I’d been wanting to make fig leaf syrup for well over a year before I finally got around to it. I’d read that fig leaves have these lovely vanilla and coconut like notes, and I was intrigued because, although I’d seen them used in cooking before, I’d never really thought of the leaves as having much of a flavour of their own.
This recipe makes a thick, concentrated syrup, which I find much more useful to have on hand. It’s lovely stirred into a latte or mixed into a homemade iced tea. You really don’t need many leaves to get a lot of flavour, and the longer you leave them to steep, the more pronounced it becomes. I’ve also found that older, more mature leaves give a deeper, more developed flavour, while younger leaves can be a little grassier.
It feels especially nice to make this in Malta, where fig trees used to be such a familiar part of the landscape. The Maltese islands’ fig trees were badly affected by a bark beetle that killed a huge number of trees, and locally grown figs are nowhere near as abundant as they once were. I remember picking bucketfuls of figs when I was younger, whereas now they can be surprisingly difficult to find, even in shops, and when you do find them, they’re often quite expensive. So I love the idea of making something from the leaves instead and finding another way to enjoy the fig tree, even when there aren’t many figs around.
