Jujube

The jujube, or Chinese (red) date, is the small drupe of Ziziphus jujuba, a thorny deciduous tree of the buckthorn family that has been cultivated in China for some four thousand years. Roughly olive-sized and shaped like a little date, the fresh fruit is glossy green ripening to mahogany-red, crisp and snappy like a tiny apple, juicy and mildly sweet-tart. Left to cure it shrivels into the famous hongzao — a wrinkled, leathery, deep-red dried fruit that is intensely sweet, chewy and date-like, smelling of apple, honey and brown sugar. Despite the "date" name it is unrelated to the true date palm; it is one of the cornerstone fruits and tonic ingredients of Chinese, Korean and Middle Eastern kitchens.