Jason McLeod, the (now former) executive chef at Ria and Balsan, challenged Chris Pandel, chef at the Bristol, to come up with a recipe using jujubes for this installment of our weekly feature.
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He would have liked to try working with the fresh fruit, but it’s hard to come by in February, so dried jujubes it was. “It’s essentially a date,” Pandel said. “The skin is much thicker than a Medjool date. . . . The flesh is a little bit more mealy, a little bit more bitter, and it’s got this kind of coffee/chocolate—a little bit bittersweet note to it. So we kind of took that and ran with it.”
He ended up pureeing the jujubes with coffee, orange juice, orange zest, and honey to make a sauce that he served with lamb merguez sausage, smoked lamb belly, and an endive and blood orange salad.
Who’s Next:
Jujube Puree
1 t Aleppo pepper
5 blood orange segments, and juice from half a blood orange
