I love the weekend. Paul is laying on the couch reading a book. The baby is napping. Crisp fall morning light is streaming in through the window. We're listening to the new Weakerthans CD with a bit of washing machine back-up happily humming, "I'm washing your clothes. I'm washing your clothes. I'm washing your clothes." We all have bellies full of french toast with sauteed figs picked from Kiley's tree last weekend. Thank you for sharing with us. They were delicious.
The french toast recipe came from Vegan with a Vengeance. We are new converts to this chickpea flour-based recipe. Until last week, Paul (the weekend breakfast chef) used a recipe that relied on silken tofu, but no more. This french toast recipe is so simple and delicious, and absolutely worth the price of this cookbook were it not filled with lots of other useful recipes, which it is. This is all to say that, I couldn't find the recipe online, so I won't be the one to monkey with copyright, but if you're vegan, the recipe is probably already in your repertoire.
Anyway, let's talk about those figs. I started with 5 big ripe mission figs. Sliced them and melted about a tablespoon of Earth Balance in a cast iron skillet over medium-low heat. Added the figs. Sprinkled with about a teaspoon of brown sugar. When the figs were falling apart all over the pan, had made their own gorgeous dark rusty pink syrup flecked with tiny crunchy seeds, and had some good looking carmelized bits, I added a tiny pinch of sea salt and then squeezed in a bit of lemon juice. Sigh. So good.
This made just enough for two hungry adults who grudgingly shared with one cute baby that had just eaten a huge bowl of oatmeal, but still insisted on eating this prefect fall breakfast. And really who could blame him? I would question his good taste if he hadn't have so insistently demanded bites of my breakfast. So really, you ought to use as many figs as you can get your hands on. We had grilled the rest of our bounty for a salad the night before, and while that was delicious, the next morning, as my fork slipped through the warm soft fruit that softly sang, "fig, fig, fig" to reach the custardy bread, I wished that we had saved them all for breakfast.
