Gettin' figgy widdit.

On any given Sunday in this period in between high summer and the cooling autumn there are still festivals and events galore, with the added bonus that most of the tourists have headed home. The locals come to the forefront, in full eccentricity, dogs in tow. Have you ever seen a three-wheeler motorcycle with spousal and canine seating? I can now say that I have. In Uzes, the event of the day centered around donkeys (purebred, natch, from the Provence) and plants. Free rides for the kiddos, in the hopes of luring buyers for the sweetly curious quadripeds. Buy at least two, lest they get lonely...

The sun is still in force, but the first leaves have begun to drop from the dehydrated plane trees.

To avoid our own dehydration, a leisurely stop for a noisette, before the plant browsing begins in earnest. A matter of pacing, you know.

Then there's day-dreaming over exotic chutneys and jams...

Yes, you read right: clementine and gingerbread, rose petal, apricot/peach/melon, and bananas flambee. So many flavors, so little time to experiment with my own variations...

I was taken by this hibiscus cocinea, purportedly able to withstand temperatures as low as -15 C/5 F. Are you familiar with it? Is it the time I've spent in Amsterdam that makes me think the leaves look smokeable?

If you aren't in the mood for marijuana, how about some "love in a cage"?

This is more my speed, to fill up those gaps as the deciduous plants begin to drop their leaves.I've all the herbs I need at home (or at least all the ones that can grow in my garden). Except garlic, I still buy that. What's more, the figs are ripening beautifully (from the tree the crows haven't been scavenging).After consulting the latest Elle à table, I pick the ripest figs for a quick, sumptuous noonday dessert: figs poached in lemon balm and muscat, which I served atop some velvety fromage blanc. In the original recipe, the figs are served as a dessert soup; I dialed down the sugar and turned up the lemon balm.If you can't find lemon balm, fresh, slightly crushed rosemary would make a charming substitute. Lacking any fresh herbs, you could add a few drops of a good vanilla extract (say a 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon) and a few grinds of fresh ground black pepper...The figs can also be served with a good vanilla bean ice cream or a slice of pound cake, with perhaps a smidgen of mascarpone, just to be decadent... The poaching liquid quickly takes a deep blush from the purple figs--and a fabulously figgy taste--so much so that I used the extra sauce to make fig kirs, using white wine. Here's to Sundays that still feel like the best of summer!
Figues pochées à la mélisse (Figs Poached in Lemon Balm and Muscat)

1 kg figs
2 cups Muscat or other sweet wine
100 g sugar
1 cinnamon stick
very generous handful of lemon balm

Having added the sugar and cinnamon stick, reduce the wine by half over a high flame. Lower the heat and add the whole figs and lemon balm, allow them to simmer gently for ten minutes. Clip the hard tips from the figs before serving; slice if desired. May be eaten warm or chilled.

The fatted liver.

One of my (many and manifold) weaknesses is an everlasting willingness to be seduced by foie gras. And in France, this is definitely the season for either duck or goose foie gras. I am lucky enough to know someone who makes his own foie gras from geese and ducks raised on kitchen peelings and whatever they find in his field. But supermarkets across France are stocked with this delicacy (in a range of diferent levels of quality and price). Beyond France, foie gras is considered a food of the elite as it is after all a luxury dish, but within France, at Christmas and New Year, it is a fixed, nearly standard feature on the table of the average Joe.

Outside of France, there has been momentum, off and on, to ban foie gras. Indeed, it is banned in some countries altogether, such as Turkey and Israel. You may perhaps remember the two year ban in Chicago. As Alex Koppelman of Salon.com rather acerbically writes:

It's undoubtedly true that some farms use inhumane methods, like caging the birds in tiny, individual cages that cause them pain and distress, but when foie gras is produced the right way (the way Hudson Valley does it, for instance) it's simply not torture. It's just a process through which humans take advantage of the duck's natural biology, which is very well suited to the kind of force-feeding involved in producing these fatty livers.
...
If you oppose foie gras, even if the only thing you've ever done about it is to make a dinner companion feel guilty, and you still eat conventionally raised meat, you're a raging hypocrite and a silly one at that. The eggs you ate for breakfast, the cheese that came on top, and the bacon on the side, all of it is produced using methods more torturous than the ones employed on a good foie gras farm. Animals on a typical farm these days are confined in spaces so small they can't turn around, much less do any of the things they'd normally do in nature. And in order to keep them at least somewhat healthy and functional despite those conditions, which tend to make them stressed and unhappy, their bodies are altered to keep them from harming themselves and their fellow animals -- chickens have their beaks trimmed, pigs and cows get their tails docked.

If you would like to find out more about this, you might be interested in the new Mark Caro book "TheFoie Gras Wars: How a 5,000-Year-Old Delicacy Inspired the World's Fiercest Food Fight." (Mark Caro is the columnist whose article resulted in the Chicago ban).

Enough of the world, back to the kitchen. If you know and appreciate the stuff, and can get your hands on some nice foie gras, I urge you to try this terrine, which I adapted from an Elle à Table recipe I scrounged up the day before a big dinner. Here's why: it is made well in advance, is so easy and relatively fast to prepare, looks impressive and tastes even better. The fruit harmonizes (yes, harmonizes!) with the foie gras to perfection. The only disadvantage I can think of, assuming you like foie gras and have no allergy to nuts, is that it's never inexpensive. The only special equipment you'll need is a terrine dish (about 12 cm in length should do); this is a glazed baking dish with straight sides.

Terrine de Foie Gras aux Fruits Secs/Fruit-Studded Foie Gras Terrine

Serves six.

250 g foie gras mi-cuit (i.e. not raw, but rather ready to serve)
4 dried figs, (the hard stem bit cut and discarded) chopped
1 tablespoon cranberries (or raisins)
2 tablespoons chopped walnuts (or pistachios)
20 g butter
2 tablespoons Banyuls, sherry or Champagne vinegar
2 tablespoons white Port, or Pineau de Charentes, or a dessert wine such as Sauternes
a pinch or two of Cayenne pepper
fresh ground pepper and salt to taste

Place a large piece of plastic wrap into the terrine dish; this will allow you to easily remove the terrine for slicing later. Break or cut the foie gras roughly into pieces, place in a mixing bowl. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat, add the chopped dried fruit and nuts and stir. Add the vinegar, stir again, then add the Port and cayenne pepper. The kitchen will suddenly reek of vinegar fumes. Don't despair. Grind pepper into the pan and add a light sprinkle of salt.

Once the vinegar and Port have evaporated leaving only the butter, remove the pan from the heat. This should take about five minutes. Allow the fruit mixture to cool a bit before adding it to the foie gras in the mixing bowl. Gently mix the two, then pile the combination into the terrine dish, pressing down to push out any air pockets underneath. Completely cover the top with the plastic wrap and allow to rest, refrigerated, for at least one night.

When ready to serve, pull the ends of the plastic wrap gently to dislodge then remove the terrine from its dish. Slice with a knife that has been previously warmed in hot water. Serve with toasted French bread slices and a spoonful of thick, vanillla-scented fig conserves.

Bird droppings.

I shouldn't be annoyed but I am, because it has happened again. And I saw them, gliding in wide circles, coming in on the sunset. These crows remember, it would seem. Actually, I'm not entirely certain whether they are crows, ravens, or jackdaws but they certainly are corvid in character and form. I think I should know my enemy better, as he certainly knows my biggest fig tree quite well.

And herein lies the problem. They arrive in a great flock, wheeling above the landscape, with the insouciance of those who know they are its true owners. They remember this particular tree, and when its fruit ripens. Figs ripen several at a time on the tree, rather than all at once, shifting from a light green to a pregnant purple. For three years now, I have been unable to see that final state of ripeness, as the sweetest fruit are swiftly plucked, one by one. As the tree is set at some distance from the house, I don't even get the masochistic pleasure of catching them in the act. It had been a lovely end-of-summer holiday pleasure (please take note of the past tense used), picking basketsful of those turgid fruit to be converted into thick, vanilla-inflected jam. And here we are, school will begin in some ten days, and I've nary a fig to show for it.

It makes me think of my mother with sympathy, her anger over my childhood pet monkey snatching the finest of the ripe mangoes from the pile she'd painstakingly collected. She'd managed to make a sort of long fruit hook, with a little basket attached, so that the fruit could be yanked from the tree, slip into the bag, and gathered, unbruised. But that was one monkey adversary, and very many mangoes.

These figs and I are hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. We haven't a chance.