Eat Down the House: Dates, Cheese, and Sausage
My dear friends Kags and Lamiyah gave me some very fancy-looking dates from Dubai, UAE. I was deciding between eating them as they are or doing something with them; then I recalled a delicious appetizer I once had at Grange Kitchen — chorizo, dates, and blue cheese.
For my version, I am using lap cheong instead of chorizo. Lap cheong is Chinese sausage. According to Wikipedia, lap cheong is more commonly seen in Southern Chinese cuisine whereas a different kind of sausage (hong chang) is a specialty of Northeastern China
Oh, the things I learn! And while I am not a big fan of sausages (kielbasa, brats, breakfast sausages, hot dogs, etc), I love lap cheong. But don’t tell my mother, she says they are not healthy.
For some of the pieces, I also wrapped bacon around the dates. Everything is better with a little bacon, right? (Well, I actually preferred the bacon-less nuggets more.)
Eat Down the House: Dates, Cheese, and Sausage
Ingredients
8 dates, pitted
Gorgonzola cheese (or other blue cheese)
Lap cheong, cut into ¼ inch pieces
Bacon, cut in half (optional)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375-degrees F.
Stuff the cheese into the dates. Wrap a half-slice of bacon around the outside of the stuffed date and secure with a toothpick. Add a piece of lap cheong to each piece, through the toothpick.
Bake for 20 minutes, until bacon is crisp. If you are not using bacon, just bake for 10 minutes. Turn over once in the middle of baking for even cooking.
Other Recipes for Stuffed Dates:
- Giada De Laurentiis’ Cheese-Stuffed Dates with Prosciutto
- All Recipes’Bacon Wrapped Dates Stuffed with Blue Cheese
- TasteHongKong’s Stuffed Red Dates with Sticky Rice Balls
Eat Down the House items eaten: dates, lap cheong bought 2 years ago and now defrosted, gorgonzola cheese from a dinner party 2 weeks ago, bacon defrosted from the freezer from who-knows-when
