When a fruit is also a tonic

An old Beijing courtyard home, Peking duck, Cantonese soups, Xinjiang. What do these all have in common? Jujubes, the Chinese red date.

It is totally unrelated to the sweet date palm from the Middle East in spite of the name. It is a fruit tree, Ziziphus jujuba, more related to the buckthorn. The tree has long been valued by the Chinese, and its dried fruits are standard pantry basics in almost every Chinese household.

They are added to soups for another level of fruity sweetness. They are boiled with brown sugar and ginger for a revitalizing drink. They are stuffed into breads as edible decorations, and cooked down to paste for some very classic Chinese pastries.

Of course, before they are dried, they are first enjoyed fresh.

My husband's early childhood was spent in a traditional courtyard house in Beijing where two jujube trees flourished. They were planted by his grandmother, who took immense pride in these fruit trees.

In spring, the trees would put out hundreds of tiny cream-colored flowers, insignificant and hard to spot among the lush new foliage. But in the still air of evening, they perfumed the courtyard, with a peculiar scent that would hint sweet fruit in a couple of months.

The spouse remembers the trees were too tall for the children to reach and when the fruits ripened, they had to wait for wind or rain to knock the jujubes down. Sometimes, an obliging adult would help.

The fresh fruits were crisp and sweet, and juicy enough. The harvested fruits always went back to grandma, who would portion out little bowls to each grandchild. The rest would be carefully dried in the sun and saved for cooking later.

The best jujubes in China are from Xinjiang in the northwest. The fruit here grow as large as eggs, compared to the thimble-sized jujubes from the rest of the country. Thanks to advanced logistics, these delicious jujubes are now available everywhere, and they are also exported to certain countries.

They are large, green and speckled with red-brown blotches with a small sharp pointed kernel. They tend to be crisp but dry and as you chew on the flesh, it dissolves on the tongue and becomes slightly starchy.

It is precisely this starchiness that makes them so good when dried.

In Beijing, the jujubes are often candied, or air-dried to a crisp. They macerate the jujubes in ejiao, which is a traditional medicinal tonic made out of donkey glue.

Beijing's signature roast duck also depends on the jujube for authenticity. To qualify as the genuine article, the duck must be roasted in a wood-fired oven using only jujube wood. Jujube wood gives the duck its characteristic fruity smokiness, as well as its burnished deep maroon color.

Dried Chinese jujubes are considered a warming food, a natural tonic, and it is often used in sweet soups that nourish body and soul.