Figs Alice B. Toklas

"I absolutely must decline
To dance in the streets with Gertrude Stein
And as for Alice B. Toklas,
I'd rather eat a box of Fucking chocolates."

I didn't say that--Brendan Behan did. The Irish poet and playwright (The Hostage; The Quare Fellow) died in 1964. Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967) was a writer, artist and Gertrude Stein’s lover. Toklas and Stein lived together in Paris. It was the Paris of the 1950's, of the salon and bohemian coffee houses; the Paris that artists and writers even today idealize. In her 1954 book, The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, a memoir with recipes, Toklas has a recipe for “Haschich Fudge,” which I assume is what Behan is referring to in his poem.

Anyway, I thought I had lost the fig recipe forever. I mean I really thought so, and in my obsessive way I ransacked my desk, tore through every Gourmet magazine I've ever held onto, fingered my recipe file pages repeatedly, only to have it turn-up where it always was--in an old recipe box, tucked safely under the tab labeled, desserts. I'll have to pay more attention to that old box, which used to be my only recipe repository. Now I have a folder, stuffed, with slips of pages falling out; and of course, the web. But I knew this recipe pre-dated popular web usage, so I had despaired. And it’s just quirky enough to never show up on Cooking.com

But there it was, a yellowing, stained slip of newsprint.

It's really just stewed figs. In this post-Gourmet era, I was so glad to see that I had dated the recipe “1985, Gourmet Magazine.” My oldest daughter would have been five and comfortably asleep on the couch when I was making this for dinner guests. I remember the look of surprise and a little puzzlement on a friends’s face when he tasted this dessert, with its deep, adult flavors. I secretly knew he thought I couldn’t produce anything this good, he (and his wife) being the staunch Francophile, who had spent a good deal of his youth sowing his oats (as we used to say) in France. He loved it and seemed to regard me with a little more respect after that.



So here it is. Bring it to the table in some kind of pretty tureen, and make it the day before you want to serve it.

Figs Alice B. Toklas
(Serves 12!)

2 lbs. dried figs
Two 3-inch cinnamon sticks
12 whole cloves
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
½ tsp. grated lemon rind
¼ tsp. grated orange rind
4 cups Ruby Port
1 cup dry red wine
Whipped cream as accompaniment
1 cup hazelnuts, toasted, skinned and chopped for garnish (essential!)

In a saucepan combine figs, cinnamon sticks, cloves, dark brown sugar, light brown sugar, lemon rind, orange rind, Port, and wine and simmer the mixture, covered, for 1 hour, or until the figs are tender. Let the mixture stand in a cool place for 24 hours and chill it for 2 hours. Serve chilled or at room temperature. Serve the figs topped with the whipped cream and garnished with the hazelnuts.