Dates still good after Valentine’s
From key plots of a movie to key ingredient of an Arabic holiday tradition, dates do it all.
Fruit-producing date palm trees rank among the oldest of all known cultivated trees worldwide.
Dates have been grown in North Africa for more than 8,000 years. Sweet, plump and delicious, as well as rich in potassium, iron, calcium and fiber, the palms are very bountiful with as many as 200 dates found in each cluster hanging from the fronds.
In the 1956 epic film classic “The Ten Commandments,” which has always been one of my movie favorites, dates are a key plot point during Charlton Heston’s character Moses’ exile from
Egypt as he wanders the desert.
Prince Rameses, played by Yul Brynner, gives Moses just “one day’s ration of bread and water” to cross the desert, even though he is warned by his aide: “But Prince Rameses, it will take many days to cross the desert if this man is to cross it at all!” Fortunately, when he is near death from starvation, Moses happens upon a lush desert oasis with a goat herder’s water well and many dates, which he gorges himself with before being discovered by a sheik and his daughters.
Given the carbohydrate content of dates, it’s easy to defend how the movie Moses so quickly revives from death’s door, to leap to his feet, and using his staff, fights off desert marauders who appear and threaten the frightened daughters. Consider this energy boost fact: an astonishing 70 percent of the weight of each dates comes from the amount of sugar content of this fruit, which is why they are classified as one of the sweetest of all produce grown.
A scant half cup of dates contain more than 300 calories. And according to the Cornell Medical Center, 12 dates provide 650 milligrams of potassium, which is several times more than other highpotassium foods such as bananas and oranges. However, unlike citrus fruits, dates contain almost no vitamin C. And because the meat of dates, which must be pitted, has such a high concentration of sugar, the flesh is very sticky. Dentists recommend anyone consuming dates should brush their teeth soon after since any bits left behind will adhere to teeth and can cause decay.
Both my second and third published cookbooks have terrific recipes for date bars and date drop cookies. But it’s not often I stumble across many new recipes using this ancient favorite and ages-old naturally sweet treat.
Last week, one of my students in my Purdue University Northwest public speaking class I teach at the Hammond campus did a demonstration presentation about one of his mother’s favorite date recipes as his class assignment. Abduljalil Alrumaih, 24, is a senior studying electrical engineering who hails from Saudi Arabia. His older brother Ali also attended Purdue University Northwest in Hammond and graduated with an engineering degree in 2015.
He said his mother, Zahar, has made her recipe for honey-drizzled stuffed dates for many years.
“This is a recipe we like to eat in our country during our holidays, following the holy month fasting observance of Ramadan, which is coming up in May this year in 2019,” he said.
“After our many days of fast, which includes no food or water each day from dawn until dusk, we have the holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which means ‘breaking the fast’ to symbolize the end of Ramadan. In 2019, this day is on June 4 and that’s when we will enjoy these stuffed dates.”
After the honey is drizzled on the stuffed date, a generous coating of sesame seeds and “black seeds,” the latter which are the variety called Nigella sativa popular in India and the Middle East, and have a flavor described as “a combination of onion, black pepper and oregano.” For anyone who does not like the “spicy” flavor of this type of “black seed,”
the table variety of chia seeds, which are “mild and nutty” in flavor, work well as a substitute.
“This is a recipe we like to eat in our country during our holidays, following the holy month fasting observance of Ramadan, which is coming up in May this year in 2019.”
— Abduljalil Alrumaih, senior at Purdue University Northwest