— Ellen Kumler

Okay, so when it comes to the fruit paste, right, which is an example of a whole food sweetener, our recommendation is to make your own. So whether it's dates or blueberries or apricots or something else that you might be using, get your, your dried fruit and mix it with a minimum amount of water to get it to blend in, whatever, you know, tool or, or equipment you're using. And then you've got date paste, okay? And then from there, you can adjust the consistency, um, by adding, you know, more water and, and, and, uh, kind of move forward from there. Now, in terms of making substitutions to a recipe, this, you, you introduce a, a great topic. So I'll take a, a little tangent here and spend a, a brief moment in time talking about substitutes. And the first thing that comes to mind for me always is if you don't have an ingredient, first of all, think of its function in that recipe. And an item could be used as a sweetener, you know, it could lend sourness or saltiness, or it could, you know, add structure. So there are, you know, a number of different functions that an ingredient can, can, uh, um, can have. And very often it's multiple functions at the same time. And so in the case of, um, d dates in a date Paste, they lend sweetness, but they also add a certain flavor, uh, along with that sweetness. So you want to think about, you know, how you can replace both of those aspects of that single ingredient. And often that requires more than one ingredient. Um, as, as your substitutions, sometimes we can nail it with one, but, uh, sometimes it, it also requires more than one ingredient, uh, for our consideration. And in the case of something like dates, it's got, uh, this rich earthiness, you know, these calmly sort of notes. And so you might, uh, you know, consider a, some sort of a, a brown sugar. Uh, if you, if it's tomato products, then maybe it's gonna be a, a caramelized, uh, tomato product where you're bringing out some of the, uh, the sweetness and that those rich earthy notes, it's not gonna be exactly the same as dates, of course, but you wanna start to mimic as much as you can, the different facets of the complexity of flavor that dates provide you. Okay? So, you know, tomatoes also add, add a lot of acidity. I typically don't get that from, uh, dates, at least not in an obvious way. Okay? So, you know, you, you think about, uh, maybe combining a more tomato paste with, uh, brown sugar, you know, of, of any sort, whether it's jy or pinot and ci or something else from around the world. Um, and then you say, you know, uh, can I simply omit it? Sure, you can always try a recipe by omitting an ingredient, so long as it's not one of the key ingredients that add structure or the main taste or significant flavor, because the recipe will fall apart at that point. So, um, you know, keep that in mind, but otherwise, sure, you can try to omit something and just see how you like the end product. Um, at the end of the day, uh, you can, you know, you have license to make any changes you want to a recipe, it's just gonna be up to you and your audience as to whether or not you like the finished product. Um, but this is where a lot of learning takes place as well, right? When you make substitutions for whatever reasons, um, whether it's because you don't have the item, because you don't have enough of the item, you know, because there is a, uh, health concern associated with the item. And, and so you make these changes and you, you'll learn a lot about ingredients and about cooking in general.