FIGS I recently stayed the weekend with long time friends on Boston's north shore, while attending a conference in Boston. As always we eat great food. This particular night we celebrated the end of summer with fresh figs wrapped in thin slices of Serrano ham which was held together with a jammy tangy sweet layer of reduced balsamic vinegar.My friends Josh and Carolyn and their daughter Naudia worked together to create these. A nice French rose was sipped by Carolyn and I. Josh amply sampled the ham. He was hungry. I cut the veggies for ratatouille and made a Caprese salad salad with burrata. I told Carolyn the first time I tasted fresh figs was in my early 20's. I was vacationing in the Berkshires with my future husband. It was late summer. One afternoon we drove by a farm stand with a sign that said fresh figs. Ever epicurious we stopped.On a rusted round table were 4-5 small green cardboard berry boxes filled with plump, sticky black figs. Swarming around them were wasps.The old man selling the figs came out and swatted the wasps away with his gnarly bent hands.Taking our money, he stuck the figs in a brown paper bag. Later we ate them with some cheese, a baguette and a bottle of wine on a blanket in a field.I marveled at how sweet and tender fresh figs were.These were nothing like the dried figs I had growing up, in my father's favorite cookie, Fig Newtons. A fresh fig is a marvelous thing. I love holding them in the palm of my hand. When they are ripe they are surprisingly heavy for their size and the outer flesh is tissue thin. I cut off the stem and usually cut them in half. The middle is fleshy pink and sweet with hundreds of small seeds that are crunchy.I love them served with Gorgonzola dolce or wrapped with Serrano for a summer appetizer. They are also very good on a grilled pizza with fig jam, thin slices of prosciutto, fresh figs quartered, Gorgonzola and toasted walnuts. Carolyn shared that she remembers her mother's home in the south of France having a fig tree at the end of the driveway. That was the first time she tasted figs. When was the first time you tasted figs? I would love to hear your memory! Leave a comment below.....