| Figs | |
by Judy Sobeloff, from the August 2004 newsletter
Figs don’t run in my blood. My mother tells a story about how, as a kindergartner, she hid Fig Newtons in her underpants all day until she walked home, too shy to say she didn’t want them. The first time I tasted fresh figs, several years ago in California, I found the seedy gelatinous insides so strange and delicious it was like seeing a shooting star for the first time, or being hit by one. The figs I sampled this month from the Co-op didn’t quite approach those remembered figs, those dreamy figments—but then what could?
There’s something cosmic about figs, reaching far beyond my ancestral figgish memories. One of the only forest trees to produce fruit all year long, figs are considered by some to be “the single most important source of food for fruit-eating animals of tropical rainforests throughout the world.... Even fish in the flooded Amazon rainforest depend on fallen figs to survive the lean dry season” (<szgdocent.org>).
The fig gives and gives, its serene, funny exterior belying tumultuous goings-on inside. It’s a jungle in there, or maybe it’s like the precisely orchestrated workings of a fine Swiss watch in there. Warning: If you don’t like figs, the following story of passion, commitment, and sacrifice will not make you want to eat them more. If you know nothing of fig reproduction, however, reading the next two paragraphs will be time well spent.
The fruiting body of the fig is known as the syconium, “an enlarged, fleshy and hollow peduncle bearing closely massed tiny flowers on its inner wall. The true fruits are tiny drupelets which develop from these flowers.” These flowers, on the inside rather than the outside of the syconium, “never open to the outside world like respectable roses, cabbages and oak trees” (<web.infoave.net>). How, then, you ask, do figs get pollinated?
Get this: “All figs are pollinated solely by teeny wasps ... [that] can only reproduce inside a fig!” Highly motivated, the female wasp squeezes through a temporary opening in the fig so tiny “she rips off her wings and often her antennae during the process,” and is ultimately entombed there after depositing her eggs. Next, the new generation of male wasps emerges inside the syconium, “wingless, feeble, and with reduced legs and eyes.” Despite their potentially delicate condition, they use their “big, strong jaws” to bite a hole in the females’ pupal case, mating with them via their “telescoping genitals.” Working as a team, the males “drill a tiny escape hole through the syconium wall” and then die. Laden with pollen, the females fly out through this hole, in search of the next fig tree (<szgdocent.org>).
I knew none of this when I cooked my fig dishes. I went into this project a naive fig lover, emerging from my peduncle, as it were, disabused of my illusions, surprised at how few followers I could find to join my figophile movement. One friend claimed an allergy to figs. Even I wasn’t sure I wanted to be part of the movement any more.
Fred and I both liked the Basmati Rice with Figs, which, despite a healthy array of vigorous ingredients such as ginger and jalapeno peppers, he described as “basically just rice with a few little figs swimming in it.” I called it “Freckled Rice,” due to the preponderance of mustard seeds. Though the cooked figs were sweet and tasty, my toddler requested removal of all figs.
In fact, the three-member toddler taste-testing team was united in their opposition to figs. Three-year-old Karina didn’t like the Goat Cheese-Stuffed Figs, her father reporting she “didn’t have it in her mouth long enough to taste it.” I found Goat Cheese-Stuffed Figs odd but good, but Fred thought the goat cheese was “too much baggage for the fig to carry,” and Krista described the combination as “not a ‘together’ sort of taste.”
Figs broiled with sugar got a better reception. Due to the seeds and sweetness, they reminded me of sesame candy. My friend Jessica was stunned to find herself liking Broiled Figs.
Basmati Rice With Figs, Mustard Seeds And Ginger (from Sam Gugino’s Cooking to Beat the Clock)
2 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. mustard seeds
1/2 cup minced onion
1 tbsp. minced or grated ginger
1 jalapeño or other hot, small pepper, seeded and minced
2 cups basmati rice
Salt to taste
4 small, firm figs, preferably Kadota, diced
Put butter in a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add mustard seeds, onion, ginger and jalapeño. Cook until onion softens, about 4 to 5 minutes. Add rice and stir. Add salt, figs and 31/2 cups water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low. Cover and cook 10 minutes. Turn heat off and allow to steam another 10 minutes.
Goat Cheese-Stuffed Figs (From Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything)
Take 8 ripe fresh figs and cut them in half. Mix 1/2 pound of goat cheese with
about 2 tablespoons cream, sour cream, plain yogurt, or milk, until it is
thin enough to spread. Add salt if necessary. Spread about 1 tablespoon of
the cheese onto the top of each fig, pressing just enough so that it adheres.
Drizzle with a little olive oil, sprinkle with some freshly ground pepper,
and serve, or refrigerate for up to an hour.
Broiled Figs (From How to Cook Everything)
Cut fresh figs in half and broil with a little sugar, flesh side up, for 5
to 10 minutes. Serve hot.
Judy Sobeloff requests that you bring us some figgy pudding. We won’t go until we get some.
|
Copyright: Copyright on articles, recipes and
images are jointly held by the Moscow Food Co-op and the respective contributors,
except were otherwise noted.
|
For additions or corrections to this page, please contact the Webmaster.
