Date

You can make this dish again, subbing cubed white or dark meat chicken for the lamb if you have extra spice blend on hand.

We love the complex flavors of this puree. We like to serve it with the Twice-Cooked Scallops (page 25). It also goes well with salmon, turkey, corned beef, and the Root Beer–Braised Short Ribs (page 226). The smokiness gives the mixture a rich meaty taste and enhances the sweetness of the dried fruits. Rest assured, though—even if you don’t have smoked fruits, you can use the regular dried version and still enjoy something special.

As a child, I love the holiday of Purim, the time when my mother would make hamantashen, filled with apricot jam or dried prune fillings. As a young adult, when I was living in Jerusalem, I discovered a whole new world of hamantashen fillings, and the magic of the shalach manot, the gift baskets stuffed with fruits and cookies. Traditionally, these were made to use up the year’s flour before the beginning of Passover as well as to make gift offerings. Strangely enough, hamantashen are little known in France, except among Jews coming from eastern European backgrounds. The North African Jews don’t make them, nor do the Alsatian Jews, who fry doughnuts for Purim (see following recipe). French children who do eat hamantashen like a filling of Nutella, the hazelnut-chocolate spread. You can go that route, or opt for the more traditional apricot preserves, prune jam, or the filling of poppy seeds, fruit, and nuts that I’ve included here.

When I interviewed Gilles Choukroun, one of the darlings of a new generation of French chefs who are injecting playfulness into French food, he had just opened the Mini Palais, a beautiful restaurant in Paris’s newly renovated Grand Palais exhibition hall, across from Les Invalides. In addition to his nascent restaurant empire, Gilles is also the father of Generation C, which stands for “Cuisines et Culture,” a group of chefs who teach cooking to the disadvantaged in Paris. Gilles, whose father is a Jew from Algeria, experiments with the spices and flavors of North Africa to accent his French food. One of his signature desserts is this refreshing citrus-fruit soup. It makes the perfect ending to a North African meal, especially with cookies on the side.

This haroset recipe originated in Toledo, Spain, before the Inquisition, and found its way to Tétouan, near Tangier, in northern Morocco, and then to Paris, where it is served today. Dates, the predominant fruit in most Moroccan haroset, are mixed with apples before being rolled into little balls. Sylviane Lévy (see page 65), whose mother gave her the recipe, says to roll them in cinnamon, then serve them in little paper cups. These balls look like chocolate truffles and taste like Passover petits fours!

Hélène Sancy’s Haroset recipe goes back to her family’s residence in Portugal before the Inquisition. It is probably one of the oldest existing haroset recipes in France today, if not the oldest. Her husband’s job is to grind the fruits and nuts with the brass mortar and pestle, which they inherited, handed down through the generations. Although the Sancys do not roll their haroset into balls as is called for in other old recipes from Spain and Portugal (recipe follows), they have another fascinating Passover custom. First they say a blessing over the bitter herbs (maror)—in their case, romaine lettuce—as a reminder of slavery in Egypt. Then they wrap the romaine around parsley that has been dipped in salt water, a little chopped celery, and about a teaspoon of haroset. The Ashkenazi way, in contrast, is to sandwich bitter herbs and haroset between two pieces of matzo. Curiously, the Sancys’ recipe for haroset, in this land of vineyards in the southwest of France, includes no raisins.

This exquisite delicacy makes a ready dessert. Accompany if you like with vanilla ice cream or mascarpone. It is made with fresh dates—the yellow or red varieties, which are hard and sour and totally different from the dried dates with which people in America are familiar. (They are called zaghlouli in Egypt.) It is usual to peel them, but that is an arduous task and, in my view, not all that much worth the effort. They are stuffed with blanched almonds, with which they make a lovely combination.

In North Africa the almond stuffing is colored green to give the semblance of pistachios, which are considered grander. You can of course use real pistachios.

These glorious pastries have a melt-in-the-mouth shell and a variety of fillings of dates or nuts—walnuts, pistachios, or almonds. See the variations for these. My mother always had a biscuit tin full of them to offer with coffee. In Syria and Lebanon they make them with semolina instead of flour. An uncle told us of a baking competition organized by a dignitary in Aleppo many years ago. The maker of the best ma’amoul would get a prize, the equivalent of about two pounds, to be paid by the dignitary. Hundreds of ma’amoul poured into his house, certainly more than two pounds’ worth, and enough to keep him eating happily for months.

Although not my favorite pastry, makroud is very popular in North Africa, especially in Tunisia, which is a land of dates. The pastries are usually deep-fried in oil, then dipped in warm honey. I prefer the lighter baked version.

This is something we used to make in Egypt. Use a moist variety of dried dates.

An Arab dish often served with grilled fish.

Cooked vegetables are not highly considered in Iraq, where they usually only find a place in a pot with meat, but turnips are treated with special respect. One way of dealing with young turnips is to peel and boil them in salted water, then press them under a weight to squeeze out some of the water, and serve them with a dusting of sugar. A special flavor is obtained when a little date syrup, called dibbis (see page 43), is stirred into the cooking water. Lately, I have tried sautéing sliced turnips with fresh dates and found it very pleasant to serve as a side dish with meat or chicken. You may use a moist variety of California dried dates.

Rutab is the Arabic word for dates. You might find this dish too sweet. In Morocco it is made with fresh Tafilalet dates, but you may use the Tunisian or the moist dried California ones available in America. Serve with bread.

The combination of chicken or meat with dates is very ancient in the Arab world. This recipe is inspired by a Moroccan one. I made it with baby partridge, which was delicious. You could also use small guinea hens or poussins. Use soft dried dates.

This freshwater fish, found in the Sebou River, is popular in Morocco. It is fat but rather full of bones, and its delicate flesh is said to be at its best soon after spawning upriver. In America it is sold already boned, which makes stuffing easy. Dates are stuffed with rice and blanched almonds, and they, in turn, provide the stuffing for the fish.

In Morocco, this is the most popular sweetmeat. The almond stuffing is colored green to give the semblance of pistachios, which are considered more prestigious. Use slightly moist dates such as the Tunisian Deglet Nour or Californian varieties.

In an Arab culture born in the desert, dates have something of a sacred character. Considered the “bread of the desert,” they symbolize hospitality and are much loved and prestigious. You would find this dish at wedding parties. Some people find it too sweet, so you might prefer it, as I do, without the optional honey. The dates give it a slightly sticky texture. Use the semi-dried moist varieties from California or the Deglet Nour dates from Tunisia.

This is sumptuous and extremely easy. The meat is cooked very slowly for a long time until it is meltingly tender and you can pull the meat off the bones with your fingers. The stuffing—it is the traditional stuffing for a whole lamb—is sweet with dates and raisins and crunchy with almonds. (In Morocco, they add sugar or honey but that makes it too sweet for me.) The couscous needs plenty of butter as there is no sauce, but you can substitute oil if you prefer. Try to get the fine-ground variety of couscous called seffa (see page 28), otherwise use the ordinary medium-ground one. For the dates, use the Tunisian Deglet Nour or Californian varieties that you can find in supermarkets. A shoulder of spring lamb is always fatty but most of the fat melts away during the long cooking. If it appears too fatty, as might be the case with an older lamb, carefully remove some of the fat before cooking.