Dates Warmed in Olive Oil with Sea Salt

I'm participating in the Whole Life Challenge and because I chose the advanced nutrition rules, my occasional dark chocolate for dessert is out.  But dates are a wonderful, wholesome, sweet snack and can make a delightful dessert.

A co-worker mentioned that he ate this at a Seattle restaurant and he and his wife made them when they were on a Whole 30 challenge.  I had a 2 pound box of dates from Costco and a sampler of Oregon Olive Mill oil, so I decided to make them myself.  Its not hard, only takes a few minutes and really showcases the ingredients. For this recipe, use the best quality oil and salt that you have, it will really make everything pop.

Oregon Olive Mill grows olives in the Willamette Valley on a fourth generation farm.  They harvest their own olives and them mill them in their own mill.  They have 13,000 trees that grow 3 varieties of olives making a top quality extra virgin olive oil.  Each variety yields an oil with a different taste, mouth feel and importantly, an after taste.   For this recipe, I used the Tuscan Extra Virgin Olive oil, because it had the most robust taste.

I used San Juan Island Sea Salt, a local Pacific North-West manufacturer of sea salt from our very own Salish Sea.  I got a sample of this salt at the International Food Blogger's Conference and it is a favorite of mine.   The salt has a brighter, crisper flavor than the french sea salts and is in much finer crystals than the Tibetan pink salt.  When I'm finishing something and want to taste the salt, this is the one I use.

I think that having a tasting party of olive oils, salts, wine, whisky or chocolate would be a pretty cool thing to do. Not all at once, but maybe a series of parties. Hmm, ideas...

Dates Warmed in Olive Oil with Sea Salt
less than 10 minutes

Ingredients

1-1/2 Tablespoon of your best olive oil
3 - 4 dates, pitted
Sea salt, fine grained, best quality

1. Warm the olive oil in a small pan, over medium heat. You don't want the oil to get warm like you'd cook meat with it, but just warm.
2. Put the pitted dates in the olive oil and gently roll them in the olive oil.  Do this until the dates are warmed through, 3 or 4 minutes.
3. Once the dates are warmed, put them on a plate and give them a generous sprinkle of sea salt.
4. Serve and enjoy!

Disclaimer: Other than the sampler of the Oregon Mill Olive Oil, I was not compensated for this post. The opinion and recipe are my own.  And if I wasn't paleo, I'd be dipping bread in this oil and just eating it that way. It's that good.