Cilento White Fig

Fico Bianco del Cilento has been a protected DOP since 2006, and the protection covers the dried fruit: what is certified is the dried fig, whole with its skin or peeled, rather than the fresh fruit.

There is a single cultivar, Dottato, locally Ottato, a Ficus carica variety with thin, pale greenish-yellow skin and amber flesh containing very few achenes, the little seeds. That scarcity of seeds is exactly what makes Dottato the drying fig: a seedy variety turns gritty as it dries.

The white in the name refers to the pale skin of the fresh fruit, not to the finished product, which dries to a golden amber.

Sugar is the whole story. A fresh Dottato is about 18 to 20 per cent sugar; dried, it comfortably exceeds 50 per cent, and the fruit becomes a concentrate. It tastes of acacia honey and almond, with a faint vanilla note and almost no acidity.

Alongside the DOP there is a Slow Food presidium for figs dried by the traditional method, created to keep alive the hand processing and the old preparations (crocette, stuffed mbottunati, plaited strings) that the bulk dried-fig trade had all but wiped out.

Honey first, then almond. A good Cilento fig is intensely sweet without being cloying, because there is no added sugar and no glucose syrup coating, and the sweetness has a floral rather than a caramel character.

The texture is the giveaway. It is soft and elastic, yielding under the finger and springing back, and the flesh is smooth: you should barely register seeds at all. Commodity dried figs, made from seedier varieties, crunch.

Stuffed and baked, it changes again: the surface sugars caramelise and turn slightly bitter, and the walnut inside cuts the sweetness. Under dark chocolate it becomes a confection rather than a fruit.

Start by eating them as they are, at the end of a meal or at breakfast. This is one of the few Italian sweet products that needs no recipe at all.

The traditional preparation is the fico mbottunato: split the fig without separating the halves, tuck in a walnut half or a toasted almond with a few wild fennel seeds and a shred of citrus peel, close it up and bake at 150°C for about ten minutes. The oven melts the sugars and caramelises the outside.

Crocette are made by opening two figs and laying them across each other in a cross with nuts in between, then baking and storing in tins.

On the savoury side they belong with cured meat and cheese: on a board with capocollo, wrapped in a slice of prosciutto, beside an aged pecorino or a fresh goat's cheese. In main courses they go into roast pork and duck, soaked first in white wine or warm water.

In baking, chop them into cakes and biscuits, use them in the fillings of Campanian Christmas pastries, and pair them with dark chocolate at 70 per cent, which suits them far better than milk.

One practical rule that changes the result: if you need the fig soft inside a dish, soak it for twenty minutes in warm water, milk or Marsala. If you want it whole and caramelised, bake it dry with no liquid at all.

Dried but not bone dry, these still hold a fifth or so of their weight as water, and that is what storage has to manage. An airtight jar or tin in a cool, dark, dry cupboard is right, and unopened packs usually carry a producer date about a year out. Left in a paper bag on a shelf they go on losing water and harden noticeably within weeks. In a humid kitchen the opposite happens and they turn tacky and stick to each other. The fridge in a sealed box slows both and stretches them to several months, though they gather condensation each time the box comes out.

The visible changes are gradual: glucose migrates to the surface and settles as a white powdery crystal bloom, the flesh deepens from straw through amber towards brown as the sugars slowly darken, and the honeyed aroma flattens. Nut filled ones move faster, because the nut oils oxidise, and chocolate coated ones develop grey streaks on the coating when the temperature swings. They freeze six to twelve months well wrapped with little change in texture.

The colour is the first test and the reason for the name: a proper dried Dottato fig from the Cilento is pale straw to light amber, never the dark leathery brown of most dried figs. The skin is thin and finely wrinkled, the flesh inside is honey coloured and translucent at the edges, and the seeds are small enough not to feel gritty. The traditional formats are two figs pressed face to face, figs threaded onto sticks or strings, peeled ones sold as monnati, and figs filled with walnuts, almonds and fennel seed. The DOP allows no added sugar.

The imported figs on most shelves are easy to tell apart once you look. Turkish figs are bigger, rounder and much paler, sold in flat rings or blocks; Greek ones are darker and often dusted with rice flour; Californian Mission figs have near black skins. A white powdery bloom on the surface is sugar crystallising out of the flesh rather than anything added. Price separates them too: the DOP runs 18 to 30 euro a kilo against 6 to 10 for supermarket dried figs.

This is a small designation with a few dozen certified producers, so it does not travel widely. Outside Italy, look to Italian specialist importers and online Italian food retailers rather than to supermarkets. In the US, expect roughly 14 to 25 dollars a pound for the plain dried figs and considerably more for stuffed or chocolate-coated boxes; in the UK, 25 to 40 pounds a kilo through Italian delicatessens. In Italy itself the plain dried DOP figs run 18 to 28 euros a kilo, mbottunati and crocette 28 to 40, chocolate-covered 35 to 50.

The reference points on the label are the EU DOP mark, the wording Fico Bianco del Cilento, and the control body. Bulk figs sold loose as Cilento figs carry no guarantee at all.

What to look for in the fruit: even pale amber colour, not brown or blackish; soft and elastic to the touch, springing back when pressed; smooth flesh without a gritty bite. Sharp or alcoholic notes mean the fruit fermented on the drying racks.

And do not be put off by a white powdery bloom on the surface. That is crystallised sugar, not mould. Real mould is green or grey, damp and furry.

The hill towns of the inner Cilento (Prignano Cilento, Rutino, Torchiara, Ogliastro, Perito, Stella Cilento) where from late August through September the drying racks are laid out in the sun on the open ground in front of the houses, and producers sell direct.

Prignano Cilento is the town most identified with the fig and holds a late-summer festival for it: the best single opportunity to taste mbottunati, crocette and pressed figs made by very small producers.

Roccadaspide and Capaccio, out towards the Sele plain, are worth combining with the area's other products, artichokes from Paestum in spring and buffalo mozzarella all year, and with the Greek temples at Paestum itself.

Vallo della Lucania is the main town of the inner Cilento and the easiest place to find certified production from several farms in one shop.

Go in September, when drying is in full swing and fresh figs are still on the trees, so a single trip shows you both ends of the same product. The stuffed and chocolate-coated versions, by contrast, appear mainly between November and January, because they are Christmas gifts.