Date Balls and Morrocan Cuisine

I have nasty cold which would make walking impossible its making breathing quite difficult so its a weekend in the City of Bristol watching The Mighty Boosh on DVD and watching the raindrops roll down the windoes

Headed out for some lunch though to St Nicholas Market , just 10 minutes walk from the flat and on the way back from Brisol Central Library for some books to aid my recovery

St Nicks is the location of our lovely slow market on the first Sunday of the month. ,the market is a fantastic foodie heaven 6 days a week ( Monday – Saturday ) within 100 sq feet a huge range of tastes and flavours more little food shops opening all the time as well as an olive stall and Gert Lush cheese shop plenty of resaurants with small tables , its a rennaisance of the last five years .

Some of the little cafes

• Royce Rolls – Fantastic homemade vegetarian and vegan rolls and cakes
• Bristol Sausage Shop , super sausage sandwich (at least four choices daily including organic pork and buffalo) featuring posh gravy and mash of the day.
• Portuguese Taste – Portuguese cuisine to eat in or take away, hot specials include duck stew and homemade albondigas – succulent, spicy meatballs.
• Spice Up Your Life – Indian & Oriental Cuisine offers quality Indian and Asian specialities
• Pieminister – award winning festival favourites pie , mash and mushy peas
• Jamaican – salt fish fritters and rice and peas

We went for Al Madina ,a souk right in the heart of the city Moroccan & Mediterranean Cuisine cous cous, traditional lamb and chicken dishes, meatballs falafels . Starting with fresh mint tea , take that cold virus, falafels were off , probably sensible a little falafel cold turkey is neccessary before the summer festival season and the ramping up of my addiction . Instead we both had warm spicy Morroccan chicken with the fluffiest couscous vegetables and olive just delicious. Wish I had take a sample of spice – analysis doubt they will be giving up the recipe easily

Though I was tempted by baclava for desert I am pretending to be good quite coincidentally I had been making date balls on Friday , these are very handy for breakfast snacking and quite meditative to make . You can add extra ingredients e.g. goji berries , sultanas spices (
cinnamon , cloves ) its worth having an experiment a girl I met as a
festival used to add guarana powder and sell them at festivals as an
energy ball

Date Balls

500g of dates ( if dried soak in apple juice for a few hours)
50g of sesame seeds
50g of dessicated coconut

1. Remove the stones from the dates, these is easily done squeezing between your fingers
2. Warm a frying pan on the stove , add in the sesame seed and coconutto gently warm shaking occasionally , the coconut will become golden brown remove from the heat when you see this begging to happen but leave the ingredients in the pan they will continue to brown
3. Food process the dates , add the toasted seeds and mix together finally by hand
4. Place the remainder of toasted ingredients on a plate
5. Removing a heaped tablespoon of the date/seed mixture roll it in your hands to form a ball approx 2cm in diamter
6. Finally rolling it around in the toasted seeds and cocanut to cover
7. repeat