fig crisp -- it's all right

We headed over to the Italian Centre Shop this weekend mainly to pick up a spinach feta twist. It's kind of a bum idea cuz it's almost 100% worth it to drive all the way over to Hellas Foods for a tyropita (cheese pie) instead, but the (mostly) spinach (not really tasting of) feta twist is still good, even if they only cooked them from the easily accessible frozen twists in their grocery department. While there, I thought I'd pick up some tomatoes and lettuce just to get us by until I could go for a serious grocery run, when we serendipitously stumbled upon flats of figs again.

How exciting! Actually, ICS had a lot of interesting produce. Fresh dates (what does one do with fresh dates?), fancy mushrooms (enoki are so cute!), and persimmons (I should really try these at some point in my life) among others I can't remember, all fairly budget friendly. Of course, I'm sure I've said it before, but they have lots of interesting products. Their pasta aisle alone is pretty amazing.

So back to the figs. Honestly, I really just wanted to use my new oven proof bowls, so I spent a lot of Saturday trying to figure out what I could do with them. Originally, I thought of making a galette, but I didn't think it would cook up crispy like it's supposed to if pressed into bowls. Instead, I revised a rhubarb crisp recipe I had (and, like, really revised it. I revise it for rhubarb now, too, because the original was super full of sugar), and I divided it among the bowls. I like that part the most about this. Preportioned = perfect.

Fig Crisp
(makes 4 ramekins or one medium sized round baking dish)

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup flour
3/4 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup melted butter or canola oil (I think you could get away with a little less if you wanted to)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
7-8 figs, peeled and sliced (this depends on the size of baking dish)

In a bowl, combine the sugar, flour, oats, cinnamon, and melted butter and mix together with a fork until crumbly and moist. If using ramekins, put about 1/4 cup of the oat mixture into each bowl (divide the mixture in half if using a larger baking dish and use half of the mixture for the bottom).

Using a fork, press the oat mixture down firmly into the bottom of each ramekin.

Take the sliced figs and arrange them on top of the oat mixture so there's an even layer for each portion (if using a larger baking dish, you might want to double up on the figs).

Gently sprinkle the remaining oat mixture (about a 1/4 cup per bowl) on top of the figs. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until golden brown on top (it should take 45-55 minutes for a larger dish).

These would be delicious with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream right when they come out of the oven, but we enjoyed them plain with a small drizzle of caramel sauce.

{fig jam}

I still had a little over a pound of figs left, so I made another jar of jam. If you'd like that recipe, check out my previous fig post. In my many fig searches, I also bookmarked some interesting ideas for fig jam, including an appetizer, on grilled cheese, fig poptarts, and fig newtons (music auto starts on this link, fair warning). But I think I'm going to come up with a savory dinner idea. For some reason, I can't get the idea of figs and black pepper out of my head. Hmm...