If you don’t eat a ripe, juicy fig this month, you’ll regret it until 2024.
You could outsource the prep work—as well as several hours of pastry lamination—and procure the teardrop-shaped fig, honey, and hazelnut danish at Mighty Bread Company in Philadelphia, P.A., or take your fig over dill-fennel seed soft serve at Olemus in Seoul. Or make like Herrlich Dining and pluck the most succulent black Mission fig of the bunch from a nearby tree, dip each half in melted dark chocolate, and sprinkle the cocoa carapace with a pinch of fleur de sel. I know a good idea when I see one, so last weekend, I too coated a fig in my favorite pantry staple: gin. I added a bit of strained fig juice to my dirty martini, and garnished with a fig slice. If you’re already jonesing for autumnal baking (not me; I’m sipping my gin on the roof deck), then the Bangalore-based Mal Arora’s fig galette with brown butter-miso frangipane sounds unbelievably divine; so too does Arora’s spiced rum, rye, and olive oil cake, frosted with cream cheese and crowned with a carton of lush, quiveringly ripe figs. If you make either of those, call me about leftovers. You can meet me on the roof deck and we’ll talk fall’s abundance ‘til the sun sets on the season of the plumpest, sweetest of the fruits, and we begin our countdown to the next harvest.