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Jujube / Red Date Recipes


gfron1

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I have a bumper crop. The neighbor has a tree and because he got sick of people taking all of his jujubes, he put up a sign reading, "Warning, sprayed with toxic chemicals!" The sign worked and the tree is full and ripe. Now, what can I do with these more-pit-than-meat fruits?

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I enjoyed eating these a lot when I lived in Korea. They were usually made into a sweet "tea" - a kind of jam or marmalade that you poured boiling water over, not unlike yujacha - here's a link.

If they weren't made into a tea, they were dried and used like a raisin or similar. My favourite way to eat them was in a sticky sweet rice snack - glutinous rice steamed with jujubes, pine nuts, chestnuts and some seasoning - maybe soy, I'm not sure. I can't find a picture on the net anywhere (in English) of what I'm talking about. But it's fabulous.

I'm going to go look through my Korea pictures to see if I can find what I'm talking about.

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I've never cooked with jujubes. Thought I was eating them in one dish I tried in China last year, a dessert, but I found them flavorless, so who knows what I was eating (red plastic?). Barbara Tropp in The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking has some info and a couple recipes for jujubes, if you can get your hands on the book. Her book always uses the fruit in semi-dried form.

There's one recipe for macerated fruit, jujubes soaked in cognac with a little rock sugar, and another recipe for a steamed banana cake with jujubes, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, raisins & walnuts. She says dried prunes are a substitute for dried jujubes, so perhaps you can go in reverse and substitute jujubes in some prune recipes. Perhaps also try a banana bread with jujubes in it.

But be careful with how you serve and store those jujubes! "The jujube's sweet smell is said to make teenagers fall in love..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jujube

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There's a thread where some sort of, I think, Thai goody called Food of the Gods was discussed. It's a date paste cake kind of thingy. Part of a date bar discussion? I'll look it up tonight.

I made a date nut bread this weekend that I really loved -- the dates get melted in hot water so that they imbue the "bread" part rather than just be in it.

From Heirloom Baking by the Brass Sisters.

Dates are one of my favorite flavors -- I'd preserve a bunch of them.

I'd also try some sort of liqueur . . .

I like to bake nice things. And then I eat them. Then I can bake some more.

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  • 2 weeks later...
If they weren't made into a tea, they were dried and used like a raisin or similar. My favourite way to eat them was in a sticky sweet rice snack - glutinous rice steamed with jujubes, pine nuts, chestnuts and some seasoning - maybe soy, I'm not sure. I can't find a picture on the net anywhere (in English) of what I'm talking about. But it's fabulous.

I'm going to go look through my Korea pictures to see if I can find what I'm talking about.

it is called yaksik or medicine food. here is the wiki page

a sweet rice made by steaming glutinous rice with jujubes (daechu in korean), pine nuts, chestnuts being seasoned with honey, brown sugar, sesame oil, soy sauce and cinnamon.

here is a better picture from a korean site. that is the yaksik before it is molded to whatever shape you wish it to be.

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it is called yaksik or medicine food. here is the wiki page

a sweet rice made by steaming glutinous rice with jujubes (daechu in korean), pine nuts, chestnuts being seasoned with honey, brown sugar, sesame oil, soy sauce and cinnamon.

here is a better picture from a korean site. that is the yaksik before it is molded to whatever shape you wish it to be.

Yeeeeesssssssss!

That's it exactly. One of my favourite ways to eat rice. Thanks for finding it - it's hard to search for something you don't know the name of.

gfron1 - make some of that - you won't be sorry!

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That yaksik looks delicious, and chestnuts are everywhere here right now. For those of you that have eaten it, how does the Seattle Times recipe, linked to in the Wiki article, look to you? Is there any reason not to use fresh jujubes for this?

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