My eyes light up whenever I see a fig tree. But I am not looking at the fruits. Feral trees in California or planted trees in the East never or hardly ever produce fruit. But these “failed” fig trees have giant lobed leaves. Watch out to avoid the milky sap when cut (some people may be allergic, but also because it’s just generally kind of yucky and sticks on things). The leaves have a coconut-vanilla-green smell that is so enticing you want to bottle it up. I wait until after the height of the fruit season and before the leaves fall off for the winter (the tree is not evergreen), then I gather the leaves and make them into syrup or freeze them. The leaves keep well, but the syrup tastes better with recently ground leaves, so I make a batch of syrup within a week of grinding them.
A gimlet is a cocktail that usually uses lime juice with simple syrup. Here, instead of simple syrup we use fig leaf syrup, which adds a freshness and smoothness to the cocktail. How do you describe the taste of fig leaf? A little coconutty, vanilla-y, and herbal. —Tama Matsuoka Wong, Into the Weeds: How to Garden Like a Forager
Read our Q&A with Wong about her new book here.
