If you are lucky enough to have a fig tree in your garden, you’ll be eating them straight from the branches one by one or for lunch with a slice of prosciutto, or torn up on bruschetta with a few rocket leaves. But better yet: get your hands on a glut. If you are anywhere Meditarranean make sure you bring back a bag in your hand luggage (we got ours in Tangier), or buy them at your local market or fruitier. They are at their cheapest at this time of year. Then make fig jam. You don’t need to peel the figs or faff around testing that the jam has set properly, because figs are ready-made to be happily boiled up with some sugar, and turned into delectable jam.
Here is the best recipe for Fig jam, by the one and only Jane Grigson.
Mme Verdier’s Black Fig Jam
A recipe from the red village of Collonges, in the Corrèze near Brive, sent to me by a friend.
Prepare the figs by removing the stems and any skin which comes off easily. Weigh them and leave them overnight in a bowl with half their weight in sugar.
Next day, put the whole thing into a preserving pan and bring to the boil. As soon as it boils, remove the fruit with a skimmer or perforated spoon. Leave the syrup in the pan to go on boiling to the pearl stage 106ËšC (222ËšF), when the sugar from small pearl-like balls. Put back the figs and cook gently, while stirring, for about 15 minutes. Be careful that the fruit does not catch and burn. Pot in the usual way.
Two notes: you can use any saucepan instead of a preserving pan as long as it is big enough. You don’t want boiling sugar to be spluttering over the sides of a small pan.
To pot the jam ‘in the usual way,’ means simply that you must use sterilised jam jars. To do this, either put them through a hot cycle in the dishwasher or boil them in a saucepan of water for five minutes. If you use screw top lids you don’t need to bother with those little circles of wax paper.
