Fruit of the Day: Figo

We recently spent a very rainy day in Puerto Alegre, Brazil. We arrived at 8:30 a.m. and headed immediately to the central market, where our trusty Lonely Planet assured us we'd be able to dine at any number of restaurants and also buy delicious ice cream. We spent the morning drinking coffee and playing cards, and around lunchtime we wandered into one of the extraordinarily well-stocked fruit stands to see what we could find for FotD.

There were a bunch of new fruits, including some that we had to pass up because they were either sold only in large quantities or were just simply too large--like this guy, the unwieldy jaca (Jackfruit in English):

We settled on three different fruits, the first of which is the figo, which you undoubtedly recognize as a fig.

We're both fans of dried figs (ideally stuffed with a hunk of manchego and wrapped in proscuitto), but neither of us had tried fresh figs before. They're smooth and firm, but with a bit of squishiness. We cut one open and found its insides to be delightfully pink and seedy. Behold:

The flavour was nowhere near as intense as a dried fig, and I don't know that I'd even have been able to recognize the taste if I hadn't known what I was eating. It was very mild. The texture was the most familiar part - the seeds were unmistakeably figgy.

UFF Fruit Rating: