Hi:

Abdulameer al-Dafar says that:

"In southern Iraq, besides dry the dates and make syrup...people do roast
dates with fat to make seedless blocks; boil fresh dates,at the *khalal* stage
when they are still yellow, until they become brown and hard,then dry them
in the shadow and store them in woven baskets to be used in the winter; and
smash kinds of hard-dates, mix them with sesame oil and store it in metal
or plastic containers. I have observed and participated in these
activities."

Best,
Kathy


On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 4:59 AM, Mennat-Allah El Dorry <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> The people toasting the dates always either explicitly said they were
> doing this for storability, or implied it.  This practice could
> have started for another reason, perhaps to a specific variety as Ralph
> Hancock mentioned in his email to this thread, but this knowledge was lost
> along the years, and it became related to storage in people's minds.
> I have only seen this done with ripened red zagloul dates.
>
> Thanks to all,
>
> Menna
>
> Am Montag, 1. September 2014 schrieb Beatrice Hopkinson :
>
>> It could be that the dates were not fully ripe but still yellow needed
>> heating to further ripen them before eating.  When fully ripe there is a
>> lot of sugar in dates so presumably this keeps them for quite a time, and
>> presumably this is not true of dates that have not ripened sufficiently to
>> develop sugar.  The growing of dates apparently requires extreme dry heat
>> in a non-humid atmosphere, in which case they could grow rotten.  Date
>> palms do require water, but only at the roots, so care is taken to keep the
>> dates above dry.
>>
>> Bea
>> ########################################################################
>>
>> To unsubscribe from the ANCIENT-FOOD-TECH list, click the following link:
>>
>> http://listserv.dartmouth.edu/scripts/wa.exe?TICKET=NzM1NTA3IE0uZWxkb3JyeUBHTUFJTC5DT00gQU5DSUVOVC1GT09ELVRFQ0ggIJN4XhFd1Y6n&c=SIGNOFF
>>
>
>
> --
> Mennat-Allah El Dorry, MA
> Institut für Ägyptologie und Koptologie
> Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
>
> "The future of Egypt is not just political reforms, but attitude reforms"
>
> ------------------------------
>
> To unsubscribe from the ANCIENT-FOOD-TECH list, click the following link:
>
> http://listserv.dartmouth.edu/scripts/wa.exe?TICKET=NzM1NTA4IEthdGhlcnluLlR3aXNzQFNUT05ZQlJPT0suRURVIEFOQ0lFTlQtRk9PRC1URUNIIIh7A%2FBm5WhX&c=SIGNOFF
>
>


-- 
Katheryn C. Twiss
Assoc. Prof.: Director, Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in
Anthropological Sciences (IDPAS)
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-4364
[log in to unmask]

########################################################################

To unsubscribe from the ANCIENT-FOOD-TECH list, click the following link:
https://listserv.dartmouth.edu/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=ANCIENT-FOOD-TECH