Dates Wrapped in Bacon

Guests on a diet won’t approve, but the cookbook 1080 Recipe’s description of Dates Wrapped in Bacon was amazing enough for me to risk it recently. Crispy and savory on the outside, soft and sweet on the inside, this was delicious and quick to make. The directions? Wrap dates in bacon and fry in peanut oil.

Inherent in those directions are buying dates instead of figs, like I did. It worked, although I think the figs were a bit too big for bite-sized treats. Oopla! Next time: actual dates.

No harm done. They were eaten up before they could get cold.

Reprint: Zingerman’s Bacon Brunch

In the spirit of sharing Zingerman’s experiences, I’m reprinting this blog post from March 28, 2009. (Isn’t it sweet? It was so long ago that my husband was only my fiancé.)

That was one amazing bacon brunch.

The Buttermilk Biscuits with Chocolate-Bacon Gravy remains on the brunch menu, so you can try it for yourself. We’ve had it a few times and it is always stellar. With the recent publication of Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon, you can be assured that there will future bacon-related events.

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I am now a Zingerman’s convert. I resisted for a while (if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know I generally avoid agreeing with crowds), but after eating bacon-enhanced food for two hours at today’s Bacon & Brunch with Ari Weinzweig, I’m in with Zingerman’s.

The brunch and Ari’s talk on bacon, was co-sponsored by the Ann Arbor Book Festival. In May, Ari will be on a panel with other foodie authors discussing his book, Guide to Better Bacon: Stories of pork bellies, hush puppies, rock’n’roll music and bacon fat mayonnaise.

The meal started out with Zingerman’s Bakehouse Bacon-Cheddar Scones and American Fried Bread. The bread was fried in, you guessed it, bacon fat. I have never eaten a more luscious piece of fried bread in my life. (My fiancé noticed a few people at the end looking in the baskets for more bread and snatching an extra piece or two.)

We were then treated to South Carlolina Gold Rice Grits and Bits Waffle and Hangtown Fry (eggs with bacon and oysters mixed in) with Bacon Hash. The hash was particularly smooth and bursting with flavor. The waffles had crispy bacon bits on top. The bacon fat, which was the base for most of what we ate this morning, absorbs the flavors of the other ingredients and allows them to blossom.

Don’t fret, vegetarians. There was a tofu bacon option for you.

Then we had a bacon tasting. Now, I might not have found a physician in Ann Arbor yet, but I’m sure she wouldn’t have approved of a plate of bacon. Still, this morning was like a bacon holiday, so who was I to resist?

I had no idea that there were so many different kinds of bacon. I know that my father likes thicker slices of bacon and I tend to buy the less smoky organic bacon at Trader Joe’s. Ari talked about customers who know about different kinds of cheeses and wines, but have a hard time describing their favorite bacon. He suggested buying a variety of types of bacon and serving them at home to guests. (Is it too late to change our wedding menu to include more bacon?)

My favorite was Benton’s. It is the second to the last one on the plate. It originates in eastern Tennessee and is dry cured and smoked over hickory.

We ended with Buttermilk Biscuits with Chocolate-Bacon Gravy. My goodness, these were delicious. While I tried to hold back and not finish each plate offered, I wanted to lick this plate clean. The sweet-savory flavors shut off all my other senses so I could focus on the striking taste. It reminded me of the sweet-sour combination of a sea salt caramel, only chocolate was involved.

Throughout the meal, Ari shared his expertise with bacon. He shared some personal stories along the way. Ari grew up in a Kosher household and remembers eating fairly unremarkable beef bacon as a child. Most of the food that he sells at Zingerman’s is something he discovered, rather than something he grew up with.

About bacon’s importance, Ari stressed, “bacon is to North American cooking what olive oil is to Mediterranean food.” According to his research, bacon has been big since the beginning in America. It crosses almost all ethnic and cultural (although not religious) lines. The Europeans brought bacon with them and even influenced the Native American cooking. In the South, he said, you will almost always find a jar of bacon fat by the stove (not refrigerated) and it would be eaten in all seasons.

Zingerman’s kindly shared recipes from the upcoming book. I know I can’t wait until the book comes out to read more.

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Have you eaten at Zingerman’s? I’d love your thoughts on your experience.

Sweet Fusion by Guest Blogger Mauro Feletti

Thank you to Mauro Feletti for his wonderful recipe from Romagna, Italy. You are welcome to contact him at mauro(dot)feletti(at)gmail(dot)com. Here, he describes how to cook shrimp wrapped in Italian lardo.

What is lardo? Lardo is cured fat. Yes, it essentially means lard in English, but it is a much more delicious version. Think about the white streaks in proscuitto. That’s lardo.

Sweet Fusion

This recipe comes from my homeland of Romagna. It is located along the coast of the Adriatic Sea in the Emilia-Romagna Region of Italy. While it is notorious as a land of sins and sinners, is also the homeland to a number of tasty and curious food delicatessens like Tagliatelle al ragu, Passatelli in brodo, Strozzapreti, Piadina, Brodetto di pesce. Romagna is a land of mixed food traditions as it has access to the sea, country and hills.

Below, I offer a sweet fusion of these different souls. My grandfather was a sailor and with his trabaccolo (trabaccalo is a type of Adriatic Sea sailing coaster) he carried wood and the precious white marble out from Istria. My father was a fisherman, but sailing is not the only passion he gave me; I learned to cook very early at home. The first recipe for the friends of “fare la scarpetta” is as simple as it is flavorful. I named it Sweet Fusion because when the lardo dissolves in the heat, the shrimp and lardo embrace each other in a sweet melt of flavors. I love this recipe also because it is easy and quick. The result is so unexpected that it will be a real discovery for who dislike complicated recipes.

Ingredients
• shrimp - 450 gr./1 lb

• Lardo (an alternative you can use is unsmoked streaky bacon), 100 gr./0,25 lb about 15 sliced paper thin.

How to make the Sweet Fusion

Clean the shrimps and remove the shell cover each shrimp with a slice of lardo (unsmoked streaky bacon.)

Preheat oven to 180°/400 degrees F.

Set the shrimps on a baking tin and bake for 10 minutes, no more.

Stay close to the oven, the cooking takes few minutes, when the lardo starts dissolving and embrace the shrimp it’s time to take it out.

Remove the shrimp from the oven, place on a platter and serve warm. Serves two.

Buona scarpetta a tutti!