Goat Cheese Stuffed Dates
Medjool dates stuffed with herbed goat cheese and wrapped in bacon — an ancient Middle Eastern fruit (cultivated for 9,000 years) paired with one of humanity's oldest dairy foods (goats domesticated over 10,000 years ago), finished with a very American touch.
- 12Medjool dates(pitted)
- 4 ozgoat cheese(softened)
- 1 tbspfresh herbs(thyme, rosemary - minced)
- 6 slicesbacon(halved)
- 1 tbsphoney(for drizzling)
- freshly cracked black pepper
Can be assembled ahead. Bake just before serving.
- 1Preheat oven to 400°F
- 2Mix goat cheese with herbs
- 3Make slit in each date and remove pit if present
- 4Stuff each date with goat cheese mixture
- 5Wrap each stuffed date with bacon half, secure with toothpick
- 6Place on wire rack set over baking sheet
- 7Bake 15-20 minutes until bacon is crispy
- 8Drizzle with honey and black pepper
- 9Let cool slightly before serving - filling will be hot
Medjool dates are larger and softer than other varieties. Don't overstuff or cheese will ooze out. Thin-cut bacon crisps better. The wire rack allows bacon to crisp all around. Let cool slightly - the cheese filling gets very hot. Remove toothpicks or warn your date.
This appetiser quietly spans the entire span of human agriculture. The date palm has been cultivated in the Middle East and North Africa for at least 7,000 years — Wikipedia confirms archaeological evidence from Mehrgarh in present-day Pakistan dating to around 7000 BCE, with evidence from eastern Arabia placing cultivation even earlier, around 5530–5320 BCE. Dates were among the most important foods of the ancient Near East, a concentrated source of calories, sugar, and nutrition that could be dried, stored, and traded across long distances. The Medjool variety — larger, softer, and more intensely flavoured than most commercial dates — nearly disappeared from cultivation before a 1927 United States Department of Agriculture rescue mission sent Walter Swingle to Morocco, where nine offshoots were collected and transplanted to California, establishing what became the modern American Medjool date industry. The goat cheese served inside these dates comes from an even older food tradition. The domestic goat (Capra hircus) was one of the first animals ever domesticated by humans, with archaeological evidence from the Zagros mountains of Iran and Iraq placing this event approximately 10,000–11,000 years ago. Goat milk cheese — soft, tangy, and highly perishable — is among the oldest dairy foods, with evidence of goat cheese production documented from approximately 6,000–7,000 BCE in the Fertile Crescent and Anatolia. The pairing of sweet dried fruit with salty fresh cheese is an ancient flavour principle deeply embedded in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine. The modern American addition of smoky bacon wrapped around the outside — the sweet-salty-savoury three-part harmony that made this a party staple from the 1990s onward — added a New World dimension to a very ancient combination.