Figs for a Thousand and One Nights

by Nigella. Featured in NIGELLA SUMMER

Introduction

This is so simple - scarcely a recipe really - but so good. Unless you get figs straight from the tree they sometimes need the blistering heat of an oven or grill to bring out all their honeyed sweetness. This is the pudding to end a slow-grazing, long-picking dinner eaten outside on a warm, balmy night.

If you haven't got any vanilla sugar, just use ordinary caster sugar and add a drop of pure vanilla extract along with the flower waters.

As featured in

NIGELLA SUMMER

2002

Figs for a Thousand and One Nights — Photo by Petrina Tinslay

As featured in

NIGELLA SUMMER

2002

Ingredients

Serves: 6

Metric Cups

12 black figs
50 grams unsalted butter
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
1½ teaspoons rosewater
1½ teaspoons orange-flower water
500 millilitres mascarpone cheese
100 grams pistachios (slivered)

12 black figs
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
1½ teaspoons rosewater
1½ teaspoons orange-flower water
2 cups mascarpone cheese
¾ cup pistachios (slivered)

Method

Preheat a grill or oven to the fiercest it will go.
Quarter the figs, taking care not to cut all the way through to the bottom, so that they open like flowers, or young birds squawking to be fed worms by their mummy, and sit them, thus opened, in a heatproof dish into which they fit snugly.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan, then add the cinnamon, sugar and flower waters. Stir to combine and pour into the figs.
Blister under the hot grill or bake in the oven for a few minutes and then serve; it's that quick. Just give each person a couple of figs on a side plate. Splodge alongside some mascarpone over which you drizzle some of the conker-dark syrup, then sprinkle over some of those green, green shards of pistachio.

Preheat a grill or oven to the fiercest it will go.
Quarter the figs, taking care not to cut all the way through to the bottom, so that they open like flowers, or young birds squawking to be fed worms by their mummy, and sit them, thus opened, in a heatproof dish into which they fit snugly.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan, then add the cinnamon, sugar and flower waters. Stir to combine and pour into the figs.
Blister under the hot grill or bake in the oven for a few minutes and then serve; it's that quick. Just give each person a couple of figs on a side plate. Splodge alongside some mascarpone over which you drizzle some of the conker-dark syrup, then sprinkle over some of those green, green shards of pistachio.