Tag Archives: Monica Pope

DATE WITH A PIG

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Houston chef Monica Pope used to serve an appetizer called Date with a Pig — a chorizo-stuffed date wrapped in bacon and drizzled with chermoula sauce.

Monica Pope’s Date with a Pig

They are ridiculously good, and happily, easy to make (assuming you made a batch of red chermoula sauce).  We prefer to make them with the hard Spanish chorizo, not the soft Mexican chorizo.  You can assemble them a few hours in advance, and bake when you’re ready to serve.

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DATE WITH A PIG
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Recipe type: Appetizer
 
Ingredients
  • 20 medjool dates
  • 1 Spanish chorizo sausage, casing removed, and cut into 20 1" x ½" pieces
  • 10 slices bacon, cut in half
  • Red chermoula sauce (see previous post)
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Cut a slit lengthwise in each date and remove pit. Stuff each date with a piece of chorizo, and wrap with bacon. Place in a baking dish, and bake until edges of bacon are crispy, approximately 15-20 minutes.
  3. When dates are done baking, swirl 2 tablespoons chermoula sauce into drippings and spoon over dates. Transfer dates to serving dish and serve warm.

Ready for a date with a pig?

Dare you to eat just one

RED CHERMOULA SAUCE

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Chermoula is a strongly-flavored Moroccan herb sauce.  I’ve only had it once, at one of Monica Pope’s former restaurants, and I was fascinated with the intense, dark red sauce.  I scoured the internet for a recipe, but there are a ton of different chermoula recipes, most of them are for green chermoula, and none were as good as Monica’s.  To my delight, I found her chermoula recipe in Green Beans and Guacamole, a collection of recipes from Houston’s top chefs.

The recipe makes quite a bit, and it keeps in the refrigerator for months.  I’m posting the slightly modified recipe for the chermoula, and the next two posts will be recipes for our favorite ways to use it — as a component of an appetizer, and with fish.  The sauce alone is not terribly photogenic, but I’m including a photo of a smear of it so that you can see the color and texture.

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RED CHERMOULA
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Recipe type: Sauce
 
Ingredients
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons chopped garlic
  • 1 cup cilantro, coarsely chopped
  • 1 cup parsley, coarsely chopped
  • ½ cup paprika
  • 1 tablespoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon ground cayenne
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • ½ cup olive oil
  • ¼ cup freshly-squeezed lime juice
  • 1-2 tablespoons water, as needed to thin to desired consistency
Instructions
  1. Place garlic, cilantro, parsley, paprika, cumin, cayenne, salt, and pepper in a food processor, and pulse until coarsely chopped. Add olive oil and lime juice, and process until a coarse paste forms. Add 1-2 tablespoons of water, as needed, to thin to a thick sauce consistency. Transfer to a jar and store in refrigerator until ready to use.

 

Great things await this intense sauce