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Search results for: onion bhajis

Onions, can you live without them?

15 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by Angie | Fiesta Friday in Cooking, Photography

≈ 85 Comments

Tags

food, onion bhajis, onion recipes, onions, photography, recipes, story, stuffed onions, vegetarian

onion & smoked gouda pizza
onion bhajis
stuffed onions
onions
vegetarian meal featuring onions

Bet you can’t. How many times do you start a recipe with sautéed onions? There, I rest my case. 

But onions don’t have to be just there to garnish or to give a taste to a dish; they can be the main ingredient, the star of the dish. In expert hands (not my hands), onions can turn from merely an ingredient into a meal. Think about an appetizer like onion rings or a soup like French onion soup. Undeniably onions play the lead role there.

Thinking along those lines, I posed a challenge to myself when I saw onions on sale for $1 a bag. Making a meal consisting of mostly onions. These self-imposed challenges have become recurring events in my kitchen. I’m not complaining, I actually love them. If recipes don’t turn out well, they’ll be forgotten and you’ll never hear of them. But when they do turn out well, I declare myself the winner and collect the trophy. An imaginary one, but it’s real. In my head.

So, once again I judged myself the winner of this particular challenge. Yay! Look at these onion recipes and tell me, can you live without onions?

stuffed onions
Stuffed Onions

This is another Ottolenghi recipe. Is there any other who can do with vegetables as well as he? I followed the directions pretty much, except where I noted.

3 cups vegetable stock
1 1/2 cups white wine
4 large onions
3 small tomatoes
3/4 cup fresh white breadcrumbs
2/3 cup feta, crumbled
2 tbsp finely chopped parsley
2-3 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
3 spring onions, thinly sliced
Salt and pepper
Butter for greasing

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. Prepare a buttered oven-proof dish.
3. Put the stock and white wine into a medium-sized saucepan, bring up to a boil, then turn down the heat to a simmer.
4. Trim off the top and bottom of the onions, then cut them in half lengthways. Remove the skin and carefully take out most of the insides, keeping only two or three layers of the outer skin of each onion intact.
5. Carefully separate the outer layers from each other and place, a few at a time, in the simmering stock. Cook for three to four minutes, until just tender, then drain well and leave to cool slightly. Repeat until all the onion has been blanched. Turn off the heat and keep the stock on one side.

Note:
Somehow I found it hard to separate the onion layers without tearing them, so I did this instead:

stuffing onions

I cut a sliver of the onion on one side, then plunge the whole onions in the simmering stock. And with a pair of tongs, pull off the layers as they loosen, much like what you do when you make stuffed cabbage. Much easier. And you get to use wider pieces of onion for rolling as well as the tender inner layers. The outer layers tend to be tough.

Also, I’m not sure how much flavor the wine really added to the dish, so I’m thinking you can do without. If there’s one criticism I have of Ottolenghi is that sometimes I feel his list of ingredients esoteric. This time it isn’t, just wasteful on the wine. You’re better off drinking the wine as you’re cooking. 🙂

6. Finely chop about one-third of the insides of the onions (About 1½ cups of choped onions.) The rest you will need to keep and use up in another dish.
7. To make the stuffing, use a coarse cheese grater to grate the tomatoes into a large bowl (you will be left with most of the skin in your hand; discard it). Add breadcrumbs, feta, parsley, oil, garlic, spring onion, chopped onion, salt and pepper. Mix well.

Note:
The only thing I did differently here was that I sautéed my chopped onions first.

8. Fill each onion skin with stuffing. Pull the sides together so that you end up with a fat cigar shape. Place seam-side down in the buttered dish.
9. Pour over about ⅓ cup of the stock, just enough to cover the bottom of the dish.
10. Bake for about 40 minutes, until soft and lightly coloured, with the stuffing bubbling. If the stock dries up during cooking, add a little more. After 40 minutes, take out onions, drizzle a little honey and dot with butter, return to the oven for an additional 10 minutes. (This part is all me. I like that caramelized look on the onions.)

onion bahjis
Onion Bhajis

So, so delicious! This one is a must try, if you don’t mind deep-frying. Along with the stuffed onions and basmati rice, these bhajis make for a perfect vegetarian meal.

4 cups thinly sliced onions
1 green chile (optional), seeded and thinly sliced
2 tbsp chopped cilantro (or parsley if you don’t like cilantro)
1 tsp cumin powder
2 tsp curry powder
Salt & pepper
2/3 cup besan flour (aka garbanzo bean flour)
1/3 cup rice flour
1/2 cup water

1. Mix all the ingredients together. It’s okay if mixture appears dry. You’re not making a batter, you just want everything to bind together so it doesn’t fall apart as it fries. I like mine loosely formed and irregular-shaped.
2. Drop by the spoonfuls into hot oil and fry until golden brown, flipping a couple of times.
3. Drain on paper towels. Served with chutney or raita.

onion & smoked gouda pizza
Onion & Smoked Gouda Pizza

Everybody was so good eating the vegetarian meal without complaint that I decided to reward them with a pizza. Still with onions. But it’s a pizza, that’s all that matters.

Pizza dough
2 medium onions, sliced thinly
5-6 slices bacon
2 cups shredded smoked Gouda (or mozzarella, if you prefer. I just happened to have gouda.)
Cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
Parsley

1. Preheat oven to 425° F.
2. Chop bacon slices and fry to render some of the fat. Drain and discard fat.
3. Sauté onions until translucent but not brown.
4. Roll your dough, and start layering the toppings, starting with the cheese, onions, bacon, and tomatoes. You can sprinkle a little more cheese on top.
5. Bake for about 15 minutes. Sprinkle top with parsley as soon as it comes out of the oven.

***

Speaking of onions, it reminds me of the time I was expecting my second child. Somehow the smell of onions made me sick, sicker than my morning sickness sick. We ordered in one night, fried rice from a nearby Chinese restaurant. Of course I requested no onion. When my husband came back with the food, I saw that he had been charged $3 for the “no onion.” I started bawling! Yes!

I told my husband to go back to the restaurant and demand the $3 back, even though he kept telling me not to sweat it. After all, it was only $3. You know the expression “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”? Well … obviously whoever coined that had not met a slighted pregnant woman. He did get his $3 back, and an apology.

I’m embarrassed thinking about it now. Whatever compelled me to react in such a manner? Must be hormones.

Onion plants, by the way, take a long time to mature. From seeds to bulbs, it can take up to 8 months. I know because I planted them a couple of years ago. I started the seeds in January and the onions didn’t get into harvest size until August. That’s the reason I haven’t planted onions ever again. But now that I’m talking about it, I feel like giving it another go. I’ll look into a fast maturing variety, if there is one. Does anybody know?

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(A Forager’s) Fiesta Friday #13

25 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by Angie | Fiesta Friday in Cooking, Edible Flowers & Weeds, Fiesta Friday, Foraging

≈ 119 Comments

Tags

appetizer, dandelion fritters, edible weeds, Fiesta Friday, Fiesta Friday #13, fritters, snack

forager's fritters the novice gardener

I seem to be hung up on the eff word. No, not THAT eff word! I’m talking about my last post and these words: Fiesta Friday, Forager’s Frittata, Forager’s French Toast, Farfalle Fungi… I thought about that last one, but decided against it. It was stretching it and getting predictable.

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Three ways with Brussels sprouts

17 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by Angie | Fiesta Friday in Cooking, Photography

≈ 81 Comments

Tags

awards, brussels sprouts, brussels sprouts fritters, brussels sprouts recipes, recipes, vegetables, vegetarian, vegetarian recipes

brussels sprouts recipes
brussels sprouts fritters
brussels sprouts thoran
fresh brussels sprouts
brussels sprouts
brussels sprouts three different ways

I’ve eaten Brussels sprouts maybe twice in my life, or thrice (is that still a word?). Okay, honestly, in all likelihood, I’ve probably eaten them more times than that, but I was just trying to stress how infrequently Brussels sprouts figure in my diet. Plus I wanted to say thrice.

Why I never thought about cooking and serving Brussels sprouts, I have no idea. It’s not like me to ignore cute, baby cabbages. Cute babies usually have a way of attracting my attention. Brussels sprouts, however, didn’t exactly pique my interest. My thought on them ran like this,”These are not as good as cabbage, these are bitter, and I wouldn’t know what to do with them.” Along those lines, pretty much.

But they’re everywhere right now, and I see that every blogger has done at least a recipe or two featuring them. A quick online research also reveals that they’re highly nutritional, more so than cabbage. In short, it’s time for me to put aside old, unfounded perceptions about the vegetable, and rise up to the challenge. Of coming up with clever ways to serve Brussels sprouts that the family, specifically the children, will appreciate.

Remember my motto? When in doubt, always baconize or fritterize. Well, apparently, I’ve found a third way. Thoranize. Let me show you.

brussels sprouts and spaghetti

Creamy Brussels Sprouts with Bacon
2 cups Brussels sprouts, sliced thinly
5 strips of bacon
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 cup light cream or half & half
Grated Parmesan cheese
Salt & pepper

1. Blanch Brussels sprouts in boiling water briefly, drain, set aside. This is an optional step. I was just trying to make the dish more son-friendly.
2. Cut bacon into small pieces, then fry until crisp. Remove from pan and set aside.
3. Sauté garlic in olive oil until fragrant, add sprouts, salt & pepper, and cook until Brussels sprouts are tender. If you didn’t blanch the sprouts, you may need to add a little water/stock.
4. Add bacon pieces, cream, and stir to mix.
5. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese.
6. Served with spaghetti or any pasta.

Brussels sprouts bhajis

Brussels Sprouts Fritters
Follow the recipe for Onion Bhajis to make these. In place of the onions, use a mix of shredded Brussels sprouts and some chopped onion.

brussels sprouts thoran

Brussels Sprouts Thoran
Cut the sprouts into quarters, and blanch them briefly. Then, follow my recipe for Turnip Leaves Thoran. I still think this is one of the most interesting and delicious ways of preparing vegetables. I would wager that very few vegetables wouldn’t improve served this way.

So there you have it, folks, the baconized, fritterized, and thoranized Brussels sprouts. All are worthy of being repeated at least thrice while Brussels sprouts are in season right now. Next year, Brussels sprouts will make their appearance in my garden, now that I know the family eats them without complaint.

***

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Recipes

appetizers, canapes, and pinchos
Appetizers & Snacks
1. Bruschetta & Crostini
2. Cheesy Crab-stuffed Jalapeño/Kataifi/Mushrooms
3. Chinese Dumplings
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pumpkin pull-apart bread
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2. Mini Bread Rolls
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4. Onion & Smoked Gouda Pizza
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peach rosette tartlet
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31. Tomato Tarte Tatin
32. Zucchini Hydrangea Cupcakes

lemon balm margarita
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fish fillet in turmeric lemongrass chili sauce
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persian jeweled rice with pomegranate
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roasted cornish hens in pomegranate sauce
Meat
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red green chimichurri
Sauces, Dressings & Relishes
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clam chowder2
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5. Soupe au Pistou (2)
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oven fritti
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1. Brussels Sprouts Fritters
2. Brussels Sprouts Thoran
3. Carrot Salad
4. Chinese Chicken Salad
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6. Corn Pudding
7. Green Beans Goma Ae
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13. Stuffed Onions
14. Taters ‘n’ Turnips
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16. Veggie Scraps Pizza

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