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This is Stephanie Manley with CopyKat.com. Today I want to show you how to
make a great appetizer. It's figs, wine, and goat cheese. And you know this
is going to be perfect for wine tasting. Let me tell you what I'm going to
put in it: red wine, cinnamon sticks, sugar, black peppercorns, figs,
lemons; we're going to use this for lemon zest, and lemon juice, and a
little bit of water.
Now I am just using an average table wine here. I think a Merlo or a Pinot
Noir will work really well. It has a little bit of a fruit characteristic.
Don't spend a whole lot of money. If you're spending $10 on this bottle of
wine, since we're going to add so many other things to it, you're spending
too much.
Now you are going to need about a half cup of water here. Now I want you to
take a couple of lemons. We're going to need about three tablespoons of
lemon juice, and we're going to need about a good tablespoon of the lemon
zest. So, depending the size of your lemons, you may need one. You may need
two or three. I'm using small lemons, so I needed several to make enough
juice. So go ahead, zest those, and then get the juice.
Now I'm using about a cup of dried figs, and I'm using Mission figs because
I was told those were the kind to use for this recipe from a friend of
mine. And she highly recommended the Mission figs, so that's what I'm using
here. So I'm going to chop these up in nice bite-size pieces. Now when
these get in the wine, they're going to expand a little bit, so you may
want to chop them up a little bit more finely if you want something that's
going to be very elegant. I kind of like things kind of rustic and kind of
nice and hearty, so I am not going to chop them up really, really tiny.
So we are going to take a pot--about a two-quart pot--and go ahead and add
in all of our ingredients to this. Now I like to use a nice heavy bottomed
pot so there are no hot spots in it, and this is going to cook very evenly.
We're going to add in our wine. We're going to go ahead and add in our
water, our little bit of lemon zest here. Now if you want to fish this
lemon zest out at any time, you can. Again, I like stuff kind of nice and
chunky, so I'm leaving mine in. I'm going to add a little bit of sugar
here, and then I'm going to add more stuff. I'm going to go ahead and add
in my figs, my cinnamon sticks, and my black peppercorns.
Now this recipe is really, really easy to make. You only need to let this
cook for about 30 minutes. The first thing we're going to do is we're going
to bring this to a boil, and as soon as it begins to boil, then we're going
to turn it down on low and let it simmer for 20 to 30 minutes. Now you have
to know that you should not serve this to anyone who can't drink alcohol,
because it takes alcohol a really long time to cook out. So if you're
sensitive to that, please, please do not make this recipe; just make
something else with goat cheese and figs. It'll be fabulous.
All right, and in goes the three tablespoons of lemon juice. Again, let it
boil for a second or two, reduce the temperature down for 20 or 30 minutes,
and pull this off the burner.
Now I just made some very basic crostini here. I just took some bread. I
sliced it, brushed a little olive oil on it, let it brown underneath the
broiler in my oven, flipped the bread over and did it again, because if you
only do it on one side, the other side's a little bit soggy; so don't do it
that way. So once you get all of your goat cheese on here, and I used about
four ounces of goat cheese for one baguette. I'm going to just put this
back into the oven and let the goat cheese get kind of warm. I don't want
it to cook, because then the crostini is going to turn all really dark. So
don't do that, just let the goat cheese warm up a little bit.
All right, and so we've got the goat cheese action going on, and the next
thing we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and take care of our
figs and wine.
Okay, so it's been about 30 minutes, and now I'm going to go ahead and
remove this wonderful fig and wine sauce from the pot. And I'm going to put
it in an air-tight storable container, because you're probably not going to
use all of this at once, but you can use this later. Not only is this great
on crostini with goat cheese, this is also spectacular on some nice French
toast. I like to use a nice hearty challah] or something that's really nice
and thick. Perfect, perfect for a Sunday morning.
Now to make these crostini up, all you need to do is spoon a little bit on
here, and let me tell you what. This tasted fantastic with a nice hearty
full-bodied wine with a little touch of cinnamon. And the black peppercorns
really tasted so good. So there you go. Please be sure rate, comment, and
subscribe so you can see what's cooking next.