Bring Us Some Figgy Pizza

When Coley and I spotted fresh figs at the St. Phillips Plaza Farmer's Market last weekend, we snatched them up right away. About a year ago, our friend Linda brought fresh figs to our house for pizza-making night, and so I dug up this delicious fresh fig and fennel pizza from Food Blogga. The pizza was divine, and I've been dreaming about it ever since! Mmmm, caramelized figs, fennel, and shallots, with blue cheese and rosemary.... you know you want to try this one out.

Because of certain Christmas carols ("so bring us some figgy puuuuuuding...."), I thought figs were a winter fruit, and tried to find some this past winter to make the pizza again. Turns out figs are actually the flowers of the ficus tree, and get harvested twice a year. The breva crop grows in early spring off of last year's shoots. The main crop grows in the summer on this years new shoots and is generally the tastier crop. But I didn't read up on figs on wikipedia straight off the bat; instead I learned the hard way that you can't find fresh figs in supermarkets during the winter, and that dried figs make a terribly disappointing substitute for fresh and ruin the fig and fennel pizza.
This story ends happily, though, because remember Coley and I just bought figs last weekend! A couple nights ago we finally got around to making the pizza again, and the results were again fantastic. I suggest Food Blogga's recipe to everyone. I also learned through my wikipedia consult that figs are an excellent source of calcium (who knew!) and that they are the oldest known crop cultivated by humans-- fossil remains show that people in Jordan Valley were cultivating them back in 9400-9200 BC. It's triple-fig fact win this weekend!