New Experiences: Fresh Figs and Lychee

O Fig
you yield squishily
like a water balloon
thin green peel bursting demurely
to the bite of my incisors
and I am filled with sweetness
slightly crunchy.
And I am pleased.

My irredeemable descriptive antics aside, THE FIG ROCKED. I have been waiting for years to try a fresh fig, and last week my mom's potted fig tree bore its first fruit of the season (it bore last year but I wasn't around at the right time). Finally, my dream is fulfilled. And how does it measure up to my expectations? Well...I am still working on finding the words. There was undeniably more to the flavor than sugar water, but with none of the sharpness that many fruits have--and none of the cloyingness of banana either--it is hard to put my finger on what. However, I am considering pairings for the next figs I may be able to harvest. Somehow, I think peanuts. Fresh fig, honey roasted peanuts, candied orange peel, a drizzle of cream? Candied mint?

In the last week or so I also tried fresh lychee for the first time, and that does have a marginally simpler flavor, it seemed to me. The closest I'd gotten previously was a Lycheetini, a chilled drink with what appeared to be some preserved eyewhite in the bottom. Now, I was introduced to my first fresh lychee by sight only, told to guess what it was. I guessed "fossilized strawberry." Upon peeling away the nubbly pink rind, I discovered that a fresh lychee is in fact a pale translucent white flesh wrapping a largish smooth oval pit. And biting in timidly, I discovered a taste like rose-scented sugar water. The smooth, bouncy texture and relative lack of color to the flesh set the lychee apart from the majority of fruits I can think of. While the flavor is light and subtle and not exactly a fireworks display, it is pleasant, and it's fun to peel and suck on slowly. Kinda like sugar cane, in a gelled format instead of a fibrous one, with a drop of flower essence.

O lychee
how close you bring me
to the pleasures of the
quick-winged hummingbird
seeking only flower nectar
to sustain it's invisible efforts.
How unadorned your siren call
to the ravenous seed-spreader,
how your simple, ancient
means of seduction give me
pause.

Apparently, Pablo Neruda has gotten into my system with his odes to food. How unfortunate that I don't have his way with words.