As the daughter of a mother whose family came to the United States a century ago from Syria, I grew up eating dates. Dates were particularly plentiful during the holidays, when pitted dates were stuffed with pecans and rolled in granulated sugar and appeared in candy dishes on every table. If those stuffed dates had an Arabic name, I didn’t know it. As I think of them now, we could have called them date “truffles,” far easier to prepare than truffles made with chocolate.
We made mamool, cookies stuffed with chopped dates flavored with orange blossom or rose water, and occasionally a platter of date-filled baklava. What I didn’t know then was that at the same time my grandparents were making their way from Syria to Florida, date palms were making their way from Morocco to the United States to begin what would be a century of cultivation in some of the hottest, sunniest parts of the country.
Credit: Chris Hunt
Credit: Chris Hunt
Dates are native to the Middle East and north Africa and were introduced as a possible farm crop for the United States through “agricultural explorers” who were a part of a U.S. Department of Agriculture program that began in the late 1800s. They brought home exotic fruits like mangoes, avocados and new varieties of oranges and introduced them into cultivation. In the early 1900s, those explorers brought back offshoots of Moroccan date palms and planted them in areas like the Coachella Valley in California where the palms began to thrive.
Four offshoots of those original palm trees still survive in Bard Valley, California, in what is now the hub of medjool date growing in the United States. And most of the date palms in cultivation are the offspring of those original trees.
Credit: Farm to Fork Media/ Bard Valley Natural Delights
Credit: Farm to Fork Media/ Bard Valley Natural Delights
While dates, like most other fresh fruits, are available year-round, their harvest season is from late August through October. The dates you’re most likely to find at the grocery store are medjools with a deep brown, crinkled skin and succulent, sticky flesh. And they’re likely to come from Bard Valley Natural Delights, an association of 13 date growers whose farms span 7,000 acres in southeastern California, southwestern Arizona and parts of Mexico. David Baxter of Bard Valley Natural Delights says the farmers harvest the majority of the medjool dates grown in the United States.
Baxter says dates are not a fruit found in every household, with only about 8% of us enjoying dates regularly. “How you use dates likely depends on who you are. Some consumers enjoy dates as a beneficial snack, some eat them like they would prunes, and some use them in baked goods.” Indeed, in the 1940s, dates were used as a substitute for sugar when sugar was being rationed during World War II.
Credit: Farm to Fork Media / Bard Valley Natural Delights
Credit: Farm to Fork Media / Bard Valley Natural Delights
He says younger customers tend to use them as healthy snacks and often as a sweetener in smoothies. “And isn’t everyone a fan of bacon-wrapped dates?”
How does Baxter enjoy dates? “I eat them at my desk as a snack during the workday, but my favorite recipe is a half jalapeno, filled with spicy cream cheese and then topped with a date. Wrap that in bacon and grill it. It’s a big hit with all my friends.”
Credit: Jonathan Bielaski / Bard Valley Natural Delights
Credit: Jonathan Bielaski / Bard Valley Natural Delights
RECIPES
If the only way you’ve been eating dates is as a sweetener for a smoothie or as a bacon-wrapped bite, try these three recipes that take advantage of the sweetness and texture of dates in surprising ways.
Credit: Chris Hunt
Credit: Chris Hunt
Saint Germain Bakery Coconut Bars
These no-bake coconut bars are the creation of collaborating pastry chef Blanca Lerma of Saint Germain Bakery at Ponce City Market. The bars were created in response to their customers asking for more vegan options. “Our goal is to make them as tasty as possible. So many customers associate vegan and gluten-free items with blandness, yet these are quite the contrary.”
At the bakery, they prepare these in silicone molds, which makes it easy to pop out each individual bar and for storage in the freezer. For those without silicone molds, we’ve adapted the recipe for an 8-inch square baking dish.
Credit: J. Alburl, @the.imprints
Credit: J. Alburl, @the.imprints
El Super Pan’s Pan de Jamón y Queso
This sandwich uses dates to great advantage. The date-almond spread, made tangy with a bit of sherry vinegar, provides just the right sweet note to complement the savory ham, cheese and peppers.
El Super Pan chef-owner Hector Santiago said he put it on the menu to celebrate the Spanish roots of Puerto Rican cuisine. “I love the rich creaminess of medjool dates. Eating them brings me back to Christmastime in Puerto Rico when we usually enjoy them along with nuts and cured meats. For this sandwich, we spread Spanish coca bread with a puree of medjool dates and Spanish Marcona almonds then fill it with jamón serrano, queso manchego, piquillo peppers and arugula. The rich almond-date ‘butter’ ties it all together. It’s a trip to Spain!”
You should be able to find piquillo peppers in the ethnic foods or pickled vegetable section of your grocery store. The restaurant simmers the peppers with a bay leaf in a mixture of water, sugar and sherry vinegar and then layers the peppers into the sandwich.
Coca bread is a slightly sweet chewy Spanish bread, similar to focaccia. We tried the recipe with sourdough bread as well as focaccia and found it delicious no matter what the bread.
Credit: Chris Hunt
Credit: Chris Hunt
Meatball al Sugo
The little nuggets of dates in these meatballs, served as an appetizer at Sugo, are another example of how the sweetness of dates complements savory ingredients.
“This is a unique meatball with several ingredients in it that display the fusion of cultures and flavors we present here at Sugo,” said Sugo executive chef Ricardo Soto. “It is, without a doubt, an Italian classic with Italian sausage, tomatoes and pecorino, then we add dates, which are a Middle Eastern ingredient that’s also widely used in Greece.”
A bit of roasted garlic is part of the garnish for these meatballs. To prepare roasted garlic, heat oven to 350 degrees and wrap one or more heads of garlic in foil. Bake until garlic is soft, about 1 hour. Cool the garlic and separate the cloves, removing each from its peel. Roasted garlic will keep in your refrigerator for about a month. Cover it with olive oil before storing.
Roasted Tomatoes
Tomato Basil Sauce
This recipe will make enough for 1/2 cup sauce per meatball. Double the recipe if you’d like to serve it as Sugo does with 1 cup sauce per meatball.
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