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Anna's Fig Preserves

Like many Sicilians, my mother showed her love for her family through the food she made for us. When I eat any food that reminds me of her cooking, it brings tears to my eyes. When I was in college she would send me care packages. She almost always cooked something for me such as biscotti, homemade bread (using flour she ground herself and yeast that we smuggled in from Sicily), or some kind of home-canned stuff. Whatever she made for me, she would always jot down the recipe on a scrap of paper and include it in the box. I saved all of the recipes and around this time of year, I like to dig through them so that I can make one of her dishes when I visit my sisters for Christmas. The smell and taste of her foods brings tears to their eyes too!
 
This morning I unfolded one of her recipes that I never cooked myself. I discovered that there were two more recipes on the back of the paper that I had never seen before. Neither recipe has a name, but they are both obviously fig preserves! I am looking forward to next year's crop of Unk. Anna's (that I started from cuttings from my mother's tree) so that I can try these out.

FigPreserves.png 

(edited to fix typo)

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Paul,Ser what a treasure this find is! Thanks for sharing those precious memories and Momma Anna's recipe!
Simply Awesome:)
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Talk about original!  Thanks Paul!  I will try both next year.
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Paul, that is so special.  Thanks so much for sharing the story and recipe with us!
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That is amazing thanks for sharing :)
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That's beautiful, thank you for sharing. What part of Sicily? I make a soup with Cucuzza passed down from my Sicilian great grandmother. We have lots of Sicilian dishes from the old country.
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Originally Posted by rafaelissimmo
That's beautiful, thank you for sharing. What part of Sicily? I make a soup with Cucuzza passed down from my Sicilian great grandmother. We have lots of Sicilian dishes from the old country.


My parents both grew up in Agrigento and fell in love when they were 14 and 16 years old. I still have family in Agrigento, Favara, Raffadali and Palermo, though I haven't spoken with them in years (they don't speak English and my Italian is horrible).

One recipe I lost is her fig cookies. They looked just like these: http://www.ciaoitalia.com/seasons/19/1909/sicilian-fig-cookies The ones I've tried usually look like hers, but taste a little different.
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Thanks for sharing these Paul. Pineapple fig almond preserve sounds great. Would the blanched almonds be sliced, slivered, chopped or whole?    In the second recipe, is that melon? What kind of melon?
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That's a very touching story. I wish I could cook now.

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Calvin, I'm pretty sure the almonds are chopped and the melon is honey dew. At least that's how I plan on making it.
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Originally Posted by snaglpus
Calvin, I'm pretty sure the almonds are chopped and the melon is honey dew. At least that's how I plan on making it.


Sounds about right. My mom would usually chop almonds in her hands - not with a cutting board. She'd cut up one at a time with a pairing knife. I don't know why. Seems slow to me, but her hands were always busy.

I think it was honeydew too.
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Paul my great grandmother also made fig and walnut cookies. She also made cookies with prickly pears.
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Originally Posted by rafaelissimmo
Paul my great grandmother also made fig and walnut cookies. She also made cookies with prickly pears.


Never tried the prickly pear cookies. Would you happen to have the recipe?

I have prickly pears growing on my property now, but they have no flavor and the cactus is always covered in white powdery stuff. I plan to go back to my parents' old house and see if the cactus patch is still there and take some cuttings. Those were sweet!
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Thank you Paul, what wonderful recipes you share!  I'm delighted you found them.
Soni

 
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Paul, thanks for sharing the recipe from your mom.  Those old recipes from the mamas and nonnas are always great at the holidays, and they keep the kids and grandkids just a bit closer to our roots.  I'll try this one for sure if I get enough figs next year.  Never seem to get more than what everyone around here eats, though.  The cuccidati (Sicilian fig cookies) are always a big hit at Christmas.  However, being Abruzzese, we often make caggiunit (or cagionetti or  cavicionetti ) at Christmas.  They're a deep-fried half-circle shaped "raviolo" filled with either a grape must and nut filling or a ceci and nut filling.  This delicious sounding jam would be great as the filling!  Thanks!
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Thanks for the follow-up answers guys!
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Wow, hanging on to this one! Thank you.
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Paul I don't have the recipe for the cactus pear cookies but I know it was made with coarse corn flour and maybe the grape syrup know as mosto. In dialect they called the cookies "mosto coté." (Cooked must).
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made with coarse corn flour... they called the cookies "mosto coté." (Cooked must)


Interesting. I make polenta, and call it polenta. My wife's dad(Sicilian) calls it "mush".
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Thanks for the recipes, Paul!
It is interesting that your Italian mom wrote them in English and not in Italian.
Many of my neighbors, who have spent a lot of time in the US, still swear and write the personal things in their native language.
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Originally Posted by greenfig
Thanks for the recipes, Paul! It is interesting that your Italian mom wrote them in English and not in Italian. Many of my neighbors, who have spent a lot of time in the US, still swear and write the personal things in their native language.


Well, she wrote the recipe down specifically for me, and my Italian is pretty bad, so that is why it is in English. She did not speak Italian very well anyway. My father always criticized her when she tried. She spoke Sicilian which is a separate language. As I understand it, there are several dialects within the Sicilian language. The most common modern Sicilian can be understood by Italians. The dialect my mother spoke had more in common with Arabic than Italian. My oldest sister still speaks that language (as well as Italian), but since it is practically a dead language, she has not had an opportunity to use it since our grandfather died.

My mother did not swear, but my father always did his swearing in Sicilian.
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That's very funny. My father always swore beautifully in Italian. Also, very interesting about that "arabic" Sicilian dialect. The arab rulers of Sicily were driven out by Normans in 1060 (6 years before Normans took over England). But the arabs stuck around for a couple of hundred years, and in the middle 13th century they formed the elite troops of the famed Sicilian King Frederick II. After the Pope sold the Sicilian crown to a French dynasty, the last Arab troublemakers were scattered and deported to mainland Italy, in particular to the area of Foggia.
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Rafael
All this talk of recipes and cucuzza is bringing back memories of fior di cucuzza (zuchinni flowers) in my minestrone. 
Hmmhm they were great!
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