Initially, I was skeptical that it was worth wasting a perfectly beautiful sunny day at some ridiculous-sounding shack in the woods trying to relive someone else’s childhood, but I couldn’t have been more mistaken. I’m here to tell you that the Mystery Spot is a must-see and it would be nothing less than a travesty if it were left out of any travel itinerary to the region.

The story goes that in the early part of the twentieth century (no exact date was given) someone was interested in purchasing the sloping area (now known as the Mystery Spot) from its owner to build a summer house. The owner refused to sell the slope without the adjacent level ground – now the parking lot. Eventually, the newcomers bought the entire property and built a small wood shed on the steeply sloping part (in itself a poor decision from an engineering perspective) and immediately began noticing certain “bizarre phenomena” which science, despite repeated attempts, has never satisfactorily explained. (see campy 1960s advertising paraphernalia showing this phenomena here.)

Our guide around the Mystery Spot was the well-informed and sparky young buck, Carl, who, if I’m honest, was the most unintentionally hilarious person I’ve ever had the good fortune to encounter. From his skinny, disheveled appearence to the way he accidentally dead-panned his delivery of the ironic sections of his schpiel - ”this is no ordinary plank, it is the plank of mystery!” - he was absolutely first-class and had me in virtual paralysis of laughter for the duration of the tour.

Strangely though, no-one else on the tour found him to be so funny. Even after we had left the Mystery Spot I was sitting in the back of the car giggling to myself. What could have caused this outbreak of the mirth, you ask? Well, the Mystery Spot, of course.

Carl had warned us at the beginning of the tour that not only were peculiarly inexplicable reversions of the laws of physics known to occur within the confines of the “spot”, but weird physical symptoms were also commonly experienced by tour-takers, including changes in height, loss of balance and confusion. Clearly, my inner-ear was playing up because I very nearly experienced incontinence on more than one occasion and even Amy reported dizziness and light-headedness. And, as, I think, this (below) photograph demonstrates perfectly, the Mystery Spot can do some terrible and awesome things to one’s coiffure.

Later that day - when I had recovered much of my former composure - I noticed that the madness brought on by the Mystery Spot was spreading throughout our group. I watched transfixed in horror as Amy’s mother and aunt, sporting the hideous grins of the criminally insane, began laying out what they described as “dinner”. Before us lay a motley selection of three-day-old and poorly-kept Chinese food, a few scraps of the previous nights’ pasta that appeared to have been scraped off people’s plates, a greying mess of geriatric cold-cuts, some random bocconcini mozzarella sprawled in an ugly dish, a paper plate of wilting Sun-Chips, and a hollowed-out watermelon.

I have rarely seen a less appetizing spread of food in my life and, at the sight of it, I immediately began to experience those same feelings of light-headedness and vertigo of earlier in the day. I fear what might have become of me had I been forced to eat any of this, for in those who, amazingly began attacking this dreadful buffet with gusto, there developed an almost instantaneous malaise of disappointment and depression that lasted the remainder of the evening and into the following morning, until only stout breakfast of eggs and bacon managed to restore their spirits.

Interestingly, and this phenomenon I must report to the owners of the Mystery Spot one day because I suspect they are blissfully unaware of this perilous and hitherto undocumented reaction, neither my mother-in-law nor Amy’s aunt were with us on the tour that day. In fact, the former had never once even visited the “spot”, so just how they managed to contract this mania may become yet another of the secrets of the Mystery Spot that remain unsolved by science.

“If I should wish a fruit brought to Paradise it would certainly be the fig.” - Prophet Mohammed

We don’t really “do” dessert. We really don’t. If we did we’d probably get a lot more hits from Tastespotting and Foodgawker, since they only seem to post chocolate flavored desserts topped liberally with powdered sugar and sprigs of mint. But bitterness aside, and in a kind of concession to both these photo sites and our own heavy bias towards savory dishes, we decided that it was time to make some sort of dessert, and a summery one at that.

Now, because we’re not bakers of any note, we decided to avoid baking, and indeed, cooking altogether, and simply arranged what nature and the bounty of our local grocery store had provided — namely, figs and greek yogurt decorated with honey and crushed pistachios. About as simple a preparation as you could imagine, right?

Serious About Figs

So, because there’s no recipe to speak of, I need to somehow extend this already overly long post, so here are some interesting tidbits about figs that I certainly wasn’t aware of, and I suspect, if you’re honest, you weren’t either.

Figs are the fruit of the ficus plant, or tree, and if you’ve ever had house plants, you’ll probably have had a ficus. While she was a student, my sister had one that survived heroically for six years on a steady diet of the dregs from cold cups of tea before meeting its tragic Waterloo being pulled out of her third floor window by an adventurous and powerful squirrel.

It is thought that figs (or ficus’) are among the most ancient genuses (genii?) of flowering plants being as much as 80 million years old, so it is little wonder then given the scientific accuracy of the Bible (note: this is irony) that they are described in its pages as the first fruit, and that it is with fig leaves that Adam and Eve hide their nakedness from the good Lord in the book of Genesis. In fact, contributors to the holy book were not the only ones to extol the virtues and practicalities of the fig, Roman poet, Pliny the Elder wrote, “Figs are restorative. They increase the strength of young people, preserve the elderly in better health and make them look younger with fewer wrinkles.”

In the intervening years, a wondrous variety of different kinds of figs have come into being — some through mutation, some by the hand of man, but today in the United States a couple of different kinds of fig predominate. The common or mission, fig is most, err common, and though, with its purple skin and pinky-peach flesh and yellow seeds it is at its best when fresh and ripe, sadly it is most often eaten dried. It was brought to North America by the Spanish and first planted in 1759 at San Diego Mission (hence the name). Later, the Smyrna fig variety arrived in California’s San Joaquin Valley from the eponymous town in modern-day Turkey in 1882 and was renamed Calimyrna later this century in honor of its new homeland. Other relatively easy to find varieties include the Kadota and Adriatic figs, the former is the American varietal of the Italian Dattato and is practically seedless, and the latter, well, is a variety originally from the Croatian coast, and is now very commonly made into, of all things, Fig Newtons.

Other interesting points about figs include: only the female fig is edible, and that figs are not really fruit as such, falling into the category of false fruits, (as indeed do strawberries, and many other berries) because the fig is, in fact, the flower and the seeds it contains are the fruit. Like I said, interesting, right? What? oh…

Anyway, it’s fig season right now through the end of September, so go get yourself some and enjoy them as if they were the first fruit! We have entered this simple and easy recipe in A Southern Grace’s Beat the Heat event since this is a great thing to make when it’s boiling hot outside.

Recipe (if you must have one) serves 4

12 ripe mission/common figs, split and spread as above

6-10oz plain Greek yogurt

2-3 tbsp runny honey

2 tbsp crushed pistachios

Assemble all these on plate and enjoy, perhaps with a chilled glass of dessert wine. We think something like a Pedro Ximenez or Moscatell would be rather nice.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• CACIO E PEPE: SPAGHETTI WITH PECORINO AND BLACK PEPPER ROMAN-STYLE
• KILLING ANIMALS: HOW DO YOU REALLY FEEL ABOUT IT?
• JAMAICAN JERK CHICKEN WITH RICE AND PEA
• GRILLED STEAK WITH TARRAGON GARLIC BUTTER
• MASHED YUCA WITH SOUR ORANGE AND ALLSPICE

After our second full day of tasting we were all overwhelmed by the urge to continue our bacchanalia that evening with a four course dinner and more wine. Heated discussions were had over what should be on the menu and what we could reasonably cook given that we’d been drinking all day and the kitchen in our cabin was less than professional-grade. Finally, we decided that a variety of cold appetizers, including hummus, guacamole, crudite, and pita chips, would be an easy way to begin and might allow us to cook the rest of the meal without getting too drunk.

The second course was gnocchi with a combination of two Lidia Bastianich sauce recipes – one with breadcrumbs fried in butter, and the other with sage and brown butter. The sauce, of course, was about as easy as a sauce can be, but the process was lengthened by us making the gnocchi from scratch.

The third course was a delicious New York Strip steak served with a red wine jus and roasted red and golden beets. And all of this was topped off with a final cheese course of a California goat brie, a morbier and an honest hunk of manchego — naturally all washed down through purple lips with some more red wine.

Now, the point of this tale is not to wow our readers with how much we drink when we’re with Amy’s cousins, because we often surprise ourselves by that, but rather it is to demonstrate that you can make really, really good gnocchi di patate from scratch even when you’re half in the bag — though we recommend you make it when sober for the first time.

Here’s how to do it.

GNOCCHI DI PATATE (Serves 3 to 4)

Ingredients

- 3 large Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 2-3inch cubes/lumps

- 3 tablespoons kosher salt (2 tablespoons of table salt)

- 1 large egg

- Up to 2 cups plain white flour (depending on size of your potatoes)

- 1 large pot of boiling water or enough to boil the potatoes in and then the gnocchi.

Recipe:

1. Boil water and add two/one tablespoon of salt

2. Peel and chop potatoes, and boil them until they no longer stick to a knife-blade. Remove potatoes from water, but not discard it. Drain potatoes and let stand until cool enough to handle.

3. Use a food-mill, food processor or, better yet, the fine grater side of a box grater, to grate potatoes.

4. Spread grated potatoes out on a baking sheet and sprinkle with remaining salt to draw out some of the moisture. Leave for 20 minutes.

5. Sprinkle flour on a board and place grated potatoes on it. Make a well in the middle and crack egg into it. Add half a cup of flour and combine it all by hand.

6. Mixture should be quite sticky so continue adding flour and combining until it gets smoother. You’ll know it’s the right consistency when it stops being sticky and, if you cut into it, it resembles cookie dough. Don’t worry about getting it really smooth because the potatoes won’t combine perfectly with the flour, it’ll always have a kind of speckled look.

7. Cut dough into three or four lumps. Re-flour your board and hand roll each of the lumps into a long sausage, about the width of a large hot dog, I suppose. Then take your knife and cut the roll into inch-long lumps. These are your gnocchi.

8. Then take a fork and press/roll the gnocchi down the tines of the fork, making grooves to better hold the sauce.

9. Re-boil the water and cook gnocchi in batches. You know they’re done when they float to the surface.

10. Serve with your favorite sauce (Amy’s Tomato Sauce, Pistachio Sauce, Pesto or Brown Butter and Breadcrumbs – see below).

BROWN BUTTER AND FRESH BREADCRUMB SAUCE (from Lidia Bastianich)

Ingredients

• Unsalted Butter (about 1 stick)
• 6-8 Sage leaves
• 1 thick slice of bread – grated finely
• Salt and Pepper
• grated Parmigiano Reggiano

Recipe

1. Melt butter in saute pan on medium. When it begins to color, add your grated breadcrumbs. You will be crisping up your breadcrumbs, but watch your heat because you do not want to burn your butter.
2. After 1 1/2 minutes, add the sage. Allow to flavor the butter for another minute.
3. Season with salt and pepper. Toss sauce with your gnocchi. Plate and sprinkle with grated Parmigiano Reggiano. DELIZIOSO!

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• CHESTNUT CUSTARD TART
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• LIDIA’S LAMB CHOPS (Lamb Chops with A Mustard Anchovy Sauce)
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