Hello Friends!

This week we’re going to simplify things a little, and we’ll go meatless as well.  Some of you know I’ve been a huge fan of the cookbook Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamami, two London-based chefs who hail from… wait for it… Jerusalem.  It’s a beautiful cookbook, but more importantly, the recipes are truly outstanding – and are not beyond the skills of most home cooks.  But sometimes the recipes call for hard to find ingredients and the instructions can get a bit fussy (as is common in cookbooks by professional chefs).  This is a shame because it potentially scares away too many people from even trying to get to the glorious results.  So let’s take on the first recipe in this cookbook and see how easy this can be!

We’re in the middle of summer as I write this, and fresh figs are everywhere and on sale.  Figs are bizarre little fruits really – try looking up how they have been fertilized for 30 million years sometime.  They are both familiar and exotic to us in the West, mostly consumed in Newton form until recently.  I don’t think I ever saw a fresh fig growing up in the Midwest; you native Californians out there probably ate them in your lunch boxes.

This recipe plays on the classic combination of fig, goat cheese and balsamic vinegar.

Middle Eastern-Style Sweet Potatoes and Figs with Goat Cheese

Ingredients:

• Two large sweet potatoes, cleaned
• 6-8 ripe figs (any kind – Black Mission are fine)
• 4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (the regular stuff, not the expensive stuff)
• 1 ½ tablespoons sugar
• 1 fresh chili (red or green – jalapeño), very thinly sliced cross-wise
• 6 green onions, sliced into 1-inch pieces
• 1 five-ounce hunk of plain goat cheese
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Instructions:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees.
2. Make wedges out of the sweet potatoes: halve them cross-wise, then halve them three times length-wise so you get little eighths. No need to peel the potatoes beforehand!
3. Put the potatoes in a roasting pan. Mix with three tablespoons olive oil, 2 teaspoons salt and a few turns of black pepper.  Turn them over so they are skin side down and not touching.
4. Roast potatoes for 20-25 minutes, until just tender but not mushy. Let them cool a bit before serving.
5. While these are baking, put the balsamic vinegar and the sugar in a small saucepan and heat over medium heat until just boiling. Reduce the heat to low and stir frequently so the sugar dissolves and the vinegar thickens to just slightly less runny than honey – should take 3-4 minutes.  (The goal here is to have it perfect consistency for drizzling, like maple syrup).  Take off the heat – it will thicken more as it cools.
6. Heat two tablespoons oil in a small skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and chilies, and stir fry until just tender – 4-5 minutes.
7. Arrange the cooled potatoes on a platter and spoon the onion/chili mixture over them.
8. Slice the figs in half lengthwise. Place them around and amongst the sweet potatoes in whatever pattern you like.
9. Drizzle your balsamic reduction over everything. Add a little (a teaspoon, maybe) water to the reduction and stir if it is too thick to drizzle.
10. Crumble (or spoon small gobs of) goat cheese over the lot.

A few tips:

• I think I’m going to try maybe pickled red onions or something a little crunchier than sautéed green onions, which I don’t think add much here.
• When using green onions, I often halve the white parts lengthwise since they cook more slowly than the green parts,
• Serve this with a nice bread or even as a side with a roast beast of some kind.
• I always laugh when a recipe says to crumble goat cheese, which I think is physically impossible with one’s hands. Wipe hands thoroughly afterwards (or lick them, which I do).

Enjoy!  More recipes to come soon.