Recipe Testing: Fig Fritters

Testing one of Rosselli's recipes.

I suspect that these are designed to be made with fresh figs, and would be pretty awesome. However, I have yet to see fresh figs purchasable in my area, and the Sunreal brand of dried figs are nice and plump and moist, so I wanted to see if I could get this recipe working with them instead. The answer is that yes, yes I can.

For the purposes of this exercise, I didn't want to make many since I was just at home by myself. So, I started by blanching about a dozen almonds, then grinding them in my mortar and pestle. I added one finely chopped fig, and about 20 sultanas instead of raisins since I could actually find them in my cupboard, and gave them a bit of a chop. For spices, I added a teeny tiny pinch each of nutmeg and cloves, and a reasonable pinch of cinnamon. I added just slightly less than a teaspoon of rose water to moisten before combining the ingredients into a paste. I then slit the whole figs, and scooped the seeds out as much as possible, before stuffing them as full as possible. This volume of mixture made enough filling to fill five dried figs. I then heated a decent layer of olive oil in a small frying pan, and fried the figs, turning them regularly, until they browned. The first one ended up a bit charred while I worked out how long to fry each side; I think about 30 seconds for each of three or four "sides" was ideal.