Craving sweets lately, but I don’t want to eat lots of sugar. So I turned to my cookbooks in hopes to find something that will hit the sweet tooth without so much sugar my teeth hurt! I found this wonderful little gem.
Rutab Murabba
(Fresh Date Preserves)
Translation:
Leave ripe dates in the sun so that they dry a little. Remove their pits and replace them with peeled almonds, and arrange them in a glass (container), and throw skimmed honey on them and a little saffron. It comes out excellently. (Perry, pp. 433)
Ingredients:
Enough dried dates to fit into a glass jar
Enough almonds to fit into dates
Enough honey to cover dates once in the jar
A pinch of Saffron
Redaction:
I gathered up a box of dried dates, a handful of almonds (or two), an empty glass jar and a pinch of saffron.
I removed the seeds from the dates with a chop stick.
Then replaced the seeds with almonds.
I didn’t have peeled almonds, so I used regular. This may be a taste thing or a “We’re serving this to the king so it has to look fancy .” thing. I used what I had because I haven’t found peeled almonds available regularly yet!
Once the almonds were de-seeded and stuffed, they were thrown into a clean empty glass jar. Nope, our modern day jars are not what they had, obviously.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Container_Umar_II_Louvre_OA7448.jpg
Something like this might, might have been used. Decorative and useful.
Antique Bottles 392 – November – Kidlington Oxfordshire – https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b6/d1/ca/b6d1ca749c483afdcb2bed37c7d9d463.jpg
This is a simple utility jar. Nothing fancy other than it can easily fit dates at the top and pour honey in.
No, I don’t know 100% if either jar was used for this purpose. These are images I found for jars that meet my criteria. They will fit the item (dates) into said jar, and the item (dates) can be fished out with ease, i.e. stuffed dates.
The first of many more to come. Don’t fill the jar with honey first. Dates float and if you have to much honey and keep stuffing all your dates into the jar, the honey WILL over flow onto the counter, making a horrible mess. Do the dates first, then the honey…I promise this will keep you from having to clean or lick your counter tops off from all the spilled honey!
So once the dates are in the jar of your choice, place the pinch of saffron on top,
and pour in the honey.
I screwed on the lip, to keep small fingers and my own out of this until a later date. Set to the side until ready to use.
Right now the dates are soaking up honey and a little bit of the saffron flavor. I’m drooling already!