The Foodie-file: Fresh Dates
I was shopping in China town and came across fresh dates. You don’t often see them fresh so I picked some up. This is a picture of them, I had some friends over for dinner so I served them with cheese – a truffle laced sheep’s milk cheese and a creamy piece of morbier. Dates are grown on palm trees from late summer through December depending on where they are being grown. Dates are generally coming from California, the Middle East, and North Africa. The two major varieties of dates – the Medjools and Deglet Noors – are full of tannins and are not eaten fresh; these are the varieties we most often see dried. The Barhi variety are eaten fresh, the flavour of fresh dates vary depending on the level of ripeness. The Arabic terms for these levels indicate what the date will taste like. “Kimri†is the stage when the dates are still green and unripe. “Khalal†is the second stage of ripeness when they are hard and yellow and hang in bunches from a withered stem. They have the crunch and juiciness of an apple but are sweeter – more like a plum. They then further ripen into the soft gooey “rutab†stage when they have a honey like sweetness, and then later to the drier, chewy stage that we are most used to seeing called “tamar.â€
Fresh dates are sometimes stuffed with almond and poached in syrup, or they can be cut up and used in a fruit salad or just eaten out of hand.
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