I adore dates, the edible variety, and I wrote about them earlier this year:
http://loiselden.com/2013/03/01/dated/
In the newspaper supplement yesterday there was an article about dates which obviously I found fascinating and it also had some rather lovely recipes included. It was focussing on medjool dates grown on a kibbutz in Israel. Dates have been cultivated for at least six thousand years, and they must have been eaten for millennia before that, who could resist them, brown and sticky and sweet?! Although they are very sweet they have a lot of minerals and vitamins in them, and are an especially good source of potassium.
I always associate them with Christmas because as children that is when we would see them in their oval boxes, with a little twiggy thing to spear and eat them with. They could also be bought in solid blocks and then chopped up to go in cakes and biscuits and puddings; once when we went to tea with my aunty she only had bridge rolls and dates, so she mate date rolls which we thought were delicious. Thinking about it, she was on a very limited income so probably that was all she could afford, but we loved them and whenever we visited after that, we always had date rolls.
My aunty was a great cook, especially of desserts so no doubt she would have been interested in the recipes in the paper, date cookies, date ice-cream, marzipan stuffed dates, and date and nut slices. The last recipe, for the slices sounds wonderful… and I wonder if it would be nice to make and give as Christmas presents (although to be honest I don;t have a great record for making these sort of gifts; I’m usually a decent cook but things for gifts generally go wrong and I have toe at them myself and do a last-minute shop for gifts!) The recipe starts with a kilo of dates, plus grams of honey and 200 grams of sugar… how many calories there? To that you add 170g roasted pistachios, 170g roasted cashews, 350g roasted pecans, 200g sesame seeds and 850g roasted walnuts… however many more delicious calories? eventually when they are all mixed together they are made into rolls and sliced into discs… It sounds divine, but how fattening… would my family like it for Christmas? Maybe… as long as the recipe doesn’t go wrong and I have to eat the results!
To find out how to make the date and nut slices, and the other recipes, and to find out about Israeli dates, have a look here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/10430788/Medjool-date-and-nut-slices-recipe.html
Lois Elsden 