[Broadcast 30/06/17]
My latest food fad revolves around a relationship with a sweet, sticky delicacy. They are one of the oldest cultivated fruits in the world - first being eaten as early as 4000BC in Iraq. In the Koran they are one of the ‘fruits of paradise’ and closer to home, today’s clean eating food bloggers whizz them up in smoothies, cake mixtures and even transform them into natural caramel. You might’ve guessed it - I’m talking about the much loved medjool date.
Whilst I, quite happily and absentmindedly, can munch through a few of these beauties in a day, it was on a recent trip to Israel that I realised just quite how much effort goes into their subsequent arrival in my breakfast bowl. In an almost biblical scene, the medjool plantations boast towering date palms stretching as far as the eye can see. Trees need serious irrigation - around 1,000 litres of water a day – thanks to summer temperatures reaching up to 40 degrees and next to no rainfall. The dates are picked by hand with trucks used to elevate workers right into the centre of the trees (a lofty 65 feet above ground), each with the goal of locating perfectly moist dates. No mean feat! There is certainly a great deal of effort and ritual that goes into the harvesting of my favourite date.
Medjools, whilst enjoying their recent surge in popularity, have traditionally played an important role in the breaking of the Ramadan fast each evening. Whilst Eid of course is the ultimate breaking of the month-long fast, Medjool dates represent a daily glimpse of that light at the end of the tunnel.
Whilst we’re all too familiar with celebrating the pleasure of eating these festive foods, the cultivation or preparation of them is so often overlooked. We dread it, often passing the buck on to someone else. Yet the chopping, mixing, pouring and picking of celebratory food is a vital part of the occasion that we mustn’t dismiss.
We’ve learnt many things from the nation’s most loved baker, Mary Berry – not least how to avoid a soggy bottom - but perhaps most poignantly, the crux of her recipe for life; “cooking and baking is both mental and physical therapy,” she tells us. Now, if only I could find the ritual in peeling potatoes…