Peach, Date, and Almond Fruit Salad

One flat peach, diced, with stoned and diced dates (Deglet Nour), and a small handful of whole almonds.

Serve with double cream, and a small sprinkling of nutmeg. A delicious and simple fruit salad!

Lamb Tagine

A Moroccan style lamb tagine, with ground lamb, red onion, spring onion, carrot, celery, root ginger, garlic, paprika, tomato passata, red and yellow pepper, lamb stock, coriander, and stoned and chopped dates.

I cooked this dish not in the traditional stoneware tagine, which is often available to buy in UK supermarkets these days, but in a large flat and lidded pan, and once all the ingredients were in the pan, It was allowed to simmer for more than three hours, after draining off the lamb fat.

Brown the lamb with the onions in the lamb's own fat. Then add the other ingredients. Cook until tender (about twenty-five minutes). Add boiling water. Decant to a pyrex glass vessel, and allow both the pan and the vessel to cool. When the lamb fat has solidified on top of the juices, which may take several hours, remove it with a spoon, and then add the juices back into the pot. Add the tomato passata, some lamb stock, and some coriander. Simmer under glass at a low heat for at least three hours.

Serve with basmati rice, or alternatively some north African couscous. Delicious!

Beef Korma

Made with stir-fried beef strips, peas, scotch bonnet chilli, garlic, and a korma sauce made with turmeric, cream and ground coconut.

Cook the beef until it begins to brown, Add the chopped chilli (1 chilli should be enough) and the garlic. After a couple of minutes add some boiling water and the garden peas. Allow most of the water to evaporate.

You can make the korma sauce from scratch with the turmeric, cream, ground coconut, coriander leaf, and a little sugar (chopped dates are an alternative), or you can add a commercially available korma sauce. Add cumin if you like.

Cook for another seven minutes or so, stirring the mixture frequently.

Serve with boiled basmati rice.

Red Grape, Honey, and Pecan Salad

Food of the Gods. Halved red grapes, sliced nectarine, half an apple, finely sliced, diced dates, pecan nuts, a dash each of mixed spice and cinnamon, and a dash of white pepper.

Mix into the fruit a dessert spoonful of soft honey, and allow to stand for 10 to 15 minutes. Add the pecan nuts, and stir in Greek yoghurt. Serve.

Seeing this recipe, a friend said: 'Greek yoghurt is fabulous, and even more so if you use Greek honey... [it has] quite a distinctive, herby flavour...' Which is true. Greek honey is worth trying with this recipe.

Red Grape, Honey, and Pecan Salad

Blue Curaçao Fruit Salad

Blueberry, Date, Peach and Banana salad, soused in Blue Curaçao liqueur.

Fruit ingredients - blueberries, peach, dates, and mashed ripe banana.

The blueberries, chopped peach, and stoned and chopped dates mixed together, and soused in blue curaçao

Layer the bottom of a serving bowl with the mashed ripe banana, and decant the soused fruit on top. Ready to serve! 

Blue Curaçao

Blueberry and Date Salad

A simple and delicious fruit salad, which can be prepared in two or three minutes. 100 grams of blueberries, 8 stoned dates, and two or three dessert spoonfuls of double cream.

Blueberry and Date Salad

Almond Lamb, with Ginger, Dates, and Cinammon

Lamb mince browned for half an hour in its own fat. Sliced Spanish onion was added and stirred in to the mince for ten minutes. Boiling water was added, and then about 200g of tomato passata. Other ingredients were then added - freshly ground almonds (two handfuls), sliced ginger, garlic, three finger chillies, half a dozen stoned and chopped dates, sliced sugar snap peas, a whole sliced yellow pepper, ground black pepper, lamb and vegetable stock, a pinch of oregano, and a cinammon stick.

The temperature was reduced, and the dish was left to simmer under glass for another ninety minutes. Served with basmati rice. Don't forget to remove the cinammon stick before serving!

 Almond Lamb, with Ginger, Dates, and Cinammon

Lamb with Cashews and Ginger

Some bargain sell-by date lamb mince prompted this excursion into north african style cooking. I browned the mince for about half an hour with a little sunflower oil. after fifteen minutes I began to add rough-cut chunks of carrot, spring onion, tomato, chopped root ginger, three chillies, stoned and chopped dates, and some garlic. The whole dish was then allowed to slow cook in a saute pan for another ninety minutes. Then some chopped tinned tomato was added, along with two handfuls of unsalted cashew nuts, paprika, and lamb stock. The pan was left to simmer for another thirty to forty minutes. 

Ground almonds could be used in place of the cashews, along with a little cinnamon, and chickpeas. 

Lamb with Cashews and Ginger