Merguez Dates

Bizarre? It would be if you used the sort of dates which people of a certain age remember as an early Proustian whiff of Christmas past, squeezed into a box the size and shape of a rodent’s coffin, sticky with sugar and clustered around a plastic fork. But here we use fresh dates that are not sweet at all. The dates are stoned and the merguez mixture, traditional in North African sausages, is spooned into the cavities before they are egged, crumbed and deep-fried. They make great mezze and