It's a date! Muslims break fast of Ramadan

A Pakistani vendor sells dates for Ramadan in Peshawar, Pakistan. Muslims throughout the world marked the month of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar, with dawn to dusk fasting. Custom saw them breaking the fast on Eid al Fitr (Friday at sunset) by eating dates.
A Pakistani vendor sells dates for Ramadan in Peshawar, Pakistan. Muslims throughout the world marked the month of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar, with dawn to dusk fasting. Custom saw them breaking the fast on Eid al Fitr (Friday at sunset) by eating dates.

When the chef Sameh Wadi was growing up -- first in Kuwait, then in Jordan, and finally in Minneapolis and St. Paul -- one of the few constants in his life was his mother's cooking, especially the date-filled ring cookies called kaak that she made by hand and stockpiled during Ramadan.

Children do not fast during Ramadan, but adults like Wadi's mother, Shahira, do not eat during daylight for the month. Traditionally, women spend much of their time cooking for the iftar -- or fast-breaking meal -- that is eaten every night after sunset.

"No question, those are my favorite things in the world to eat," Wadi said. "I never realized as a kid how cruel it was to steal them, because even though she was fasting, she would still have to make more."

During Ramadan -- which began June 17 -- the far-flung Muslim communities of the world are unified by one food: The date, one of the earliest cultivated crops and an ancient icon of the Middle East, where the thick-trunked date palm is a symbol of hospitality, rest and peace.

In the hadith -- a collection of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad -- it is recorded the Prophet always broke the fast with dates and water, so many Muslims are careful to follow, whether the fruit is called balah (Arabic), khajoor (Urdu), hurmah (Turkish) or buah tanggal (Indonesian).

In modern communities, restaurants offer iftar specials and buffets, and all-night food markets pop up to feed the hungry throngs. Dates are always available, out of respect for tradition and because they provide a quick boost of energy for the eating to come.

"An iftar without dates would feel very strange to all the Muslims I know," said Yvonne Maffei, who writes a popular cooking and nutrition blog, My Halal Kitchen, from her home north of Chicago. "It would be like Thanksgiving without a turkey: The table doesn't look right without it."

This year, each day's fast was a particularly long one in much of the United States, from about 5 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Cooking for Ramadan seems like an oxymoron, but the two large meals of the night hours -- the predawn suhoor and the sundown iftar -- are opportunities for home cooks to come up with ever more alluring, filling and nourishing dishes.

"It sounds strange that Ramadan is a time for even thinking more about food," said Razia Parvez, a homemaker in Boonton, N.J., who was born in Pakistan. "But cooking helps me get through the fast, because I can smell everything and imagine the tastes that I will be serving my family later."

Muslims observing the fast try to eat extra dairy and protein at both meals to help stave off hunger the following day. Iftar invariably includes a bowl of dates and sometimes more elaborate desserts -- like pitted dates stuffed with nuts or labne (thick yogurt); mamoul and kaak, round cookies filled with dates; and date paste rolled into cylinders or balls and coated with coconut.

The most elaborate desserts are saved for Eid al-Fitr, the great feast on the first night of the month that follows Ramadan, which this year fell Friday. Shirin Farhat, an Iranian-American student in Los Angeles, said her mother's ranginak -- a traditional Persian cake of dates cooked with cinnamon and cardamom and layered with walnuts -- is the dish she looks forward to all year long.

"I just take a bite of a date to break the fast," she said. "I save my appetite for ranginak."

There are three basic types of dates: soft, semi-dry and dry, but thousands of variations are available around the world. Their flavors range from rich molasses to light butterscotch to honey, sometimes accented with the headiness of cognac, the succulence of prunes and the burnt-sugar edge of caramel.

They are mentioned often in the Koran, the Bible and ancient Sumerian and Assyrian texts. Like all palm trees, date palms belong in the same botanical family as grasses, not fruits; that's why, nutritionally speaking, they have more in common with grains than with most fruits. Dates contain potassium, protein, iron and other minerals; they can last for years, and thus have been staples of the diet of nomadic people all over the Middle East for centuries.

Date palms from the Middle East began arriving in the United States about 100 years ago, when the Department of Agriculture began its effort to transform the arid regions of the Southwest into fruitful fields.

Along with almonds, oranges, lemons and figs, dates are a drought-resistant crop that can flourish in desert conditions, and California's Coachella Valley and the area around Yuma, Ariz., have proved ideal.

During Ramadan, many Muslim-Americans make a point of seeking out dates from their ancestors' home countries: the red-brown zaghloul from Egypt, golden barhis from Iraq, orange-brown sair dates from Iran. Throughout the Muslim world, purple-black ajwa dates from Medina in Saudi Arabia -- where the Prophet lived and died -- are considered the finest of all.

They hardly ever make it to the United States, but Wadi got his hands on some recently.

"I just sat down and ate them all," he said. "Cooking an ajwa would be like deep-frying a black truffle."

NAN Religion on 07/18/2015

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