A&S Journal Competition: Feast Cooking
AKA: My Very First Redactions
So, I've decided to just write these up straight here, because it's easier, and I don't feel like writing them into my handwritten journal first, so these are going to be electronic entries only, I'm also way behind on uploading my handwritten entries, so this may be the way to go....
I tried several different recipes out, because I had to cook myself dinner anyway, and it's just easier, especially with waiting-around time, to have more than one thing on the go. In addition to the recipes here, I also put in some (modern) chicken, and made a loaf of bread.
The first recipe I tried was from Scappi's Opera (L'arte et prudenza d'un maestro cuoco; Scully, Terence (trans.), "The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570), (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2008)).
Being an eggplant fiend, although usually eating it sliced, salted and rinsed, then dipped in a batter or crumbs and fried, I decided to try one of his eggplant recipes:
"Book III 229. To braise eggplant - that is, pomi sdegnosi
Get eggplants that are not too ripe or too bitter, and clean off the purplish skin they have - although you do find white ones - and cut them lengthwise into several pieces. Let them steep for half an hour; discard that water and set them to boil in a pot in fresh water that is lightly salted. When they are well cooked, take them out and let them drain on a table. Have an earthenware baking dish or a tourte pan ready with oil; carefully flour the pieces and make a layer of them in the pan. Get beaten mint, sweet marjoram, burnet and parsley, and beaten fresh fennel tips or ground dry fennel along with crushed garlic cloves, and scatter all that over the layer of eggplant, as well as enough pepper, cinnamon, cloves and salt; splash verjuice on that and sprinkle it with sugar. Repeat, making up two or three layers. Cook it the way a tourte is done. When it is done, serve it hot in dishes with the broth over it. If is not a fasting day you can put slices of provatura or ordinary cheese and grated bread between each layer; and, instead of oil, use butter."
My first decision was that it wasn't a fast day.
I trialled this using two medium-sized eggplants. It's interesting that the reference here is to "clean off" the skin - in the next two recipes, also for eggplant, he specifies that the eggplants are "peeled" - Scully is quite pedantic about his translations, so obviously the wording must be different for him to use this different phrasing (I need to get an Italian copy to compare). Also he describes the skin as "purplish", so I'm wondering if he's referring to a different breed of eggplant than the very dark purple-skinned ones we have available in the supermarkets here.
As it was, I peeled the skin with an ordinary peeler, because this seemed like the easiest way of dealing with it. I cut each eggplant lengthwise into five pieces - on reflection, I probably could have done with only four or three pieces per eggplant. I soaked them for half an hour as specified, then cooked them until very well cooked, ending up with about half the amount of eggplant I began the exercise with. Instead of draining them on a table, I put down a clean towel and drained them onto a plate. When you tip out the boiling water from the pot it is generally a good idea to pour it straight in the sink instead of over your hand, but it's been at least a month since I last got burnt (I'm a wee bit clumsy), so it was probably about due.
While the eggplants were sitting draining and contemplating life in general, I wandered on out to the herb garden to play fetch. I wasn't sure exactly how much of each herb I was supposed to be using so I grabbed three or four sprigs of mint, a couple of fennel tips about three inches long each, a few bits of marjoram (less of this because the plant's still new and there's not much to it yet), and about double the amount of parsley. I ended up with two decent fistfuls of herbs, one being parsley, the other being everything else. I didn't have any burnet, and I don't know what that is, so I'll have to check through my herbals and find it, then check through my garden stores and see if I can buy a plant. Scappi refers in the recipe at this stage to the herbs being "beaten" - I wonder if he means "bruised" by this? I chopped them fairly coarsely, and made sure they were well-mixed with the garlic in a small bowl (I cheated and used pre-crushed garlic from a jar, a couple of spoonfuls, because I forgot to buy garlic).
At this stage I decided it would be easiest to make sure everything was ready to go at once, so I also assembled the spices in a separate container (a bit like making curry - I had a "wet" and a "dry" mix). I put in a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon, about a 1/2 teaspoon of cloves, a 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and as much pepper as I could get out of the container (note to self: get around to buying sodding mortar so can grind sodding pepper fresh, or at least remember that the container's practically empty and buy more next time you're at the supermarket), and made sure this was well-combined.
At this point I also sliced the cheese, or I would have done if I had known how messy my fingers were about to get assembling everything. I need to find out what provatura cheese is, or what Scappi considered to be "ordinary" cheese (this will no doubt be mentioned at some other point in the book, he is quite thorough on these things), but for today I used good old Edam. The block stuff. I did at least have the forethought to grate the bread - I used one dried bap roll that my flatmates hadn't eaten, it was still partially soft even after five days, but better for breadcrumbs than for eating.
So: the assembly process. Slices of butter into the bottom. Even though the eggplant had been sitting contemplating existentialism as a way of life for about twenty minutes, it was still sodding hot. Also bloody slippery, and too soft to pick up with tongs. However, I dutifully picked up each piece, plopped it in my wee bowl of flour, flipped it over, and put it in the small earthenware vessel I just happened to have. I fit three bits of eggplant per layer, four if they were squished up or edge bits. So then my fingers were covered in flour-and-water-paste. At this point I attempted to sprinkle herbs over the layer. This was a fairly scant sprinkling, as I realised that I could have used the entire lot over this one layer. So next time I'll get more herbs. Then a sprinkling of the spices, and a large teaspoonful of sugar, and a healthy splash of cider vinegar in place of verjuice, followed by a handful of grated bread spread evenly over, and a few slices of cheese. Then repeat for the second layer, running out of herbs. Put in third layer of eggplant, run outside and get more herbs, chop them with glued-up fingers, and sprinkle. Only just had enough spice, would probably make a little more next time. Finish layering, put lid on vessel (Scully informs us in one of his footnotes that "to cook in the way a tourte is done" means "apply a moderate heat from above and below to a covered pan"), and chuck it in the oven. Leave in oven about 30-40 minutes, at 180 degrees celsius. Remove and let sit until the beans are done cooking. Eat. Absolutely delicious, really, really, really yummy.
So, if I was writing it up as a proper recipe, I'd probably write it like this:
Ingredients:
2 x medium-size, ripe but firm eggplants
Salt
A large handful each of fresh mint, sweet marjoram, and fennel tips
Three large handfuls (two shop-bought bunches) of fresh parsley
3-4 t (generous helpings please) precrushed garlic, or 4-5 cloves, crushed and finely chopped
3t ground cinnamon
1 t salt
1/2-1t ground pepper
1/2-1t cloves
Butter - about 50g
Flour - about 1C
3T (or really heaped teaspoons) sugar
3/4C verjuice or cider vinegar
1 large or two small stale white bread rolls, grated
Cheese, sliced
To make:
Peel eggplants, slice lengthwise into three or four pieces each, soak in cold water half an hour. Drain, transfer to a saucepan, and bring to a boil in fresh, lightly salted water, cook until well done. Drain off water, and leave eggplant to finish draining on a clean tea towel.
Coarsely chop all the herbs, and mix together with the garlic. Mix all the spices together in a separate bowl.
Get a lidded baking dish (deep, and about 20-25cm diameter) ready, by chopping butter into thin layers and placing evenly over base of dish.
Put some flour into a shallow bowl, and carefully coat each piece of eggplant on both sides with the flour, on the way to the baking dish.
Lay one layer of eggplant into the baking dish, sprinkle over generously with herbs, then with the spice mix, the sugar, and 1/3 of the verjuice or vinegar, being careful to distribute everything evenly. Top with a handful of the grated bread, and a layer of cheese slices. You should have enough eggplant to make two more layers on top of the first. Finish with the cheese layer, then put the lid on the pot, and cook at 180 degrees celsius for 30-40 minutes.
The Scappi reads very well and is nice and straightforward and clear, so it made a good easy starting point as my first redaction. There's still some bits I need to play around with (getting the herb-spice ratio just right, finding the right type of cheese to use, also trying the fast day variation), but I'm pretty happy with it for a first attempt, and it tastes so good that I certainly won't mind making it again.
The other two recipes that I tried I took from Martino of Como ("The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book" Martino of Como, Ballerini, Luigi (ed.), Parzen, Jeremy (trans.), ( University of California Press, Berkeley, 2005)).
Firstly, Violet Garlic Sauce (p79).
"Violet Garlic Sauce
Follow the order in the recipe above, except it is not necessary to add broth, but take some red grapes and crush well by hand in a pot or other container, simmer for a half hour, then strain this must, which you will use to thin the garlic sauce; and the same can be done with cherries. This garlic sauce can be used in times of meat or fish, as you wish."
The "recipe above" is as follows:
"White Garlic Sauce
Take some almonds that have been carefully peeled and crush, when they are half-crushed, add however much garlic you like, and crush together adding some cool water so that they do not purge their oil. Then take some bread white and soak it in lean meat broth, or fish broth if on a fast day; and you can serve this garlic sauce to suit all seasons, fat and lean, as you wish."
So, I started by taking my red table grapes, washing them, and picking them off the stalk, and weighing them so I could be all Scientific about things (I used 500g). Then I crushed them with a potato masher - I could have used a blender, but this would have made them all fine with skins in and it would be difficult to get them out, and Martino says to strain them, so I wanted to leave them chunky. And then I put them onto boil and simmered for a half hour as requested. Then, with my hands remembering last time I decided to strain and press hot fruit through muslin, I decided to leave it to cool for a bit. Once it had cooled, I strained it through muslin, pushing out all the juice I could. 500g of grapes makes 3/4C of must, and the must that red table grapes make tastes & looks exactly like the McCoy dark grape juice, which is really handy to know, because I probably won't bother making the must in that case. Anyway, at this stage I remembered that I'd used all my blanched whole almonds making marzipan earlier in the week. Oops. Fortunately, I had some ground almonds, but I think I would have been happier with the texture (and probably taste, too) if I'd started with whole blanched almonds and processed these down with cloves of garlic (again, used the precrushed stuff - about 1 1/2-2 t worth). I added a little water to make it smoother, then put in a whole bread roll that I'd grated, and added the must and blended it until it was smooth, then decided it needed more liquid to be "sauce" like, so put in some more water until I was happy).
The end result was very violet, and quite bland with a hint of grapes. There is a redaction of this recipe in the blue book Katherina leant me, so I am going to look at this tomorrow (although they call it a "pink sauce"), and see what they do. Obvious points that I would change immediately are to add more almonds in proportion to the bread (I used about 5 heaped tablespoonsful of almonds), and also obviously to start with whole blanched almonds, add way more garlic because I couldn't even taste it (although I may not be the world's best judge here, really liking lots of garlic in things and also having a nose that doesn't work), and also obviously fresh whole cloves, and probably also more must, to cancel any reliance on water in the sauce altogether. It worked okay with the chicken (which I'd stuffed with cheese, parsley, basil, and cashews, so it was probably a good thing that the sauce wasn't that strong).
Finally, I tried Martino's recipe for fried fava beans (p66)
"Frying Fava Beans"
Take some fava beans, and sage, and onions, and figs, and some apples, as above, and some good herbs as well, and mix together; and fry in a pan with oil; and after you have finished preparing this fry, remove and top with some good spices."
The "as above" refers to a previous recipe for crushed fava beans, which pretty much has all the same ingredients except you cook the beans first and then mash them, before frying the other ingredients with them.
So, I took a couple of smallish onions, and sliced them lengthwise (I thought this would look visually appealing, but having just reread the mashed bean recipe, that one specifies finely chopped onion), and fried them with about 300g of (prefrozen) broad beans, and two apples of about the same size as the onions, peeled and chopped to be about broad bean size. I also used chopped dates, in place of figs (since I forgot to get them at the supermarket) - about a handful. I fried them all with a reasonable portion of fresh, chopped sage, parsley, thyme, mint, and oregano (these herbs being chosen because they were the ones I could find in the dark). When it was all cooked, I added a spice mix fairly similar to the one I used for the eggplant, only less of it (about a teaspoon of cinnamon, and everything else in proportion to that).
The beans worked well, and tasted good. The onions, beans, and apple were all of similar volume to one another, and they worked well as a combination. I was light on the dates, because the recipe called for figs, and also because I am still being a bit wussy about trying new weird food combinations. However, the dates cooked down nicely and melded with the rest well, so I would probably use more of them next time, but I really need to try the recipe using figs, which I will be brave on and use in proportion to the rest. I used dates as a substitute though because in a number of the Scappi recipes, he says they are an appropriate substitute for figs, or vice versa, so I thought it would probably be okay. I need to play with the herb combinations and spice combinations some more, but as a starting point it tasted fine.
So, I've decided to just write these up straight here, because it's easier, and I don't feel like writing them into my handwritten journal first, so these are going to be electronic entries only, I'm also way behind on uploading my handwritten entries, so this may be the way to go....
I tried several different recipes out, because I had to cook myself dinner anyway, and it's just easier, especially with waiting-around time, to have more than one thing on the go. In addition to the recipes here, I also put in some (modern) chicken, and made a loaf of bread.
The first recipe I tried was from Scappi's Opera (L'arte et prudenza d'un maestro cuoco; Scully, Terence (trans.), "The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570), (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2008)).
Being an eggplant fiend, although usually eating it sliced, salted and rinsed, then dipped in a batter or crumbs and fried, I decided to try one of his eggplant recipes:
"Book III 229. To braise eggplant - that is, pomi sdegnosi
Get eggplants that are not too ripe or too bitter, and clean off the purplish skin they have - although you do find white ones - and cut them lengthwise into several pieces. Let them steep for half an hour; discard that water and set them to boil in a pot in fresh water that is lightly salted. When they are well cooked, take them out and let them drain on a table. Have an earthenware baking dish or a tourte pan ready with oil; carefully flour the pieces and make a layer of them in the pan. Get beaten mint, sweet marjoram, burnet and parsley, and beaten fresh fennel tips or ground dry fennel along with crushed garlic cloves, and scatter all that over the layer of eggplant, as well as enough pepper, cinnamon, cloves and salt; splash verjuice on that and sprinkle it with sugar. Repeat, making up two or three layers. Cook it the way a tourte is done. When it is done, serve it hot in dishes with the broth over it. If is not a fasting day you can put slices of provatura or ordinary cheese and grated bread between each layer; and, instead of oil, use butter."
My first decision was that it wasn't a fast day.
I trialled this using two medium-sized eggplants. It's interesting that the reference here is to "clean off" the skin - in the next two recipes, also for eggplant, he specifies that the eggplants are "peeled" - Scully is quite pedantic about his translations, so obviously the wording must be different for him to use this different phrasing (I need to get an Italian copy to compare). Also he describes the skin as "purplish", so I'm wondering if he's referring to a different breed of eggplant than the very dark purple-skinned ones we have available in the supermarkets here.
As it was, I peeled the skin with an ordinary peeler, because this seemed like the easiest way of dealing with it. I cut each eggplant lengthwise into five pieces - on reflection, I probably could have done with only four or three pieces per eggplant. I soaked them for half an hour as specified, then cooked them until very well cooked, ending up with about half the amount of eggplant I began the exercise with. Instead of draining them on a table, I put down a clean towel and drained them onto a plate. When you tip out the boiling water from the pot it is generally a good idea to pour it straight in the sink instead of over your hand, but it's been at least a month since I last got burnt (I'm a wee bit clumsy), so it was probably about due.
While the eggplants were sitting draining and contemplating life in general, I wandered on out to the herb garden to play fetch. I wasn't sure exactly how much of each herb I was supposed to be using so I grabbed three or four sprigs of mint, a couple of fennel tips about three inches long each, a few bits of marjoram (less of this because the plant's still new and there's not much to it yet), and about double the amount of parsley. I ended up with two decent fistfuls of herbs, one being parsley, the other being everything else. I didn't have any burnet, and I don't know what that is, so I'll have to check through my herbals and find it, then check through my garden stores and see if I can buy a plant. Scappi refers in the recipe at this stage to the herbs being "beaten" - I wonder if he means "bruised" by this? I chopped them fairly coarsely, and made sure they were well-mixed with the garlic in a small bowl (I cheated and used pre-crushed garlic from a jar, a couple of spoonfuls, because I forgot to buy garlic).
At this stage I decided it would be easiest to make sure everything was ready to go at once, so I also assembled the spices in a separate container (a bit like making curry - I had a "wet" and a "dry" mix). I put in a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon, about a 1/2 teaspoon of cloves, a 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and as much pepper as I could get out of the container (note to self: get around to buying sodding mortar so can grind sodding pepper fresh, or at least remember that the container's practically empty and buy more next time you're at the supermarket), and made sure this was well-combined.
At this point I also sliced the cheese, or I would have done if I had known how messy my fingers were about to get assembling everything. I need to find out what provatura cheese is, or what Scappi considered to be "ordinary" cheese (this will no doubt be mentioned at some other point in the book, he is quite thorough on these things), but for today I used good old Edam. The block stuff. I did at least have the forethought to grate the bread - I used one dried bap roll that my flatmates hadn't eaten, it was still partially soft even after five days, but better for breadcrumbs than for eating.
So: the assembly process. Slices of butter into the bottom. Even though the eggplant had been sitting contemplating existentialism as a way of life for about twenty minutes, it was still sodding hot. Also bloody slippery, and too soft to pick up with tongs. However, I dutifully picked up each piece, plopped it in my wee bowl of flour, flipped it over, and put it in the small earthenware vessel I just happened to have. I fit three bits of eggplant per layer, four if they were squished up or edge bits. So then my fingers were covered in flour-and-water-paste. At this point I attempted to sprinkle herbs over the layer. This was a fairly scant sprinkling, as I realised that I could have used the entire lot over this one layer. So next time I'll get more herbs. Then a sprinkling of the spices, and a large teaspoonful of sugar, and a healthy splash of cider vinegar in place of verjuice, followed by a handful of grated bread spread evenly over, and a few slices of cheese. Then repeat for the second layer, running out of herbs. Put in third layer of eggplant, run outside and get more herbs, chop them with glued-up fingers, and sprinkle. Only just had enough spice, would probably make a little more next time. Finish layering, put lid on vessel (Scully informs us in one of his footnotes that "to cook in the way a tourte is done" means "apply a moderate heat from above and below to a covered pan"), and chuck it in the oven. Leave in oven about 30-40 minutes, at 180 degrees celsius. Remove and let sit until the beans are done cooking. Eat. Absolutely delicious, really, really, really yummy.
So, if I was writing it up as a proper recipe, I'd probably write it like this:
Ingredients:
2 x medium-size, ripe but firm eggplants
Salt
A large handful each of fresh mint, sweet marjoram, and fennel tips
Three large handfuls (two shop-bought bunches) of fresh parsley
3-4 t (generous helpings please) precrushed garlic, or 4-5 cloves, crushed and finely chopped
3t ground cinnamon
1 t salt
1/2-1t ground pepper
1/2-1t cloves
Butter - about 50g
Flour - about 1C
3T (or really heaped teaspoons) sugar
3/4C verjuice or cider vinegar
1 large or two small stale white bread rolls, grated
Cheese, sliced
To make:
Peel eggplants, slice lengthwise into three or four pieces each, soak in cold water half an hour. Drain, transfer to a saucepan, and bring to a boil in fresh, lightly salted water, cook until well done. Drain off water, and leave eggplant to finish draining on a clean tea towel.
Coarsely chop all the herbs, and mix together with the garlic. Mix all the spices together in a separate bowl.
Get a lidded baking dish (deep, and about 20-25cm diameter) ready, by chopping butter into thin layers and placing evenly over base of dish.
Put some flour into a shallow bowl, and carefully coat each piece of eggplant on both sides with the flour, on the way to the baking dish.
Lay one layer of eggplant into the baking dish, sprinkle over generously with herbs, then with the spice mix, the sugar, and 1/3 of the verjuice or vinegar, being careful to distribute everything evenly. Top with a handful of the grated bread, and a layer of cheese slices. You should have enough eggplant to make two more layers on top of the first. Finish with the cheese layer, then put the lid on the pot, and cook at 180 degrees celsius for 30-40 minutes.
The Scappi reads very well and is nice and straightforward and clear, so it made a good easy starting point as my first redaction. There's still some bits I need to play around with (getting the herb-spice ratio just right, finding the right type of cheese to use, also trying the fast day variation), but I'm pretty happy with it for a first attempt, and it tastes so good that I certainly won't mind making it again.
The other two recipes that I tried I took from Martino of Como ("The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book" Martino of Como, Ballerini, Luigi (ed.), Parzen, Jeremy (trans.), ( University of California Press, Berkeley, 2005)).
Firstly, Violet Garlic Sauce (p79).
"Violet Garlic Sauce
Follow the order in the recipe above, except it is not necessary to add broth, but take some red grapes and crush well by hand in a pot or other container, simmer for a half hour, then strain this must, which you will use to thin the garlic sauce; and the same can be done with cherries. This garlic sauce can be used in times of meat or fish, as you wish."
The "recipe above" is as follows:
"White Garlic Sauce
Take some almonds that have been carefully peeled and crush, when they are half-crushed, add however much garlic you like, and crush together adding some cool water so that they do not purge their oil. Then take some bread white and soak it in lean meat broth, or fish broth if on a fast day; and you can serve this garlic sauce to suit all seasons, fat and lean, as you wish."
So, I started by taking my red table grapes, washing them, and picking them off the stalk, and weighing them so I could be all Scientific about things (I used 500g). Then I crushed them with a potato masher - I could have used a blender, but this would have made them all fine with skins in and it would be difficult to get them out, and Martino says to strain them, so I wanted to leave them chunky. And then I put them onto boil and simmered for a half hour as requested. Then, with my hands remembering last time I decided to strain and press hot fruit through muslin, I decided to leave it to cool for a bit. Once it had cooled, I strained it through muslin, pushing out all the juice I could. 500g of grapes makes 3/4C of must, and the must that red table grapes make tastes & looks exactly like the McCoy dark grape juice, which is really handy to know, because I probably won't bother making the must in that case. Anyway, at this stage I remembered that I'd used all my blanched whole almonds making marzipan earlier in the week. Oops. Fortunately, I had some ground almonds, but I think I would have been happier with the texture (and probably taste, too) if I'd started with whole blanched almonds and processed these down with cloves of garlic (again, used the precrushed stuff - about 1 1/2-2 t worth). I added a little water to make it smoother, then put in a whole bread roll that I'd grated, and added the must and blended it until it was smooth, then decided it needed more liquid to be "sauce" like, so put in some more water until I was happy).
The end result was very violet, and quite bland with a hint of grapes. There is a redaction of this recipe in the blue book Katherina leant me, so I am going to look at this tomorrow (although they call it a "pink sauce"), and see what they do. Obvious points that I would change immediately are to add more almonds in proportion to the bread (I used about 5 heaped tablespoonsful of almonds), and also obviously to start with whole blanched almonds, add way more garlic because I couldn't even taste it (although I may not be the world's best judge here, really liking lots of garlic in things and also having a nose that doesn't work), and also obviously fresh whole cloves, and probably also more must, to cancel any reliance on water in the sauce altogether. It worked okay with the chicken (which I'd stuffed with cheese, parsley, basil, and cashews, so it was probably a good thing that the sauce wasn't that strong).
Finally, I tried Martino's recipe for fried fava beans (p66)
"Frying Fava Beans"
Take some fava beans, and sage, and onions, and figs, and some apples, as above, and some good herbs as well, and mix together; and fry in a pan with oil; and after you have finished preparing this fry, remove and top with some good spices."
The "as above" refers to a previous recipe for crushed fava beans, which pretty much has all the same ingredients except you cook the beans first and then mash them, before frying the other ingredients with them.
So, I took a couple of smallish onions, and sliced them lengthwise (I thought this would look visually appealing, but having just reread the mashed bean recipe, that one specifies finely chopped onion), and fried them with about 300g of (prefrozen) broad beans, and two apples of about the same size as the onions, peeled and chopped to be about broad bean size. I also used chopped dates, in place of figs (since I forgot to get them at the supermarket) - about a handful. I fried them all with a reasonable portion of fresh, chopped sage, parsley, thyme, mint, and oregano (these herbs being chosen because they were the ones I could find in the dark). When it was all cooked, I added a spice mix fairly similar to the one I used for the eggplant, only less of it (about a teaspoon of cinnamon, and everything else in proportion to that).
The beans worked well, and tasted good. The onions, beans, and apple were all of similar volume to one another, and they worked well as a combination. I was light on the dates, because the recipe called for figs, and also because I am still being a bit wussy about trying new weird food combinations. However, the dates cooked down nicely and melded with the rest well, so I would probably use more of them next time, but I really need to try the recipe using figs, which I will be brave on and use in proportion to the rest. I used dates as a substitute though because in a number of the Scappi recipes, he says they are an appropriate substitute for figs, or vice versa, so I thought it would probably be okay. I need to play with the herb combinations and spice combinations some more, but as a starting point it tasted fine.