This semester, I’m taking a class called “Food Systems” as part of my Nutrition minor. For one assignment, we were asked to locate taste of a single ingredient. Lucky me – because this project perfectly coincided with a very exciting time in my family’s garden. The ensuing account follows the three stages of before, during, and aftermath of eating a fig for the very first time.
BEFORE
Since I’m at home this semester, I have access to my backyard blossoming with plants, from herbs like mint and sage, and also fruits like this one sprawling brown turkey fig tree. In Fall 2015, my 80-year old Sicilian uncle had haphazardly surprised us and planted this tree for us, the phone call going like this: I come plant a fig for you today. And once Zio Corrado declared such statement, there was no going back. After years of it being unfruitful and on the verge of demise, it finally has provided us with figs this year! This class proved to be an opportunity for me to try figs for the first time. While I am unsure where my uncle purchased the tree, the fig tree is native to the Middle East and Mediterranean. Understanding where my food comes from matters to my experience of eating it because as an environmentally-conscious individual, I consider the carbon footprint involved in transporting foods from a farm to oftentimes a packaging plant to a New Jersey supermarket to my house. In this case, I took several steps to the tree and picked the figs by twisting the stem with my gloved hand, as their milky juice can be poisonous and leave a scar on bare skin. The fig leaves were large and sprawling, and the figs grow from the stems similar to a branch of brussel sprouts. Upon reflection, I’ve realized that when it comes to fresh food, I think about the origin of the food more so because of seasonality; when it comes to pantry foods, I think about the origins less and it’s almost as if the products being there are just a “given”. With my fresh fig in hand, I went back into the house, washed it thoroughly, and sliced it in half on a plate.
DURING
I ate this food in my backyard along with my younger brother who has been perhaps the most attentive and hopeful family member to our fig plant; he has religiously gone out with pliers every other day to trim the tree. The fig plant was right next to us on the patio as we spoke, reflecting how when we had gotten the plant, he was only five feet tall, and now, after nearly years, he’s grown with the tree. Now was my turn to try the fig.
Experiencing food is a five sense immersion for me. Visually, figs are unique and alien – they could almost pass as dates, yet they have small avrils on the inside that mimic a pomegranate. The first sense you use to determine a fig’s ripeness is its color. I avoided the green ones, and searched for ones that had a purplish-burgundy hue. When I sliced into the fig, you could see an off-white membrane enveloping coral-colored villi-like structures. At the base of the fig, was a hole that has almost a “hairy” entrance. Touch wise, the fig is smooth, like soft leather on the outside against my fingers. You want a fig that is rather soft. This fig had fine vertical lines that were raised above the skin, similar to scarred tissue. Its shape was like a plump teardrop in my hand. In my mouth, I was delighted by the small seeds that gave off both a popping feeling and sound. Also in regards to sound, as I was picking the fig from my tree, there was a rustle of the branches as I weaved to get the fruit of my liking. The smell of the fig was not overwhelming, and it was not until I came up close to it before chewing it that I could denote a subtly milky aroma. In this way, the sweet smell translated into how I tasted a slight sweetness in the fig. The beauty of the fig made eating it much more interesting than if the flavor was isolated.
Taste wise, the room temperature fig’s fresh sweetness ruminated closer to the front of the tongue, and had a slight bitterness towards the back of my mouth. It had a tender skin with a more seedy-pulpiness and jellyness on the inside; while the membrane carried more sweet notes, the inside, perhaps due to the seeds, had a slight bitterness to them. As I mentioned before, the inside almost mimics villi, which can be parsed towards the back of the mouth and into the throat. While extremely fresh, the fig’s flavor was more delicate than I imagined, which is why its impact beyond texture was limited.
AFTERMATH
Admittedly, eating the fresh fig was a little anticlimactic. After years of tending to this plant – organically, too – I thought the figs would have more flavor in general. Since I was rather underwhelmed by its delicate sweetness, I immediately thought about how I could “spruce” up the flavor. For example, perhaps I could make a jam with some lemon to bring a slight sourness, or zest ginger for a little zing! Otherwise, I suppose it’s why figs are often sold as dried, so as to concentrate their flavor and sweetness. I would eat more figs in the future, just not by themselves; some foods I find are just elevated when they have another flavor companion. I expected the fig to taste fruitier, but upon reading about figs, I was reminded that they are, in fact, a flower. Though I have never tasted fig newtons, I think years of smelling them at school had conditioned me to think of figs as having an ostentatiously sweet, nutmeg-y flavor, which was not so. My memories of figs go back to when I was a little girl and would go to Sicily in the summer to visit my family; my one aunt had a love affair for figs, and would purchase a small crate of them from the contadino (translating to peasant farmer) who would come by our street every morning in his little cart. I was never tempted to try them until this summer, when years after hoping for this tree to bear fruit, did the tree provide us with figs. I will always remember the day my uncle randomly stopped by to help us plant a two foot tall “tree”, which has now branched to be nearly eight feet tall. It’s quite special to see a tree grow, despite heavy winters and barren years. So while the figs had a very delicate flavor, I will always esteem them with great positivity and love because of my familial connection.