Michelle Darmody's favourite fig-based dessert recipes
I love finding out silly, fun facts about food; peanuts are not really nuts, they are in fact a legume; a bunch of bananas is more accurately called a hand; or that strawberries are not berries at all. I do often get quizzical looks when imparting the knowledge unsolicited over a dinner table, but it usually matched with interest.
One of the most interesting, if a little macabre, food facts is the tale of the wasp and the fig. The two live in mutual dependence of each other, it is the tiny fig wasp that helps this unusual plant to survive, but often the wasp pays the price. What we think of as a fig is in fact an inverted flower rather than a fruit, like all flowers it needs pollen to pollinate it, so it can reproduce. A fig tree produces both a male and female figs, if the wasp lays her eggs in a male fig, which does not ripen into an edible 'fruit', she will find it a perfect place for her brood to grow. But, if the wasp crawls into a female fig by mistake she cannot get back out, but she carriers with her the precious pollen that allows that fig to swell and ripen. This fig will produce a special enzyme which then breaks down the insect's body into proteins that get absorbed by the plant.
