Jujube (Red Dates)

Jujubes are small wrinkled red fruits, dried until they are dense and chewy. The flavour is exactly what the old name red date suggests: apple like and lightly sweet on the first bite, then rounder and more date like as you keep chewing. The skin is papery, the flesh is firm, and there is a single hard stone in the middle.

These are the whole dried fruit, skin on and unsplit, rather than sliced or ground. They come from Ziziphus jujuba, a large flowering shrub originally from South Asia, and the fruit has a long history in Chinese cooking as well as across Central Asia and the Middle East, where it turns up in tea, stews and platters.

How to use them

Simmer a handful in water with cinnamon and cardamom for a warm autumn drink, or drop them into soups, aush and slow cooked stews, where they soften and sweeten the broth from the inside. They cook into compote and khoshaf alongside apricots, and into rice puddings and halwa. Eat them dry as a snack, chop the flesh into granola and trail mix, or set them out on a Nowruz platter. Technique tip: simmer for twenty to thirty minutes to soften them right through, then press the flesh off the stone with the back of a spoon.

Details

Also known as

Red date, Chinese date, Chinese red date, Jujube fruit, Annab, Unnab, Hongzao, Ziziphus jujuba, فاكهة عناب