Sweet & Spicy: Delicious dates

Eating a date connects us to a long history.

Dates are among the oldest of fruits and the date palm on which they grow is among the very earliest trees in cultivation. Their heritage in the Middle East, North Africa and Indus Valley go back many centuries BCE. Here in the United States, they’ve been grown in California for a little more than 100 years.

In this country, they’re found in grocery stores, usually in the produce section. The sweet and sticky fruit has more than two dozen varieties. The two varieties most commonly found in the United States are big, succulent Medjool and the smaller, firmer Deglet Noor. Each fruit contains one small pit that is about half the size of an almond, so there’s very little waste. Removing the pit is easy, but dates can be purchased already pitted.

The name “date” is derived from the Greek word daktylos, which means “finger,” associated with the fruit’s elongated oval shape. Date palms may reach up to 100 feet high and live as long as 100 years.

While they are delicious simply eaten as is, like a piece of candy, dates can easily go from savory to sweet.

I like them stuffed with goat cheese or feta for an appetizer. A recently popular way of serving them is to wrap a solo or stuffed date in bacon and run under a hot oven for a rich salty-sweet flavor.

They are a pleasantly sweet surprise in salads, anywhere you might use raisins or other dried fruit. I love a salad with the contrast of sweet dates with salty feta and warm spices such as coriander, cardamom and cumin.

For snacks, they’re good stuffed with a peanut butter, almond butter or tahini.

Dates are found in many desserts and sweets around the world. Perhaps the most famous cookie is ma’amoul, in which date paste is surrounded by a tender, crumbly pastry often scented with rose water or orange blossom water. I’d love to make these wonderful cookies one day, but for now I seek them out in Middle Eastern grocery stores.

World travelers that they are, dates landed in Britain where they feature in a famous dessert, the sticky toffee pudding. The origins of this cake are said to be in England’s Cumbria region.

In Australia or New Zealand, the dessert is typically called sticky date cake. The recipes are the essentially same: a simple cake that is utterly moist due to an abundance of chopped dates first softened in boiling water. To finish, the cake is liberally doused with a homemade butterscotch sauce. The dessert also may be served with vanilla ice cream or with double cream, a form of heavy cream with more butterfat.

A rich, warm dessert with fruit from warm, sunny climes seems just right for the onset of winter.