How did I miss this in the bounty of onion ideas we’ve been sending your way? Hope you still have a few onions to experiment with.
Bread and Butter Pickled Onions
Onions
Caramelized Sweet Onions – in a slow cooker
We’ve posted a stovetop version of caramelized onions. Here’s one more way to make them, this time in a slow cooker. If you start them in the morning on a day when you’ll be home, you can just check on them periodically and they’ll be done some time before you’re ready to go to sleep.
Use your caramelized onions to top any piece of grilled meat, stir into sour cream or yogurt to make onion dip, sauté some potatoes and top with onions, stir into steamed squash, use them as a condiment on any sandwich …. they’re really versatile. And delicious.
Caramelized Sweet Onion Tarte Tatin
This is a really simple recipe with a huge wow factor. If you keep a box of puff pastry in your freezer, you’re golden. You do keep puff pastry in your freezer, don’t you? It’s adapted from a recipe I first saw in Southern Living. For the prettiest tart, use the smallest onions you’ve got on hand. But really, it works with any size onion, just cut the onions into quarters or even eighths. The idea is to line the bottom of the skillet with onions in a pretty pattern so when you turn it upside down (after it’s cooked, of course), it’s a gorgeous pattern of rich, brown, buttery onions with crisp pastry on the bottom. Easy. Delicious, Impressive.
Pickled Onions
Feeling overwhelmed with members of the onion family? A miserable year for a number of crops has been a fantastic year for onions and garlic. I hear there are more in our future. There can never be too many onions or too much garlic for me.
Onions are easy, easy, easy to pickle and they’ll keep for months. They’re a traditional topping for tacos, but they’re great on any sandwich or chopped up into a salad. Red onions are the traditional onion for pickling but who says you can’t use white ones?
Caramelized Sweet Onions
For use in Caramelized Onion and Swiss Popovers, or anywhere else that strikes your fancy (grilled cheese sandwiches, a topping for burgers, with grilled steaks or pork chops, in quiches or tarts…use your imagination and have fun with them!)
Caramelized Onion and Swiss Popovers
Speaking of gorgeous onions, how great that the onions have not succumbed to the torrential downpours? Love this recipe from Southern Living’s May 2013 issue. Hope someone out there likes to bake besides me and the Mellow Bellies Rogue Baker.
This recipe will use up a bunch of onions and they are wonderful in more than just these popovers. Use them in sandwiches, top anything you grill, stir them into sour cream and make what a friend calls “Czechoslovakian Onion Dip” (the joke being that it’s so exotic that it’s far beyond the old standard French onion dip), put them on any kind of flatbread as a crostini ….. the possibilities are endless. It’s a great thing to have in your refrigerator.
Onion Pie
A recipe from www.tasteandtellblog.com, based on one they found on the Food Network website.
Easy Lemon Basmati Rice with Green Onions and Parsley
Hmmm …. guess I’m on a green onion binge. Well, here’s one more idea.
I’m spending a lot of time at my main job looking at magazines that focus on health. I’ve really come to appreciate little Prevention magazine and you’re also going to be seeing a lot of their recipes this year. This one comes from their book “Quick and Healthy Low-Fat Cooking.”
Pickled Spring Onions
First, a warning. You’re going to get lots of pickle recipes this year. Not sure why, but I’m on a pickling binge. And you can pickle anything. Really. These are going to be refrigerator pickles – really just seasoned vegetables that you can keep refrigerated for up to a month or so. Lots of health benefits from pickles and fermented vegetables, so I hope you’ll enjoy them.
Justin Burdett of Miller Union demonstrated this recipe at the Peachtree Road Farmers Market just about a year ago. Put up some of those pretty green onions you got today. Won’t be long before they’ll just be a fond memory.
Justin called for champagne vinegar, which sounds a bit more decadent that it really is. It’s pretty reasonably priced, but you could substitute white wine vinegar or even apple cider vinegar and still get good results. He also cools the brine before pouring it over the vegetables – that keeps the green onions from turning olive green right away and preserves the fresh flavor a little more. Since the green onions are tender, they don’t need even the little bit of cooking that happens when you pour boiling liquid over your vegetables. And it also means these are absolutely, positively refrigerator pickles. No sitting around at room temperature for these savory bits.
Joe Truex’ Spaghetti with Scallion Sauce
Finally – CSA season is upon us. I’ve missed the surprise of the weekly box – such fun to guess what might be in store for us every Wednesday.
Today’s box gives us two big hints for boxes to come – a beautiful bunch of spring onions or scallions or green onions (call them what you will) that will grow to become beautiful big storage onions in later boxes. I’m thinking these are sweet onions, although they’re not Vidalias since we don’t live in that neck of the woods.
And garlic scapes – those little pigtails. It’s the sign of a true CSA connoisseur if you recognized them right away. We’ve had recipes for garlic scape pesto and probably garlic scape pasta, check the Riverview recipe archives. For me, this year, I’m slicing mine into salads with that lovely head of lettuce and arugula. Love, love, love them. And looking forward to the heads of garlic those scapes presage.
And kale! And eggs! Maybe this means it will be a banner year for eggs as well.
I’ve been wanting to share this recipe for ages. Two years ago, Joe Truex prepared this for his demo at the Morningside Farmers Market. Ann Brewer who’s been running those demos since the dawn of time tries to coordinate her demos with what I’m featuring in the AJC’s weekly “In Season” column. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. This was a case where Joe was NOT. HAPPY. (so I am told) with the ingredient Ann had decided he would feature (which of course was all my fault since I had decided to feature green onions). But once he prepared the dish, he fell in love with it, and it became a special at the old Watershed location. No telling that he’s still making it, but now you can make it at home.