3 delicious recipes with figs shared by Russian chefs 

1. Salad with baked beets, figs and cheese

Evgeny Mikhailov, Drinks@Dinners restaurant

Beets, greens, slightly salty cheese, fresh figs and sweet-and-sour dressing – these are the ingredients of this salad’s success. The simple instructions below explain it all.

Ingredients (one serving):

• Beets – 50 g
• Figs – 80 g
• Feta cheese – 50 g
• Greens for decoration (frisée, spinach, arugula, microgreens) – to taste

Dressing:

• Olive oil – 50 g
• Egg yolk – 5 g
• Mustard – 1 g
• Lemon juice – 20 g
• Honey – 5 g
• Fresh tarragon – 2 g
• Worcestershire sauce – 1 g
• Salt, pepper – to taste

Instructions:

1. Rinse a medium-size beet and wrap it in foil, unpeeled. Put it in the oven for 40 minutes at 180º C.

2. Peel the prepared beet and cut into slices along with figs.

3. Cut your feta cheese into cubes.

4. Mix all sauce ingredients and dress the salad.

5. Decorate the salad with microgreens.

2. Vol-au-vent with figs and ryazhenka

Valery Chigarnov, L.E.S. restaurant

Vol-au-vents made of puff pastry are perfect for both parties and cozy family teas. We suggest you try and prepare them with an unusual filling of creamy ryazhenka combined with figs and walnuts.

Ingredients (one serving):

• Yeast puff pastry – 1 sheet
• Flour – 3 tablespoons
• Fig jam – 30 g
• Figs – 1
• Ryazhenka – 50 ml
• Walnuts – 5 g
• Eggs – 1
• Lavender, raspberry powder – 5 g (optional)

Instructions:

1. Take pre-made puff pastry vol-au-vents or make them yourself. This is how the chef makes vol-au-vents: take out the puff pastry from the pack and let it defrost while covered by plastic wrap. Sprinkle your working area with flour and roll the pastry into a sheet 3-4 millimeters thick. Depending on your glass’ diameter and your pastry’s thickness, you can make 7-10 vol-au-vents from one sheet of pastry. Cut out the base of the vol-au-vent with a simple glass. Put it on parchment. With the remaining puff pastry, form the walls on the base. Brush your vol-au-vent with beaten egg. Put it in the oven, pre-heated to 180ºC, for 10-15 minutes until brown. Take your vol-au-vents out of the oven and let cool completely.

2. Put the fig jam on the bottom of the vol-au-vents.

3. Ryazhenka has an inherent unusual sweet taste, but you can make it even more interesting if, just like the chef, you add 5 grams of lavender to it. Put the ryazhenka in a cream siphon to make foam. If you don’t have one, put cold ryazhenka over the fig jam with a spoon. In that case, you are better off getting ryazhenka with a high fat percentage – about 4%.

4. Decorate with fresh fig slices.

5. When serving, sprinkle with grated walnuts. The chef also dusts it with raspberry powder.

3. Figs with beets

Chef Artem Estafiev, Artest restaurant

This dish is quite impressive due to the combination of bright beet slices and fig peels. For even more contrast, the chef uses yellow beets – but if you don’t have any, go ahead and experiment with red ones.

Ingredients (one serving):

• Sour cream 30% - 10 g
• Goat cheese – 10 g
• Yellow beets – 20 g
• Figs – 20 g
• Sea salt – 0.5 g
• Green peas – 10 g
• Pike caviar – 5 g (optional)

Instructions:

1. Mix goat cheese and sour cream until combined – make a cream.

2. Blanch green peas in boiling water for 2-3 minutes, then put them in cold water.

3. Wash the beet without peeling it and bake it in salt (the chef recommends you to try Maldon salt or Fleur de sel) at 160º C for 30-40 minutes. That will allow you to get rid of the earthy flavor and balance the beet’s sweetness. Cool the beet.

4. Wash the fig and slice it so that you can put in beet slices. Put the beet into the fig so that the fig and beet alternate each other.

5. Skip this step if you don’t have a sous vide cooker. The chef serves the fig on a confit egg yolk. He puts a whole egg into a sous vide cooker and cooks it at 62º C for 60 minutes, after which he separates the yolk from the whites and mixes it with hazelnut oil (3 g).

6. Serving: put the goat cheese cream on a dish, place the fig with the beet on top.

7. Decorate the dish with blanched green peas and pike caviar. You can also add more salt, add greens (watercress) and dress with vegetable oil. The chef recommends hazelnut oil and tarragon oil.

READ MORE: 3 autumn recipes with baked vegetables from Russian chefs