SpiceLines

This cluster of Marseilles figs is still quite green and hard--and therefore unripe. But they can ripen in a matter of hours, so I'm keeping an eye on them.

There is a positive explosion of hard green baby figs, some popping up in clusters, others lining the boughs like birds on a wire. Many of them are high up, so dangerously out of reach that if we had second story windows in the right place—and I were a little more daring—I could lean out to pluck them.

Then, just this morning, the horror! The near tropical heat and rain caused dozens of figs to swell up and ripen in a matter of hours. Naturally while I was perusing the latest on the Gulf oil disaster, the birds and the wasps were wallowing at the fig buffet, devastating the fruit’s succulent flesh with beaks and stingers.

My fault for not checking the tree at dawn.

When I ordered the Marseilles from Virginia six or seven years ago, it was said to be “Thomas Jefferson’s favorite.” His Garden Book, a meticulous diary of far flung horticultural endeavors and correspondence with like-minded friends, suggests that, indeed, the 3rd President did love figs—he planted the first dozen at Monticello at the age of 27—but he cherished the pale green “white” Marseilles, which he discovered in France, best of all.

In a 1789 letter to a South Carolina friend, he lists specimens sent to America “by Mr. Cathalan,” including “44 figuiers, de 3. especes.” He adds: “The Marseilles fig is admitted to be the best in the world.” Over the years Jefferson sent cuttings of the Marseilles to horticulturally-inclined acquaintances across the South, and in 1809, he again describes it as “incomparably superior to any fig I have ever seen.”

The thing about the Marseilles is that like a lot of antiques, it’s a bit quirky.

It’s hard to tell when the fig is well and truly ripe—and unless it’s really ripe, there’s no point in eating it. (A semi-ripe Marseilles can be as bland as a cotton ball.) The fruit stays green, so you can’t rely entirely on the color. Instead you have to wait for the dark green immature nubs to swell up four or five times their size and turn a lighter shade of green. Squeeze the most promising fruit—very gently. Does it yield to pressure? It may still be too early to pick. Wait until the fruit looks almost overripe, more yellow than green, and is so voluptuous that the stem bends under its weight.

A few of the figs I picked this evening just as the sun was going down. I managed to eat just one--and it was exquisite: sweet as honey and full of "figgy" flavor.

Unfortunately this can happen in the blink of an eye, so the birds often get there first. Then come the wasps with their long stingers. It takes only minutes to reduce a pearlescent green fig to scarred brown mush. But if you pluck the Marseilles at just the right moment, it is undeniably exquisite. Its pale pinkish-brown flesh, studded with tiny seeds, is sweet as wildflower honey and it has a fresh, delicate flavor that is the essence of “figginess.”

In the past we’ve had so few of these delectable morsels that I usually eat them off the tree. But this year I expect we’ll have enough to actually think about cooking them. Sweet ripe figs are a perfect foil for salty prosciutto or jamon serrano, and there are lots of recipes around using all kinds of pork, especially tenderloin. And of course fresh figs make a stellar summer ice cream, and are lovely with mascarpone or fresh ricotta cheese.

But I’m thinking of spicy arugula and black pepper, rich nuts like toasted marcona almonds or walnuts, and the spritely zest of lemons and oranges. I’m even wondering about the flavors of the tomatoes and rosemary bushes growing near the Marseilles.

What would you do with a bushel of the most exquisite figs on earth?