Ingredient: Figs
Category: Fruit
Season: Autumn -- European Crop
The Common fig (Ficus carica) is a large, deciduous, shrub or small tree native to southwest Asia and the eastern Mediterranean region (Greece east to Afghanistan).
The fruit is 3–5 cm long, with a green skin sometimes ripening towards purple.
The Common Fig is widely grown for its edible fruit throughout its natural range Iran and also in the rest of the Mediterranean region and other areas of the world with a similar climate, including Australia, Chile, South Africa, and California, Oregon, Texas, and Washington in the United States.
Thousands of cultivars, most unnamed, have been developed or come into existence as human migration brought the fig to many places outside its natural range. It has been an important food crop for thousands of years, and was also thought to be highly beneficial in the diet.
The edible fig is one of the first plants that were cultivated by humans.
Nine subfossil figs of a parthenocarpic type dating to about 9400–9200 BC were found in the early Neolithic village Gilgal I (in the Jordan Valley, 13 km north of Jericho).
The find predates the domestication of wheat, barley and legumes, and may thus be the first known instance of agriculture. It is proposed that they may have been planted and cultivated intentionally, one thousand years before the next crops were domesticated (wheat and rye).
Figs were also a common food source for the Romans. Cato the Elder, in his De Agri Cultura, lists several strains of figs grown at the time he wrote his handbook: the Mariscan, African, Herculanean, Saguntine, and the black Tellanian (De agri cultura, ch. 8).
The fruits were used, among other things, to fatten geese for the production of a precursor of foie gras.
Figs can be eaten fresh or dried, and used in jam-making.
Most commercial production is in dried or otherwise processed forms, since the ripe fruit does not transport well, and once picked does not keep well.
In Bengal, the fruit is called Dumur.
It is cooked as a vegetable and is believed to be good for heart ailments.
Like apricots, fresh figs, ideally, need to be eaten picked from the tree, warm from the Mediterranean sunshine, fully ripened and bursting with soft, luscious flesh. If their sweetness is then combined with some thinly sliced Parma or Serrano ham, you would have a feast indeed.
They should be dark purple, feel soft to the touch when you buy them, and their skins should have a soft bloom, which needs to be wiped off with damp kitchen paper.
Eat them just as they are, or arranged in overlapping slices, brushed with honey and baked for 10-12 minutes at gas mark 7, 425 F (220 C
Another very unusual way to serve them is as a starter, such as Roasted Figs with Gorgonzola and Honey-Vinegar Sauce
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