Episode 123: Persian Dates

In Episode #123, co-hosts Bita and Beata chat about all things dates! Persian dates that you eat, dates in recipes both traditional and modern, and dates that you go on. They also share experience and stories around Persian matchmaking and getting set up on dates Iranian style.

Persian dates are dates in dried form which taste sweet and buttery/caramel-y.

Hot dates

• Heat in microwave with almond butter for a healthy snack
• Wrap in bacon or prosciutto as an appetizer

Recipes with dates

• Pitted and filled with nuts 
• Blended with nuts and other dried fruit and rolled into energy balls
• Used in Persian Lentil and Date Rice | Adas Polo and Reshteh Polo
• Khormah Maloos – cooked with eggs and served for breakfast

Occasions for eating dates in Persian culture

• With tea
• Blended with nuts and other dried fruit and rolled into energy balls
• Memorials
• Breaking fast – start with hot water and dates

Match-making in old Persian culture and personal stories around growing up in Iranian-American families.  Introductions for potential marriage.

Ask the Beats!

Question from email: Are there any vegetarian recipes that include pomegranate?

We cover some strategies to leave meat out of Khoresh Fesenjoon | Persian Pomegranate and Walnut Stew.  In addition pomegranates make great garnishes to many dishes including salads, cooked vegetables, and mixed rice dishes (shirin polo).  Modern ways to add pomegranate to dishes include sprinkling the arils in a morning oatmeal and enjoying mixed into plain yogurt.  

Recipe and resource links from this episode:

Bita’s recipe for Date and Nut Balls

Bita’s recipe for Lentil and Date Rice | Adas Polo

Bita’s recipe for Fruited Pomegranate and Kale Salad

Youtube video for How to Deseed a Whole Pomegranate Underwater

Beata’s recipe for Walnut and Pomegranate Stew – Khoreshteh Fessenjoon

Beata’s recipe for Khormah Maloos – Persian Dates and Eggs

Podcast production by Alvarez Audio

Transcript:

This is Modern Persian Food. Our culinary podcast for today’s food enthusiasts. We talk about classic Persian flavors, modern recipes and embracing culture and identity through food. I’m Bita. And I’m also Beata. Welcome to our show.

Beata: Today we’re talking about a fun topic.

Bita: Dates. We’re talking about Persian dates, dates that you eat, days that you go on. And let’s start with that. 

Beata: We thought that in light of current holidays that are just around the corner and that are right upon us, that we can talk about dates.

Bita: What’s the current holiday? Are you talking about Valentine’s day? 

Beata: I’m talking about Valentine’s Day. Love day. 

Bita: How cute we’re talking about dates on Valentine’s Day. 

Beata: Yeah, hot dates. Speaking of hot dates, we like to eat hot dates. So, if you haven’t had a date, they’re delicious. They’re very sweet, buttery brown sugar caramelly to me and my daughter, who still is at home with us. She has been on a healthy eating kick as of late, which I love. And she loves to do this new thing. Well, she takes dates and make sure there’s no pit in it, right? If they’re not pitted dates, you remove the pit. She puts a little almond butter in there and then gently heats it in the microwave. For this like jack it in and melt in your mouth sensation. Have you ever tried it? 

Bita: No, I haven’t. But that sounds delicious. What a great little dessert too. I would love that. 

Beata: Oh yeah, it’s a treat. 

Bita: I love actually warm dates that are wrapped in bacon or prosciutto, and you can stuff them with cheeses if you want, or with walnuts, and then cook them in the oven for a little bit. The bacon caramelizes and gets crunchy on the outside and then the date is super delicious and sweet, so that’s like actually a really fun appetizer. You could put a little toothpick in it and pick a little platter of them. 

Beata: I have not tried that.

Bita: Yeah, it’s delicious. I do like them with walnuts. I like them with a little walnut in it or a little almond in it for just a quick pack of energy.

Beata: Yeah. Speaking of energy, I have some date nut energy balls that we need sometimes make. They’re just raw nuts, whatever dried fruit you like. And when I put dates in recipes like the energy balls or even in smoothies, what I’ll do to get them to blend better in the Cuisinart or the blender, is I will pour just a bit of boiling water over them and let them soften.

Bita: Yeah.

Beata: And it helps them to blend better. 

Bita: Yeah, that’s so delicious. And those are great because I can imagine that you, those are really convenient to like pop in the morning if you are running around and you just want a little energy boost or a little bit of something in the morning when you’re running late, at least for me, I always feel like if I have something that’s easy and accessible to just pop in my mouth that I’ll have a better likelihood of actually eating sometimes in the morning. 

Beata: It’s better for you than something that you open out of a package. Or a box. So yeah, you know, quick energy after workout, I have you. I also really love them in Persian lentil and date rice at espolla.

Bita: Yes.

Beata: It’s probably my personal favorite way to enjoy dates. I prefer the flavor of dates over raisins. A lot of people put raisins in their lentil rice. I will put some, but I love dates in that mixture. We’ve talked about at us below the lentil rice in previous episodes. But it’s such a comforting, delicious combination of the cinnamon and the lentils and the dates. And I put nuts in there too. It’s so good. 

Bita: Yeah, that’s delicious. I love that. I serve that a little bit differently. I actually cooked that separate though walnuts and raisins and sometimes with caramelized onions and walnuts. It sounds delicious too, and kind of mix that and use that as a topping that will put over a dust poodle or sometimes actually reach the poodle, which is like a peel off with many smoked noodles. You could have that like a vegan option is to actually use those dates and the raisins and onions as like more protein and fiber to the dish. I love it like that too. That’s like one of my favorite ways of having dates in Persian food. 

Beata: Yeah, lentils are a powerhouse of nutrition. I always change the recipe slightly and make it be heavier with lentils and a little bit less of a proportion of the rice. 

Bita: One of my favorite date dishes is actually a breakfast dish that my dad would make for us growing up. It’s called hormone malus. And it’s basically a sunny side up eggs with caramelized dates, the way that he would make it. And now that I make it, is that you pick the dates and cut up the dates into a few pieces and just sauté it very lightly in a little bit of oil in the bottom of the pan. And then I’ll crack open the eggs all around the dates. And I may cover it just for a few minutes to actually get it cooked through. But I love to see the beautiful yolks of the eggs in the platter and serve that with a little bit of bread or lettuce cheese on the side and that’s like a very comforting breakfast dish, but if I, you know, I’m running around and I just want to have, like, a simple dinner or something like that, I’ll actually crack some eggs on some dates and have it as like a simple dinner as well. 

Beata: Oh my gosh, that sounds so interesting and how cute and sweet that your dad would make it.

Bita: Yeah, we have a few people in our family with the really sweet tooth that would love that. 

Beata: Yeah, and dates are always great to have, like with tea. Like, if you’re going to do like tea time or tea ceremony dates as one of the things that you can have with your tea is kind of typical and traditional of Persian tea service. And sometimes I’ve seen also like a memorial or like religious events, they’ll have a platter of dates that have walnuts in them and then in certain ceremonies, if their people were like fasting to break their fast. So, you usually have dates with like warm water as the first food that they have. It’s very energizing, gives you a lot of strength. 

Bita: Yeah, you know. I randomly looked up the top, you know, 10 aphrodisia foods because I was trying to prove a point to my hubby that pomegranates are like a super sexy.

Beata: Yeah, true.

Bita: Because we were laughing so hard at that audio you made, which we’ll have to reference back to Instagram. It was really funny. Back in the fast and June episode, I tried to say that fast and June is really sultry and kind of sexy, and because of the pomegranate to me. So yeah, there are some sources that link that pomegranates is #1, but dates are on the list.

Beata: Oh, really?

Bita: Yeah. Dates are.

Beata: Good to know. 

Bita: So, I think if people are talking about like their Valentine’s Day menu, maybe we could have fish in June as the main course. And then a round of dates stuffed with almond butter or pomegranates or something for dessert. Get them all ready and in the mood.

Beata: Yeah, I think you could have fun.

Bita: Talking about dates, the other type of dates. So is it like so typical of Persians, to try to match, make people that they’re always like, oh, you need to go out with this person. Or like let me trick you to think that you’re going to do something else and let me try to introduce you and do plasticard. And so, you guys can get together. And get married. 

Beata: Ohhh my gosh.

Bita: Don’t you have a fun story about that? 

Beata: Yes, I do. So, way back when I think I may have still been in college, but I have always been an animal lover and a pet lover. As you know, we have a house full of fur kids as well as regular kids. And growing up, especially cats, I always had cats and I was the cat girl. I had cat gifts for every birthday and holiday and my lovely mum on June and her little group of Persian friends that she would gather with, you know, unbeknownst to me, arranged for me to meet a young man, who was visiting from New York, he was like a marathon runner and I was a runner and so they thought that was enough.

Bita: Yeah.

Beata: We would definitely like have a ton in common and fall in love and get married, right? But instead of telling me that she told me that her friend had a Persian kitten that she didn’t want. You know that needed to be rehomed and so of course I was going to come. So, I show up at the Tea Party, fully ready to embrace a kitten and take it home and then we walk in and it’s like one of those semicircular tea parties where everyone’s sitting in chairs in a circle. And here’s this guy, and it kind of became very obvious by the conversation that there was no cat. Oh God, you’re like forget this. I’m so mad. Yeah, I was like, oh, my gosh. Where’s the cat? You know? And I didn’t even, like, entertain the prospect of this poor guy. So that’s my story. 

Bita: Well, yeah, I totally see that too. And even me growing up too, everyone in the project community is trying to like match, make all the young girls and the young boys together. But it’s funny because at least when I was growing up, they’re like, no, you can’t have a boyfriend. But here’s someone that you can marry. And it’s like, maybe not because I don’t really know that person. And that makes me feel like really uncomfortable when you guys talk like that. But yeah. So needless to say, you married a Persian guy anyway.

Beata: Yeah, I did yeah that I met on my own.

Bita: Yeah.

Beata: More or less so. But what we like to do is we like to walk downtown. We’re lucky we live close to downtown Palo Alto, and that’s what we do for dates these days. And I have a question, we haven’t asked the dates. 

Bita: That’s us. 

Beata: That’s us. Today’s question actually comes off of e-mail and the question was, are there recipes that are vegetarian that can include pomegranates and more generally, what are some other recipes that include pomegranates? 

Bita: I love pomegranates. You know, we spent a few episodes ago talking about 5th and June, which is made with pomegranate molasses and you can garnish with fresh pomegranates. And I know you love doing that. I love doing that too. Really, like any kind of food that you feel like needs like a little bit of brightness to it. You know, some people will do a squeeze of lemon. You could just put a little bit of like pomegranate arrows on it that are really give it a brightness to it. Roasted vegetables would be really great with it, or like salads and just adding some of the raw pomegranate to it. But pomegranate molasses. There are some like really great things that you can do. You could just use that as kind of like a sauce. The other time I talked about adding it to my chicken wings, then you had the idea of adding it to meatballs. So, I think that is really endless what you can do with pomegranate. What do you think? 

Bita: Yeah, absolutely. It’s really nutritious. It’s got antioxidants. It’s a super food and good fiber. And I actually had someone ask me. A student of mine. That was encouraging to try new fruits. Asked how to eat them and they were really wondering if you have to spit every seed out. And I said no, I mean, I crack open a pomegranate every day. I have that underwater method. It’s really fast and easy when you do it in the water way and I actually put it in my oatmeal bowl with a bunch of other fruit.

Beata: Yeah.

Bita: I love the texture of it. And then I leave the rest of the arrow pomegranate arrows out for whoever wants to snack on them. My daughter loves them, but I have a kale salad recipe that I like to pull out for the holidays. It’s a fruited kale salad and it has pomegranate arils in there and it adds color and flavor and texture. So yeah, like you said, you can garnish almost anything. I do garnish the fest in June. I garnish sometimes like shearing polo. Even the jewel dries. I don’t use the molasses in any other recipe that I could think of, but you could get really creative with it I think. 

Beata: Yeah, totally. Your oatmeal with pomegranate breakfast reminds me of like, I love actually for breakfast having plain yogurt with granola and then adding fresh pomegranate to it as well. And that again, like, just has, like, a brightness to it. This makes it a lot more fun. 

Bita: Yeah, almost the same kind of crunch as adding nuts to it. 

Beata: Yeah. Well, great question. 

Bita: This was fun. Thank you. I hope that you’re inspired to go on some dates, eat some dates. 

Beata: Yeah. Include dates into your meals. They’re really delicious. Really good for you and very Persian. Thank you, Vita. Until next time.

Bita: Thank you, Beata Jan. Have a great day.

Beata: You too. Bye.

You’ve been listening to the Modern Persian Food podcast with Bita and Beata. Thanks for spending time with us. If you’ve enjoyed what you heard today, consider telling your friend or giving us a good rating. You can subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcasting app, or find us online at modernpersianfood.com or on Instagram for the recipes and information we talked about today. We’d love to hear your thoughts and see you next time.