“The proper way to eat a fig, in society,” wrote DH Lawrence, “is to split it in four, holding it by the stump, and open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower. … But the vulgar way, is just to put your mouth to the crack, and take out the flesh in one bite.”
I’m a vulgar fig-eater. Few things give me more pleasure than when I bite into a ripe one and eat it up. With the right fig, the flavours can be so intense, so rich that it seems clear to me that no other fruit can compare. But the figs I eat are of just one of nearly a thousand fig species, and what eats the others is really interesting.
Under The Banyan 