Roasted Autumn Fruit
Seasonal fruits really do lend themselves to cooking in wine. See our poached pears recipe but also use leftover wine with figs and plums. The French have a recipe called ‘Confiture des vieux garçons’ where they cook dried and fresh fruit like figs and prunes in red wine and spices. Easy to do and a store cupboard staple. This recipes allows you to use whatever season fruit you have to hand. Roasting the fruit rather than poaching gives lovely caramel notes.
Prep: 20 mins
Cook: 40 mins
Serves: 6
Roasted autumn fruit
Ingredients
14-16 firm figs
10-12 firm plums, you can mix up the colours
250 ml (about a third of a bottle) of red wine
200g caster sugar
300 g blackberries - but Sally uses black grapes from the vineyard
To serve: Whipping cream and 4 cardamon pods
Method
Preheat your oven to 190°C/180°C for a fan oven/Gas mark 5
Cut the figs in half lengthways leaving attached at the bottom, halve the plums and remove the stones.
Put the fruit in the bottom a shallow oven proof dish big enough for all the fruit to fit in side by side. The figs points up and the plums cut side up.Add the wine and 150 g sugar to the pan and simmer until the sugar has dissolved and reduced by one third.
Pour the wine mixture over the fruit and sprinkle the remaining sugar on top
Roast in the oven for 25-30 minutes. Keep an eye on the dish, so the fruit caramelizes but doesn’t burn and the individual fruits stay intact.
Remove from the oven, add the blackberries on top, they fit nicely into the centre of the plums. If using Sally’s grapes add these 15 minutes before the end of cooking.
Whip the cream and add in the ground seeds from the cardamon pods. you may want to add in icing sugar but the fruit will probably be quite sweet enough.
A different take on this is with apricots, if there are still some in the shops. Guess what? Wendy suggests roasting them in Sweet wine white. It’s sweet enough not to need reducing beforehand, just use half the volume compared to the recipe above. Sprinkle sugar mixed with ground almonds and a knob of butter on top before roasting or add toasted flaked almonds once out of the oven.
Accompaniments
Of course a really good vanilla ice cream works but why not a blackcurrant sorbet, flavoured whipped cream (as above) or creme fraîche (better for the gut)? As we suggest for poached pears, if trying to be a little healthier, then try with coconut milk yoghurt or greek-style dairy yoghurt, or whip a little kefir into the cream to give an acidic note which is a great foil to the sweetness.
Wine
And wine with that? The roasted plums and figs work really well with a Cabernet-led red wine, try a Medoc or a Haut Medoc, especially if serving with a blackcurrant sorbet as Cabernet wines are known for their blackcurrant notes.
You know what Wendy is going to say for the apricots........