Baked fig with goat’s cheese and thyme

The fig season is upon us and, while I love adding slices of raw fig to a cheese board, they are even more delicious baked in the oven with goat’s cheese.

This hardly qualifies as a recipe, it’s so simple.

1. Preheat the oven to 180’C
2. First, take some fresh goat’s cheese (I find the firm, rindless curd style ones work best for this) and mash with some fresh thyme leaves and some crushed black or red pepper.
3. Carve a cross into the top of the fig, cutting about half way down and gently squeeze the perimeter of the fruit to open the top up.
4. Press a generous dollop of the cheese mixture onto the top of the fig and place in the oven for ten to fifteen minutes until you can see the cheese starting to change colour and the fig starting to sag a little.
5. Sometimes I like to add a little chilli to this dish to enhance the flavour – either in the form of a ring of chilli as you can see in the picture, or by mashing some finely chopped chilli into the cheese mixture.

Variations

This recipe works well as a starter but if you put some dark chocolate under the cheese before baking is also makes a delicious dessert.

For a more substantial plate, try adding rocket and prosciutto.

Nutrition notes:

Figs contain approximately 19g of carbohydrate per 100g of fruit, some of which is gut-friendly fibre. They are also packed with vitamins and minerals – especially high in potassium and manganese. You can include them as part of a ketogenic diet as long as the rest of your meal is very low in carbohydrate. NB Dried figs are much more sugary per 100g as they have lost most of their water content.