3. Listen to the Rice Before You Cook It

Vera: Try this now, wherever you are. Take one grain of puffed rice, lay it on your palm and press it slowly with your thumb. Listen. It breaks with a tiny crack, like a twig snapping under frost.

Anton: That crack is the sound we want to keep. Listen to the rice before you cook it. If the grains are soft and silent, they are stale, and no syrup in the world will make them crisp again.

A School Fair, Many Summers Ago

Vera: The first time I heard that crack I was nine. My friend Hana sat beside me at school, at the desk under the window with the cracked pane, and her mother made honey rice squares for the summer fair.

Vera: That year she let the two of us help. We pressed the warm mixture into the tins with the backs of spoons while she stood guard at the stove, and we sold every square before the brass band had finished its first march. The whole schoolyard smelled of honey and hot butter, like a meadow in July.

Anton: And the money?

Vera: We spent it all on more puffed rice. Hana still sends me a card each summer with a small square drawn in the corner, coloured in gold.

The Pantry Shelf

Anton: In a hot land far to the south, rice is puffed at the roadside in great pans of hot sand. The grains swell and jump like seeds in a summer storm, and on festival days they are pressed together with dark palm sugar into sweet bricks.

Vera: Cora has found our box of puffed rice behind the flour, and Dani is guarding the honey jar on the shelf by the door. They both want to stir. Why both honey and sugar? Would honey alone not do?

Anton: Honey alone stays soft and tacky, like mud at the edge of a pond. Sugar gives the snap. Together they hold the grains firmly and still let them crackle.

Anton: The children will press the squares later. This recipe has one dangerous moment, and the grown-up keeps it.

At the Work Table

For 16 squares: 85 g puffed rice cereal (3 cups), 40 g butter (3 tablespoons), 85 g honey (1/4 cup), 50 g light brown sugar (1/4 cup) and a pinch of salt. A 20 cm (8 inch) square tin and a saucepan. Honey is not for babies under one.

Anton: A child lines the tin with baking paper and tips the puffed rice into a large heatproof bowl.

Anton: A grown-up melts the butter, honey, sugar and salt in the saucepan over a moderate heat, stirring, with the handle turned in towards the wall.

Anton: When the syrup bubbles all over, the grown-up lets it boil for one to two minutes. One minute gives chewy squares, two minutes firmer ones. Use a deep pan, because the syrup foams up high.

Vera: Hot sugar sticks to skin and burns deeply, so the children stand well back while it boils. They can still weigh everything, and watch from a chair set back from the stove. Watching is a lesson too.

Anton: A grown-up pours the syrup over the rice and stirs quickly with a wooden spoon until every grain is coated.

Anton: Wait three or four minutes. When the grown-up has checked that the bowl is only warm, a child presses the mixture firmly into the tin with the back of a spoon rubbed with a little butter, so nothing sticks.

Anton: Leave it to cool and set for an hour. A grown-up cuts it into 16 squares with a sharp knife. They keep for three days in a closed tin.

Vera: And if they crumble apart?

Anton: Then the syrup did not boil long enough. Eat the crumbs with a spoon, nobody minds, and give it a little longer next time.

Under the Kitchen Clock

Question: Dani wants to know why the syrup has to boil before it goes on the rice.

Answer: Boiling drives water out of the syrup. The less water is left, the harder the sugar sets as it cools, the way a puddle thickens into ice on a cold night.

Three quick questions. One: How can you tell that puffed rice is fresh? Two: Who pours the hot syrup? Three: How long do the squares set before cutting?

Answers. One: It cracks when you press it. Two: A grown-up. Three: One hour.

Vera: Cora is pressing her ear to a square. Still crackling, she says. And now she is thirsty.

Anton: Then a jug of cool roasted barley tea. It is made from toasted grain alone, with no leaves at all, so the children can drink as much as they like. It tastes a little like the crust of good bread.

Vera: Barley tea for the children, then, and a second cup for me by the window.

4. Nearly Two Thirds of a Date Is Sugar

Anton: Here is a number to keep. Nearly two thirds of the weight of a dried date is sugar, made by the palm tree from nothing but sunlight, water and air.

Vera: Nearly two thirds of a date is sugar? Then these rolls need no sugar from my cupboard at all.

Anton: Not a grain. The tree has done that work already, slowly, through a whole hot summer, and all we have to do is press its sweetness into a shape that small hands can hold.

Saturday, Before the Milk Arrives

Vera: Flora came in first today. She is sitting on the upturned crate by the stove, peeling the paper from a box of dates and counting them out loud, one for the bowl and one, I suspect, for herself.

Anton: Let her count. In the green oases of a dry land far to the south, where palms grow in rows beside the wells, children learn to count on dates long before they ever see a number written down.

Vera: And the coconut? Surely that is not from the desert.

Anton: No. That comes from warm shores where the sea is always close. Traders carried it inland on long journeys, and the two sweets met in the market, as travellers do.

Vera: How long does a date palm live?

Anton: Longer than most people. A palm planted by a grandfather may still be bearing fruit for his grandchildren, standing in the same patch of shade beside the same well, its leaves rattling like rain whenever the wind comes.

The Oasis Market, Long Ago

Anton: I worked one season in a bakery at the edge of an oasis town. Across the lane sat Amos, the date seller, under an awning of striped cloth, with his brass scales hanging from a beam of palm wood. Our ovens were lit long before dawn, because by noon the air in the lane was hotter than the oven's own breath.

Anton: Every afternoon he called me over and pressed a date into my hand. Soft as an earlobe means ready, he said. Hard as a pebble means give it a bath first. Sticky like summer honey means eat it now, before the flies decide for you.

Vera: Did he ever charge you?

Anton: Never once. On my last day he filled my cap with dates and told me to share them with whoever I baked for next. I suppose I am still doing that.

By the Pantry Door

Question: Flora asks why we do not add any sugar, when every other sweet seems to need it.

Answer: Dried dates already hold so much natural sugar that more would only hide their taste. The orange juice and the pinch of salt are there to wake that sweetness up.

Three quick questions. One: How much of a dried date is sugar? Two: What must every date be checked for? Three: How long do the rolls chill?

Answers. One: Nearly two thirds. Two: A stone. Three: Thirty minutes.

At the Work Table

For 14 small rolls: 200 g soft pitted dates (about 1 1/3 cups), 60 g desiccated coconut (2/3 cup), 1 tablespoon cocoa powder if you like, 1 tablespoon orange juice and a pinch of salt. No oven and no stove.

Vera: Some people with nut allergies also react to coconut, so anyone with an allergy should check every ingredient first.

Anton: A child splits each date open with clean fingers and looks inside for a stone. Then a grown-up checks them all again, because one hidden stone can crack a tooth.

Anton: If the dates are hard, leave them for ten minutes in warm tap water, never boiling, then drain them and pat them dry.

Anton: A grown-up chops the dates very finely with a sharp knife, or whizzes them in a food processor. The blade is for grown-up hands only.

Anton: A child mashes the chopped dates in a bowl with half of the coconut, the cocoa, the orange juice and the salt, using a fork, until the paste holds together when squeezed.

Anton: The children roll the paste into little logs as long as a finger, about 6 cm, and turn them in the rest of the coconut, like stones rolled in fresh snow.

Anton: Chill the rolls for 30 minutes. They keep for a week in a closed box in the refrigerator.

Vera: Could we use other dried fruit?

Anton: Soft dried figs or apricots work the same way. Dry ones need the warm bath, and figs need their hard little stalks snipped off.

Vera: Flora has made one shaped like a snail, and she is wrapping two more in a napkin for her little brother. Amos would have approved, I think.

Anton: He would have weighed it first. Then he would have eaten it.