Fig, Prosciutto and Gorgonzola

Some pizzas are an idea. This one is an argument that keeps resolving in your favor.

Sweet fruit, salty cured pork, and a blue cheese with a bit of a temper. On paper that's three things all shouting. In the mouth they cancel out each other's worst habits, which is why the combination has survived on menus for decades without anyone getting bored of it.

The idea behind it

Figs and prosciutto is an old pairing and a reliable one. The fig brings jammy sweetness, the prosciutto brings salt and a little funk, and the two meet in the middle.

The gorgonzola is the part that makes it a pizza rather than an appetizer. Blue cheese is sharp, and on its own it can bully everything around it. Put it next to something as sweet as a black mission fig and it stops being aggressive and starts being interesting. The fig blunts the edge; the blue gives the fig somewhere to go.

We use a garlic olive oil base rather than tomato, because tomato would compete. Tomato is acidic and assertive and it'd turn the whole thing into a fight. Oil and garlic just carry everything and get out of the way. The mozzarella goes on light for the same reason, there to bind and to add a little pull, not to be the main event.

It's the same thinking behind our garlic olive oil house pie, which is where we first worked out how good that base can be when you let it stay quiet.

What to expect when you eat it

The first bite reads sweet. Then the salt arrives, then the blue cheese shows up at the back and sits there.

The figs go soft and slightly caramelized in the oven and the edges of the ones that catch the heat are the best part of the pizza. Black mission figs in particular hold their shape better than you'd expect and keep a little seedy texture, which matters more than it sounds. Something on this pie has to have bite or the whole thing goes velvety and one-note.

Prosciutto goes on in a way that keeps it tender rather than crisping it to a chip. The gorgonzola crumbles melt partially and leave pockets, so you get bursts of it rather than an even wash.

It's a rich pizza. Two or three slices is usually the number, and then you're glad there's something green in the fridge.

When to order it

Figs have a season and it's short, which makes this one of the pies that comes and goes.

Late summer into early fall is when it makes most sense and when it tastes most like itself. Fig season overlaps with the tail of Spokane's good stretch, so it tends to show up on the menu around the same time the evenings start cooling off and a richer pizza stops feeling like a bad idea. If you want to understand why the menu moves the way it does, what Spokane grows lays out the calendar.

It also does well as the second pizza in a two-pie order. Pair it with something plain and tomato-based and the contrast flatters both.

What to drink with it

Something with acid, something with bubbles, ideally both.

A dry sparkling wine is the easy answer and the correct one. The bubbles cut the fat, the acid resets your palate between bites, and a pie this rich genuinely needs the help.

Beyond that: a Lambrusco, which is fizzy and a little sweet and seems designed for this. A saison or a farmhouse ale with some pepper to it. If you want red, something light and bright rather than big, because a heavy tannic red next to blue cheese and fig is too much of everything at once.

Why we keep bringing it back

Because people ask for it. It's the pie that converts whoever at the table said they don't like blue cheese, and that happens often enough now that we've stopped being surprised.

It's also a good demonstration of what a white base can do. Most people think of pizza as a tomato product with variations. Take the tomato away and a different set of combinations opens up, most of which nobody tries. Crust matters covers the foundation underneath all of it, and pizza basics has the fundamentals if you want to build something like this at home.

The current menu will tell you whether the figs are with us this week.