Description: The date-plum is a fruit tree, a poor relative of the famous „kaki tree", originally from West Asia and cultivated in Europe in the middle of the 15th century. This irrefutable fact confirms how imaginative the interpretation is, that the fruits of date-plum were the vital food of the legendary Lotus Eaters, mentioned by Homer.
Understanding, very curious, is to believe that St. Andrew was crucified on this tree; hence the tradition of Rome to sell the fruits of Diospyros for the feast of St. Andrew and to call the tree "wood of Saint Andrew" or even "holy wood". It is worth mentioning that our plant belongs to the same family of the famous ebony and so its wood, although of lower quality than the ebony itself, was and is highly regarded for carpentry works.
The fruit, a fleshy berry, as large as the cherry and similar in the taste of the kaki, is cooked and eaten with sugar. With the same fruit you can get a stimulating liquor, which is preferably drunk on the rocks in the summer in order to emphasize the sugary qualities and the slightly astringent properties of the fruit.
Ingredients: - a couple of handfuls of date-plum fruits - 1 liter of Grappa - nutmeg - a pinch of ginger
Preparation: The preparation of this grappa is very simple because you must just insert a couple of handful of fruit together with little nutmeg and a pinch of ginger in a litre of Grappa. The whole operation will be performed in late autumn, that is when the fruit is ripe, so that after filtration and aging, which must be eight months, the liquor may be consumed the following summer.
