Fresh figs are in at the Saturday street market just a couple of blocks away, and they share the display with the magenta-splashed Borlotti bean pods! I bought some of both green figs and black, and enough borlottis to make a pot of something. (I also bought some picadilli tomatoes, slender green beans, pickled onions, dolce “sweet” green olives and cherries.)
As a kid, my only exposure to this fruit was in the form of highly-sugared “Fig Newtons”. Little did I know that the cookie’s core comes from a soft, sweet fruit, that needs no sugar (wonderful when wrapped with prosciutto). I wanted to do a side-by-side taste test of both green and black figs, so I strolled the market to find the best prices, best fruit and best fruit-handler! (Good fruit and pricing is easy to find. A gentle handler is not.) I ended up with enough figs, ultra-ripe and needing to be eaten promptly, that I’ll be eating several a day hoping to keep ahead of their ripeness.
Borlotti beans caught my eye when I was living here a couple of years ago. Now, during each time in Italy, I’ve got to buy at least enough of the pretty beans to sit myself in a chair for half an hour and shuck the soft shells for a meal. I’ll cook up a pot of the speckled beans, with some fresh sage, garlic, fresh tomatoes, red pepper, zucchini and maybe some pancetta.
Steve Parle’s post will get you started on cooking borlotti beans.