Haleq

Our family's traditional Haroset is made with date honey (Haleq, Eng pron: hullake) mixed with chopped walnuts. Haleq is mentioned in the writings of the Ben Ish Hai. Making it is a little labour intensive, but we can't get ourselves to compromise with any other kind of Haroset. This stuff is liquid gold!

4kg of stoned dates in a large pan.

Add water and boil to a pulp (adding more water as you go to prevent burning). As the dates swelled up I moved half of the mixture to a second pan.

Our trusty Boots Wine Press makes squeezing the juice out of the pulp a cinch. (Well, it's still pretty time consuming, but it doesn't hurt your hands the way squeezing hot pulp through a pillowcase does.)

The cakes of date leftovers are pretty tasteless and I discard them, but I know that the real pros add water, boil again, and press a second time.

Simmer the resultant liquid gently for several hours

When it is reduced to less than half, and the froth turns an orange colour it's ready. Leave to cool and then bottle.

Done! 4kg of dates yielded just under 2 litres of Haleq.