A great friend and business partner in another life, Eugene Maiale (we’ve owned a few Italian restaurants together, both in Adelaide and Sydney), once made me try some poached figs in port when I popped over to visit one day … I’m talking over twenty-five years ago … and as soon as I ate them, I knew I had to convert them into a gelato.
Originally I poached the figs with port but my Sicilian blood got the better of me, so I switched to marsala, but the process is exactly the same.