Gorgonzola Figs

Figs are so bizarre.  Delicious and sugary sweet, yet shockingly healthy, they are essentially a stem with seeds and flowers blooming on the inside... and we EAT them. Wild.  Gorgeous and yet somehow a bit gross, opening up a fig makes me feel like a surgeon, prodding around in an alien body full of tiny little cilia.  If you really want to be weirded out, google "figs and wasps" and enjoy the reading there.  I'm leaving it out of this post in the hopes that people will actually try the recipe that follows, and not spend their whole life avoiding figs.

While creating this recipe, I learned a fun new fact: my Maine Coon cat, Ginger, apparently likes figs.  Usually right by me whenever I am cooking (or cleaning, reading, trying to study, walking down the stairs, watering the plants... you get the idea), she generally has more interest in the noise and smells than the food itself.  Lying in wait (errrr... I mean, lounging at my feet) as I went from stove top to dining room table with the figs, I really wasn't paying her much attention -- perhaps the source of the problem in the first place.  After taking my first photo of the figs, I turned my back for just a second, and when I turned back around I witnessed Ginger as she snagged one of the bruised figs I had set aside and trotted off victoriously with her new toy.

ROASTED GORGONZOLA STUFFED FIGS

• 6 fresh figs
• 1/4 cup crumbled Gorgonzola cheese (Gorgonzola Piccante is my preference, but the pre-crumbled stuff will do in a pinch)
• 2 tablespoons Grand Marnier®, in a small bowl
• leaves from 1 sprig of fresh thyme

Preheat oven to 425°

Slice each fig in half from stem to stem.  Use a measuring spoon to remove 1/4 teaspoon of flesh from the center of each fig.  This will give the cheese a little bit more of a foothold on the fig.

Dip the open face of each fig into the Grand Marnier, then place skin-side down on an aluminum foil lined pan with a light lip (the figs will produce a bit of juice as they cook).  Put about a teaspoon of Gorgonzola cheese in the dip you made earlier in the center of each fig, and sprinkle the thyme leaves over them.

Bake for 10 minutes.