheese
- 1 pear
- 2 handfuls watercress
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1/4 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1/2 tsp honey
- juice 1/2 lemon
- sea salt
- freshly ground black pepper
Prep time: Cook time: Total time: Yield: Serves 2
I have entered this recipe into Javelin Warrior’s Made with Love, Monday’s round up of from-scratch recipes.
Mum of three, daydream adventurer, OU Life Sciences graduate, occasional crafter, ex-pat Canadian & quite possibly Britain's most northerly food blogger.
Janette@culinaryginger says
This is a perfect salad for fig season right now and I’d love this for lunch today
Paul Wilson says
Love goat’s cheese.
Debbie Skerten says
Reminds me of holidays.
Margot @ Coffee & Vanilla says
What a yummy salad, usually make similar one with pears alone but never occurred to me I could use figs as well.
Csilla says
I’ve never eaten fresh fig just dried one, but this dish looks delicious.
Jacqueline Meldrum says
I love your salad and I was cheering your hubby on to like it too! Yay!!!
Great flavour combos Elizabeth. I would really enjoy this salad.
Elizabeth says
Thank you 🙂 He can be quite the food critic sometimes, so I was very impressed that he enjoyed them!
Angela Darroch says
We are lucky enough to have a huge big fig tree in our garden as well as walnut trees so this is one combination that I love already. Pity I couldn’t send some over to you. Beautiful photo again.
Elizabeth says
Wowee! I have to admit to being a little bit envious! 🙂 That must be fabulous to have access to fresh figs and walnuts. Thank you for the compliment about the photo 🙂