Dátiles con Bacón

The tapas counter's bacon-wrapped dates, each fruit stoned and given a Marcona almond, wrapped in streaky bacon and roasted hard until the fat crisps and the date collapses

Origin: Elche and Alicante, Spain

From the journey of Date.

Europe grows dates in exactly one place, and it is twenty minutes inland from Alicante. The palmeral of Elche runs to something like two hundred thousand trees in and around the town, planted first by Carthaginian settlers, maintained under the Roman colony of Ilici, and given the irrigation system that survives by Andalusi engineers in the tenth century. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2000 and it is the northernmost commercial date grove on earth. Dátiles con bacón makes no claim to antiquity and should not. It is a twentieth-century tapa, found from Alicante to Bilbao, and its Spanish appeal is entirely the appeal of salt against sugar: a stoned date, an almond pushed into the cavity, a rasher of streaky bacon wound round the outside, and fierce heat until the fat has rendered and gone crisp and the fruit inside has slumped into something close to caramel. What is worth noticing is that the operation is not new at all. Apicius has a Roman cook drawing the stone from a date, setting a nut in its place, and rolling the fruit in salt before glazing it in honey. The Maghreb does the same thing with almond paste for a wedding. Spain does it with a rasher and a hot oven and calls it a bar snack. The fruit, the nut, and the salt are the same three elements in all three, separated by two thousand years. The almond is not incidental either. Alicante is almond country as well as date country, and a Marcona, short, round, and high in oil, is what a Spanish cook would reach for.

Ingredients

Dates

  • 16 soft dates (Medjool, or Elche dates if you can find them), whole

Filling

  • 16 Marcona almonds, blanched and unsalted

Wrapping

  • 8 rashers streaky bacon, unsmoked, cut in half across

To cook

  • 1 tbsp olive oil

To finish

  • 0.5 tsp smoked paprika (pimentón dulce), optional
  • 2 tbsp Pedro Ximénez sherry, optional

Method

  1. Slit each date along one side and remove the stone, keeping the fruit otherwise whole. Push a Marcona almond into the cavity and close the date around it.
  2. Cut each rasher of bacon in half across so you have sixteen short pieces. Stretch each one out with the back of a knife on a board.
  3. Wrap a piece of bacon round each date, overlapping the ends underneath, and secure with a cocktail stick pushed through.
  4. Heat the oven to 220C (fan 200C, gas 7). Lay the wrapped dates seam side down on a rack set over a roasting tray and brush lightly with olive oil.
  5. Roast for twelve to fifteen minutes, turning once, until the bacon is deep gold and crisp at the edges and the dates have visibly softened.
  6. If you are using the Pedro Ximénez, pour it into the hot tray or pan for the last thirty seconds and turn the dates in it so that it reduces to a glaze.
  7. Remove the cocktail sticks or leave them in for serving, dust with smoked paprika if using, and serve immediately while the bacon is still crisp.

Notes

The dates should be soft. A dry date stays chewy under the bacon and the contrast that the dish exists for is lost. Blue cheese instead of the almond is a very common Spanish variation, usually a Cabrales or a Valdeón. It is excellent and it is not the Alicante version. Unsmoked bacon is the right choice. Smoke competes with the caramel note of the date and generally wins. Elche dates are sold locally in Spain and rarely exported. Medjool is the practical substitute and gives a very similar result.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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