Figs with Wild Thyme Honey in Red Wine and Lapsang Souchong Custard

Name: Figs with Wild Thyme Honey in Red Wine and Lapsang Souchong Custard
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Eastern Asia
Ingredients: 1 cup heavy cream; 4 sprigs fresh thyme; 1 teaspoon rose water; 16 whole dried figs; ½ cup sugar; ¼ cup wild thyme honey, or other good honey, like leatherwood; 1 recipe custard; 2 tablespoons Lapsang Souchong tea leaves; 1 (750 ml) bottle red wine, fruity Zinfandel type

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Jeremiah Tower Cooks

By Jeremiah Tower

Published 2002

About

The flavors of wild California, Provence, and refined China are in this dessert, so an orange-flower water or green Chartreuse custard sauce would also work well.

The figs taste even better if made the day before.

Ingredients

16 whole dried figs
1 (750 ml) bottle red wine, fruity Zinfandel type
4

Asia
Dessert
Gluten-free
Vegetarian

Method

Put the figs and red wine in a nonreactive saucepan, and soak for 1 hour. Add the thyme, sugar, and honey, and simmer until the figs are tender, about 1 hour. Strain, reserving the figs, and boil down the cooking liquid until it is reduced to cup. Stem the figs and put them back in the reduced wine sauce and let them cool.

Put the tea leaves in a bowl and pour