Creative ways to pair dates with sour, salty and spicy ingredients

livemint.com:

Salty: I remember seeing this utterly delicious video on Instagram where soaked dates were ground to a paste and mixed into soft salted butter, slathered on a thick toasted slice of sourdough. If you are a sweet-salty fan, this would be food nirvana. Whisk in some date puree with soy sauce, vinegar, sesame seeds, black pepper (or chilli flakes) and a touch of toasted sesame oil for the perfect Asian dressing, where date steps in the place of honey.

Bitter: Melt some bitter dark chocolate and dip deseeded dates in the melted chocolate. Place on a baking paper. Sprinkle coarse salt and freeze or refrigerate until the chocolate is set.

Eat one for the perfect after dinner-dessert. You can also spoon a bit of tahini or sesame seed paste inside the cavity of the date and then proceed to dip it in melted chocolate for another layer of mildly bitter flavours. Spicy: I can’t think of a better way to put together dates and chillies than in a hot (and sweet) sauce.

I’ve written about a lacto-fermented green tomato hot sauce in an earlier column. Keep a mix of rehydrated dried chillies (Byadagi, Guntur, Kashmiri) to lacto-ferment for three weeks and then blend with dates and tamarind puree. You can make the flavours more complex by fermenting the dates separately for two days by immersing them in kombucha or whey.

This also reduces the sugar level in the dates. The fermented dates can be drained and pureed along with some tamarind paste and the fermented red chillies. Sour: Combining chopped dates in an orange and greens salad or making a citrusy dressing with lemon juice and olive oil in a salad with dates, walnuts, kale and roasted vegetables will showcase the contrasts beautifully.