Fig, orange and mascarpone, the way the kitchen does it

Fig, orange and mascarpone is a dessert of six ingredients: whipped mascarpone loosened with honey, figs caramelised cut side down, orange zest and a deliberate note of salt and olive oil at the end.

It is the dessert from Issue 01, scaled down for two and written out properly. Nothing here needs a thermometer or a mould. The only two decisions that matter are how dark you let the cut face of the fig go, and how few strokes you use on the mascarpone.

Ingredients

Sweetness is the easy part. The salt and the olive oil are what make it a dish.

• 4 ripe fresh figs
• 250 g mascarpone
• 1 orange, zest and 1 tbsp juice
• 2 tbsp honey, plus 1 tsp for the pan
• 30 g almonds, skin on, roughly crushed
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• Flaky sea salt and a pinch of fine salt

Method

1. Take the mascarpone out of the fridge twenty minutes ahead. Beaten cold it splits and turns grainy, because the fat has no give in it.
2. Toast the crushed almonds in a dry pan over medium heat for three to four minutes, until they smell nutty, then tip them onto a cold plate. Left in the hot pan they keep cooking and go bitter.
3. Zest the orange finely, keep a third back for finishing, and squeeze a tablespoon of juice.
4. Fold the mascarpone with the honey, the orange juice, a pinch of fine salt and two thirds of the zest, using a spatula and no more than twenty strokes. Overworking is the one way to ruin it.
5. Halve the figs. Heat a heavy dry pan until properly hot, lay the halves cut side down and leave them for two to three minutes without moving them, until the cut face is dark and sticky. Moving them steams the fruit instead of caramelising the sugar.
6. Turn off the heat, add the teaspoon of honey to the pan and swirl it through the fig juices to make a thin caramel.
7. Spoon the mascarpone into two wide bowls, set the figs on top cut side up, spoon the pan juices over and scatter the almonds and the reserved zest.
8. Finish with a thread of olive oil and a pinch of flaky salt. The oil and the salt are what stop this reading as a pudding and start it reading as a dish.

Ripeness, timing and what to drink

Buy figs that are heavy for their size and soft at the stem, with skin that gives under a thumb. An underripe fig will not caramelise; it only dries out and stays green in the middle, and no amount of honey fixes that. Assemble at the last minute, because the mascarpone slackens and the pan juices bleed within ten minutes of plating.

Drink something with acidity rather than more sugar: a young off-dry Riesling, or a glass of new-harvest wine if you are anywhere near a vineyard in September. Espresso works too. For the other end of the same technique, see our hand-cut tajarin, where the rule is also to do less rather than more.