Bacon-Wrapped Dates
A case study in stealing friends' recipes and passing them off as your own.
Say you have a friend who is a vegan. Say you are not very good at vegan cooking (beyond perhaps salad and hummus.) Say you feel that you are constantly disappointing said friend and/or forcing her to make difficult choices given your inability to remove dairy from your menu preparations.
Say that vegan friend decides that for one night only, she's going to eat as much bacon as she can keep down.
What would you take to the "Watch a Vegan Eat Bacon" party?
I know what I'd take.
Say you have a friend who is a vegan. Say you are not very good at vegan cooking (beyond perhaps salad and hummus.) Say you feel that you are constantly disappointing said friend and/or forcing her to make difficult choices given your inability to remove dairy from your menu preparations.Say that vegan friend decides that for one night only, she's going to eat as much bacon as she can keep down.
What would you take to the "Watch a Vegan Eat Bacon" party?
I know what I'd take.
Bacon-wrapped date, before
These, my friends, are Kovac's bacon-wrapped dates. They brought our annual Friendsgiving celebration to a screeching halt two years ago and have been my #1 Kovac request since. Dare I say, as pork-based bite-size appetizers in a funky package go, I might even like them better than sausage yummies.* And since Kovac wasn't going to be at this party, I had a responsibility to take these guys,** because everyone should have these at least once, and if you're a vegan again tomorrow, well, you've only got today.***
A bacon-wrapped, ricotta-stuffed date tastes like what happens when you get a little maple syrup on your sausage: smoky, sweet, unctuous. It's breakfast on a stick, really, and requires precious few ingredients to make. Granted, some specialized equipment makes the process faster: tweezers make extracting date pits a cinch, and using a pastry bag to squirt in filling mitigates what is sure to otherwise be a sticky mess. A few minutes in a very hot oven, and you're done.
And by the way, there's no hard and fast rule against making these for dinner. Or lunch. Or second breakfast.
Kovac's Bacon-Wrapped Dates
Burghilicious recipe piracy continues unabated! Yarrrgh!
20 dates
1/2 cup ricotta
A few grates of fresh nutmeg (or 1/8 tsp ground)
Salt and pepper, to taste
10 pieces of bacon, cut in half
Special equipment: Tweezers, a pastry bag and 20 toothpicks
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Use a small, sharp knife to cut an X in the end of each date. Squeeze the date open and use the tweezers to extract the pit, then flatten the inside of each date into a round cavity.
Mix together ricotta and nutmeg until very smooth, then season to taste with salt and pepper. Load the ricotta into a pastry bag fitted with a 1/4 inch round tip. Gently fill each date with ricotta. It's ok if a little oozes out. Wrap each ricotta-stuffed date with 1/2 slice of bacon and secure with a toothpick.
Roast the dates for 10-12 minutes, flipping halfway, until bacon in brown and cooked through. Bacon-wrapped dates are best hot, still delicious warm, and totally edible cold.
A bacon-wrapped, ricotta-stuffed date tastes like what happens when you get a little maple syrup on your sausage: smoky, sweet, unctuous. It's breakfast on a stick, really, and requires precious few ingredients to make. Granted, some specialized equipment makes the process faster: tweezers make extracting date pits a cinch, and using a pastry bag to squirt in filling mitigates what is sure to otherwise be a sticky mess. A few minutes in a very hot oven, and you're done.
And by the way, there's no hard and fast rule against making these for dinner. Or lunch. Or second breakfast.
Bacon-wrapped date, roasted to perfection
Kovac's Bacon-Wrapped Dates
Burghilicious recipe piracy continues unabated! Yarrrgh!
20 dates
1/2 cup ricotta
A few grates of fresh nutmeg (or 1/8 tsp ground)
Salt and pepper, to taste
10 pieces of bacon, cut in half
Special equipment: Tweezers, a pastry bag and 20 toothpicks
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Use a small, sharp knife to cut an X in the end of each date. Squeeze the date open and use the tweezers to extract the pit, then flatten the inside of each date into a round cavity.
Mix together ricotta and nutmeg until very smooth, then season to taste with salt and pepper. Load the ricotta into a pastry bag fitted with a 1/4 inch round tip. Gently fill each date with ricotta. It's ok if a little oozes out. Wrap each ricotta-stuffed date with 1/2 slice of bacon and secure with a toothpick.
Roast the dates for 10-12 minutes, flipping halfway, until bacon in brown and cooked through. Bacon-wrapped dates are best hot, still delicious warm, and totally edible cold.
*Please don't tell sausage yummies that I'm cheating on them.
**Passing them off as my own is simply a side benefit of fulfilling the responsibility of making sure the vegan ate some.
***There were also plenty of other gotta-have-it bacon dishes at the party, from chocolate gelato with candied bacon crumbles to pancakes-and-syrup cake with strips of bacon inside, to countless forms of bacon-wrapped-something. Needless to say, the vegan's house stank of bacon for days afterward.
**Passing them off as my own is simply a side benefit of fulfilling the responsibility of making sure the vegan ate some.
***There were also plenty of other gotta-have-it bacon dishes at the party, from chocolate gelato with candied bacon crumbles to pancakes-and-syrup cake with strips of bacon inside, to countless forms of bacon-wrapped-something. Needless to say, the vegan's house stank of bacon for days afterward.
Thanks for this post....I can't wait to try these with the ricotta. I have made bacon-wrapped dates for years, but I stuff them each with one toasted whole almond....always a hit! Thanks, again! Love the blog.
December 4, 2009, at 2:02 PMOMG do those look good. I've never been a date kind of guy, but these look like they are worth the effort. And these days anything with ricotta is something I like.
December 4, 2009, at 8:46 PMI happen to have dates, bacon & ricotta in the fridge right now!! Tonight's snack?!?!?
December 10, 2009, at 12:04 PMI found your blog searching for Chicken Phyllo Pie and wanted to see what else you had... Bacon in the latest post... I'm hooked!! THANKS!