Figgery pokery

Let me tell you what was wrong with this dish.
1. The blackcurrant sorbet accelerated the hardening of the figgy caramel in which the caramelised figs were wallowing, resulting in a large amount of inaccessible caramel.
2. It wasn’t served on pistachio coloured plates.
3. The plate upon which it was served wasn’t edible.
4. The menu proclaimed that the dish would be served with cream and it was not.

Apart from these quibbles, these figs were the best sweet things I’ve eaten in a mighty long time. I say this having just left Turkish delight heartland, having recently scoffed all manner of nutty, syrupy pastries. Hot caramelised obscenely figgy figs with a caramel made from honey, fig syrup and butter is the stuff of culinary fantasy. The dollop of sharp and acidic sorbet, surprisingly, made the whole dish even better, cutting through the sweetness of the figs and meddling with the texture of the caramel. And the nuts! Perfectly placed walnuts, delightfully crushed pistachios!

If it were possible to eat these figs in the bath, it would also be dangerous to so do, so intensely and deliriously pleasurable were they for the eating. Negotiating traffic afterwards was difficult. In fact, having eaten these figs and thus eliminated the prospect of rational discourse, the only realistic follow-up option was to go to a Turkish bath. Andy sauntered off to the men’s baths, I to the women’s. I lay on a hot marble platform and try to gaze at the sky through the star-shaped perforations in the dome above me. I was thwarted by recollections of the figs. I bathed and steamed, a woman scrubbed many months of grime from my body; I steamed and bathed a little more and all of a sudden it was time for dinner. This blog is testimony that I have survived to tell the tale.