I wouldn't say bacon makes everything better, but it can easily take a dish from good to great, and in most cases a dish is better off with it than without it. I had a great appetizer last week at one of my favorite restaurants that combined pancetta (bacon Italiano) with grilled peaches, duck stock, a balsamic-type condiment called saba, and mascarpone cheese. SO GOOD.
And yet, there are whispers around the interwebs about whether bacon has jumped the shark, since there are foodie folks who will analyze every single aspect of food preparation/sourcing/eating/policy into the ground if you let them. I've been known to overanalyze a few things in my time, but I've got a pretty live-and-let-live attitude when it comes to food. What else would you expect from someone whose average month's consumption includes Lean Pockets and seared ahi tuna, foie gras and Cheetos, coq au vin and hoagies? I've got no soapbox.
Bacon is what you make of it, and what you make with it. We don't need to analyze it more than that.
My favorite appetizer -- a standby for parties at our house -- is the bacon-wrapped date, a perfect little package of sweet-salty-creamy warmth. As with many of my recipes, it doesn't have to be followed too exactly. Some kind of cheese, some kind of date, some kind of bacon. A little time in the oven. Some kind of wonderful.
It starts, as many great things do, with five little words: first, you take some cheese.
(this one is a Cambozola, or Oregonzola, or one of those -zolas) The classic way to make these is to mix crumbled bleu cheese with mascarpone for just the right mix of pungent sweetness and pipe the mixture into the center of the pitted dates from a bag with a cut-off corner, but that can be tricky. If the bleu cheese crumbles are too big, they'll clog your piping bag. If the temperature is too cold, the stuff won't squeeze. If it's too warm, it'll go liquid. For that reason, if this is your first time out, you may want to cut slim sticks of a softish cheese instead, and just tuck those straight into the dates. The -zola above was fine, though I left most of it in the fridge while I worked, since it went soft quickly. What you really want is a cheese that doesn't melt until it gets hot. Mozzarella, muenster, provolone, these would all work. Gruyere, maybe. Parmesan, no. Once the dates are filled, all you have to do is wrap bacon around the outside, cutting off the excess part of the strip (the sharper your knife the better) and using it for the next date, securing the end of the bacon with a toothpick as you go. (you'll figure out quickly how much bacon it takes to wrap each date; these are each about 1/3 of a strip of Niman Ranch bacon from Trader Joe's) These are also great for a party since you can do this step the night before, store them in the fridge overnight covered in plastic wrap, and then pop them into the oven 10 minutes or so before guests arrive. Bake in a 400-degree oven on a rimmed cookie sheet covered in foil -- these throw off a lot of grease and you don't want to set your oven on fire. Not that I've ever done that. While making these, anyway. (Don't ask me about the musakhan.) Bake a few minutes on each side, turning with tongs. It'll be obvious when they're ready -- the bacon crisps up and shrinks in, pulling the whole package into a compact bite. If the bacon still looks flabby, leave them in a little longer. Note: do not serve at a party with vegetarians in attendance, as this makes your whole house smell like OMG SO MUCH BACON, and that's just rude. Sadly, I do not have any pictures of these actually cooked, since once they're out of the oven, they never last very long.
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