Rangina

The Gulf's everyday sweet, whole stoned dates laid in a dish and buried under flour toasted slowly in clarified butter with cardamom and saffron

Origin: Oman and the United Arab Emirates (the Arabian Gulf)

From the journey of Date.

Rangina is what a Gulf household makes when a sweet is wanted and there is no reason to bake. Stoned dates are laid whole in a shallow dish, and flour toasted in samn until it smells of biscuit is poured over them still hot, so that it sets around the fruit as it cools. There is no oven, no sugar, and, in the strictest versions, nothing else at all beyond cardamom. It is made across Oman, the Emirates, and the Saudi eastern province, and it belongs to the oldest layer of Arabian cooking: the layer that predates flour milling on any scale, in which the only reliable stores in a house were dates and clarified butter. Toasting flour in fat is the same operation that gives Moroccan sellou, Libyan bsisa, and Indian panjiri their character, and in each case it exists because a toasted, fat-coated flour keeps in heat where a raw one does not. This is date country in the fullest sense. The lower Gulf holds the oldest date stones ever found, on Dalma Island off Abu Dhabi, and the palm groves of Al-Ahsa in eastern Saudi Arabia form the largest oasis on earth. The variety used will be a local one, a Khalas or a Fardh or a Khenaizi, and it will not have travelled more than a few miles. It is served at Ramadan, at Eid, and to guests, and it is eaten with the fingers from the communal dish, a date at a time, with cardamom coffee alongside.

Ingredients

Fruit

  • 500 g soft dates (Khalas, Fardh or Medjool), stoned but left whole

Toasted flour

  • 200 g plain flour
  • 150 g clarified butter or ghee
  • 1 tsp ground cardamom
  • 0.25 tsp saffron threads, crushed
  • 2 tbsp date syrup or honey, optional

To finish

  • 2 tbsp shelled pistachios, chopped
  • 1 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted

Method

  1. Stone the dates, keeping each fruit whole, and lay them tightly in a single layer in a shallow serving dish about 20 cm across.
  2. If the dates are dry, steam them for five minutes or cover them with boiling water for ten and drain them well before laying them out.
  3. Melt the clarified butter in a heavy frying pan over a low heat and stir in the flour. Cook, stirring constantly, for fifteen to twenty minutes.
  4. Stir in the cardamom and the crushed saffron and cook for one minute more. Add the date syrup if you want a slightly darker, sweeter sauce; leave it out for the plain version.
  5. Pour the hot toasted flour over the dates while it is still loose enough to flow, and spread it to cover them completely.
  6. Scatter with the chopped pistachios and toasted sesame and leave to settle for fifteen minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature, with cardamom coffee.

Notes

The consistency of the topping is a matter of taste and of household. Some cooks want a pourable sauce and use more butter; others want a crumbly layer and use less. Start at the ratio given and adjust on the second attempt. Do not use unclarified butter. The milk solids will burn long before the flour is toasted. In Oman the dish is sometimes made with halwa spices, a little rosewater, or a scrape of nutmeg. In the Emirates it is more often left plain with cardamom alone. A dry, firm date is a poor choice here even after soaking. This is a dish for the soft, honeyed varieties of the Gulf, and a Medjool is the closest widely available substitute.

The Gastrographer

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