Blood Orange Date Filled Wontons

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A fond, childhood recipe is updated with some blood orange and made healthier by baking. Blood Orange Date Filled Wontons are deliciously sweet and crunchy. They’re the perfect end to a delicious Asian meal; or any meal for that matter.

This is the last day for #TripleSBites! We had 20 bloggers, 11 sponsors, and over 100 recipes being served up the this past week. Organized by Camilla over at Culinary Adventures with Camilla, it was definitely one tasty event. If you missed any of it, SHAME ON YOUR!  But, you’re in luck!  

Growing up, we didn’t have a lot of money to splurge on take-out food. Domino’s and the occasional Chinese food was about it. It was for special occasions like birthdays, milestones at school, things like that. We just didn’t have the money to spend on what was frivolous items like that. Heck, we didn’t even have the mac and cheese from the box. And Rice-a-Roni? Nope. Too expensive and we can make better at home.

Eventually, we found many buffets that had everything we needed or wanted to eat for a reasonable price, especially seafood and Chinese food. There was Chesapeake Bay Seafood House that had all you can eat crab legs, popcorn shrimp, scallops, etc. And then Hunan Moon I think it was? They had THE BEST dumplings. Strange enough, I haven’t ordered dumplings in forever. I should change that.

 

But I digress…

Growing up was about cooking and not ordering in. We had a couple of Chinese or Asian cookbooks that were pulled out when we decided to make take out for dinner. The little yellow Chinese cookbook was a prominent source for information on egg drop soup, wonton soup, Kung Pao Chicken, Moo Goo Gai Pan (my personal favorite growing up), egg rolls, chicken with walnuts, and anything Asian we could easily cook in our little kitchen. Mom made THE.BEST egg rolls! I used to love nibbling on one for breakfast the next day. I come of the dinner for breakfast generation. Or was that just our house?

I loved those times in the kitchen watching Dad make the stir-fry or the soup and helping Mom with the egg rolls and these delicious gems; date filled wontons. They were the perfect and simple dessert to conclude our home cooked take-out meals at home. To be frank, I don’t really know how they came about. I never asked. I’m not sure if they were made up or actually from a recipe. It doesn’t really matter. Either way, they’re delicious and you will agree after you make some.

Dates. They’re like dried apricots, for me. I could easily pound a bag of them. They’re super sweet, full of delicious goodness and are the perfect snack food. I’m sure some of you have put them in raw energy bites or some sort of healthy truffle as a binder. I see those recipes and are almost sad for the dates. They lose their identity on those recipes. Dates by themselves are simply delicious. I highly suggest just noshing on one straight out of the bag.

Now, for me, my memory entails a brick of dried dates that we had to reconstitute or at least soften with some liquid. For those that have attempted to use tamarind, this is what I remember dates to be like. Of course, that was decades ago.  Thankfully, today, they’re so much easier to cook with.   Now, dates are readily available to nibble on or cook with straight out of the package.

But, since I remember Mom having to microwave those babies, I thought I’d maintain the same tradition with a twist. The dates really do need to be softened for this recipe, but this time, I thought I’d add some delicious flavor in the blood oranges. The super sweetness of the dates is cut by the citrus flavor of the blood oranges.  Blood oranges are not tart, mind you.  They just bring enough citrus flavor to the party to brighten the flavor of the dates.