Recipe 65: Spinach Sauteed with Garlic, Figs, and Honey

The challenge: Learning to work with figs, and finding a use for the leftover figs.
I was glad the recipe called for dried figs instead of fresh figs-that could have been more of a challenge.

As I tasted the figs, since I had plenty for the recipe, I noticed the stem ends were a little hard and needed to be spit out. After they were cooked, I realized that was true once I cooked the sliced figs as well. Now, I'll know for next time.

I did do a little reading up on the fig as I was preparing this blog, and I did find from the California Fig Advisory Board, that "It is definite that a fig tree provided the first clothing as noted in the Bible, “...the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons”, but there is room for speculation that the forbidden fruit might have been a fig, not an apple."
http://californiafigs.com/about_figs.php

This recipe was pretty easy. Heat a skillet, add a little olive oil. Add in a couple of tablespoons of thinly sliced garlic and saute' until lightly toasted-30 seconds. Then add the fig and chicken stock or broth, about a quarter cup of each. Cook until chicken stock/broth is mostly reduced, about 1-2 minutes. Then add the spinach and cook, stirring until wilted-about 2 more minutes.

Season with salt and pepper and drizzle honey over spinach just before serving. This is supposed to make 4 servings. Either I really like spinach, or I didn't have a whole pound, I'll be lucky to get three servings out of this. Of course, I was cooking it while hungry for lunch, so that might have been a part of it. That's it, I'm done.

Now, I either need to buy more spinach or find another use for the leftover figs. I'm not disappointed in their flavor, but they're not a fruit I'm going to crave like I do oranges. I think the figs are getting diced and added to power bars;-).

Back to the question at hand though, yes, I will definitely make this recipe again, just not too soon. I'm not making plans to go buy more spinach obviously, even though it was good for lunch. This is a nice recipe for a Tuesday night after work and other errands when you still want food quick.