recipe: date jam

ingredients:
1 generous cup pitted dates
1/2 red onion, diced
1/2 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons honey
pinch of cinnamon

instructions:
Sweat red onions in a small saucepan with a little salt.
Chop the dates coarsely and add to pan.
Add orange and lemon juice, honey and cinnamon, bring to a boil, and let simmer for 15 minutes.
Cool.

What’s incredible about this recipe, aside from the resulting delicious jam, is that it gets more beautiful as it cooks and breaks down into caramel-y goodness. Over the course of the cooking time, the jam went from light blonde in color to a rich, dark toasty caramel. I’ll add that because my dates were, ahem, a bit dried out, I ended up adding a little bit of water to the mix because they immediately soaked up all of the orange juice. I was also lazy and didn’t chop the dates, so the extra water allowed them a little more time to break down into smaller pieces.

Sandra recommends: slice and toast a baguette, smear with fresh goat cheese, a dollop of date jam, and sprinkle with Marcona almonds and chives.

Here I’ve done almost that, subbing in blistered almonds for Marcona and omitting the chives simply because I didn’t have any on hand. As you can see, the result is beautiful. I’ll add that it was also delicious! Serve with a simple salad for lunch, a light starter, or as Sandra often does, with a collection of delicious tapas.

Enjoy ~