Desperate for a Date

Mysterious objects began to appear at the market last week: bright yellow little fruits, the size of Italian plums but hard as apples, tightly clustered on long golden branches. They were dates, and they were beautiful.

And I was terrified.

I feared them, feared trying one only to relive my experience with le coing, which turns out to be the French word for 'quince,' which turns out to be an accurate approximation of the nasal sound I made when I chomped into it. They should really put up signs for these things. 'Bite me and wince,' or perhaps, 'Bite me and quince.'

But I couldn't resist the siren song of the Golden Bough, so I finally mustered up the courage to ask the grocer what the hell one did with said dates. My apple-addict friend was making her purchases when I marched up to the counter, dates in hand, and asked if it was edible.

He was a little stumped. "Of course it's edible."

"No, but I mean, do I have to cook it first?"

Flat expression. "You have to roast it for seven days."

Blank stare.

And then he burst out laughing and gave me the dates for free, which was a terrible mistake, because now I'm addicted.

These aren't just the fresh variety of the standard Medjool or Deglet Noor dates you'd find in the States; it turns out that Phoenix dactylifera is a great deal more complex than we give it credit for. There are actually several dozen kinds of cultivars, most of which never make their way out of the Middle East because they're too delicious (just kidding). I think it's more that the Western market wouldn't know what to do with them and, more importantly, wouldn't be able to tell the difference, so why bother sending prize dates to people lacking the refinement to taste the distinction? I kid, but I do wonder sometimes...

Anyway, the mountain of dates that I've been consuming lately are of the Barhi variety, which is one of only a handful that can be eaten in the khalal stage of maturity, which is the second of four: kimri (unripe), khalal (full-sized, crunchy), rutab (ripe, soft), and tamr (ripe, sun-dried). Apparently Barhis taste good at the later stages, too, but I wouldn't know this from personal experience, as that would require waiting to eat them.