Baked Figs, a Fancy Snack

I love figs. I'm not going to lie, I would eat them anytime anywhere. They are so exotic yet so homey, modern and ancient at the same time. Our next door neighbors growing up had a fig tree in their yard and when the figs were in season I would stand under that tree and literally eat my fill. It was awesome. These days, I have to find them in the store and commit to paying slightly more than they might be worth, but I don't really mind because again, I love figs.

Now that we've got that covered, I acquired some figs and I wanted to do something very simple with them. David Tanis in his book "A Platter of Figs" has an easy recipe for baked figs. While I was making them, I realized I also had a beautiful block of blue cheese leftover from E's wedding which would be perfect with the figs. (I imagine the original recipe is delicious as well, but I can hardly ever resist a salty/sweet combo.)

Ingredients:

Figs, cut in half (how ever many you want, or have on hand)

A few sprigs of thyme

olive oil

s&p

blue cheese

To Do:

Put thyme sprigs in the bottom of a glass baking dish and layer figs halves on top. The dish you bake them in should be just big enough to fit your figs. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Pop in a 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes, at which point you want to take the pan out of the oven and smush little pieces of blue cheese into each fig. Cook about 5-10 minutes longer, until cheese is melted. Remove from oven, let cool slightly, eat. Try not to eat them all at once. Then, eat them all at once.