Prosciutto-Wrapped Figs with Gorgonzola

Use ripe but firm figs. Gorgonzola dolce is creamier and milder than piccante. A quick broil or grill intensifies flavors. Can be assembled ahead and broiled just before serving.

The three ingredients in this bite collectively represent thousands of years of food history, all converging in a distinctly Italian combination. Figs are among the oldest cultivated plants on earth. In 2006, archaeologists working at Gilgal I, a Neolithic village site in the Jordan Valley, discovered nine carbonised figs and hundreds of fig fragments dating to approximately 11,400 years ago — predating the domestication of wheat, barley, and legumes, and making the fig the earliest known example of deliberate fruit cultivation. The World History Encyclopedia confirms fig cultivation in modern-day Jordan by around 11,300 BCE. By the time of the Sumerian civilisation in Mesopotamia (around 4000 BCE) fig harvesting was depicted on clay tablets, and ancient Egyptian tomb paintings also show figs being harvested. Fig cultivation spread to ancient Greece by the 9th century BCE and through the Roman Empire across the Mediterranean, reaching the full breadth of modern Italian territory. Gorgonzola — the cheese at the centre of this bite — is first documented in a written record from 879 AD, its name taken from the town of Gorgonzola just east of Milan in Lombardy, where it was historically produced and where the Official Consorzio del Gorgonzola DOP places its origin. Prosciutto, the third element, traces its production in the Parma region to the Etruscan period, and the Roman writer Cato the "Censor" documented the air-cured hams of Parma in approximately 100 BCE. All three received formal Italian or European protected-origin designations in the late 20th century: Gorgonzola DOP and Prosciutto di Parma DOP both in 1996.