Cooking: Onion/Pastry Project

I have a list of Long Lost Foods that I mourn. Examples that have been floating in and out of my hungry consciousness lately include:

• The eggy-bread buns that they used to sell at a bakery at the Fancy Mall, the ones that they slashed across the top and doused with greasy onions cooked to a near-caramelized state and mixed with ittybitty bits of something hamlike.
• The gloriously fatty shallow onion tart with a fine, flaky crust and ittybitty bits of something baconlike that they used to sell at a nearby pseudo-French restaurant. It was also served with a few random sprouts, some cornichons, and some really good olives.
• The gigantic deep onion tart, with a little bit of bacon, that they used to sell at a French restaurant in Vancouver. Well, no, they still sell it, but Vancouver is, well, Vancouver. I can't just run down there for lunch. Also, last time I tried it it didn't seem quite greasy enough, and they warned me about the bacon. Now, I appreciate that a restaurant might warn a patron about an apparently-vegetarian dish that emphatically isn't, but I worry that they might be developing qualms about saturated fat. And that would just be wrong.

You're seeing the theme here, right? Fat, caramelized onions, pastry, and bits of pig. The bits of pig are optional - the more I read about the high intelligence of pigs, the closer I get to finding ways to get along without bacon. But nobody ever made friends with an onion, so I've decided that it's time to lay off the helpless longing thing and take control of my greasy onion pastry supply. The eggy buns demonstrate a level of breadmaking talent that I'm unlikely to achieve, so I'm hunting for tart recipes.

Recipes with a halfhearted attitude toward onion caramelization are scored down in my book - anyone that tells me to cook the onions for a paltry twenty minutes, or tells me to add sugar, or refers to "pale golden" onions, isn't getting my point. Caramelized onions should be cooked slowly until neither you or the onion can take any more waiting - forty minutes, an hour, maybe a little more. They should be brown and shriveled - no "golden" or "translucent" or "starting to soften" about it.

And Walla Walla and Vidalia onions are right out, though I won't throw out the recipe, I'll just ignore the onion recommendation. In my book, "sweet" onions don't just have less heat, they have less flavor - a shortage of the volatile stuff and the sugar. I want rock-hard, sugar-filled onions that make me cry when I slice them. If I ever get my hands on those Copra onions that I keep dreaming about, I'll use them for this.

And I'm skipping the tarts with a quiche/custard base - I haven't mastered those skills yet. And the ones with a top crust. And the ones with things like clams, figs, or apples. On the other hand, olives, cheese, anchovies, and crispy bits of pig are just fine. Even if I perhaps decide to skip the pig.

I'm looking at the following candidates:

• Cauliflower and Caramelized Onion Tart from Smitten Kitchen. I hadn't planned on cauliflower, but this looks good.
• I wanted at least one recipe using puffed pastry, so that I can cheat by buying my pastry. I chose Onion Tart from Not Derby Pie. The author claims to cook the onions for only twenty minutes, but look at those onions! Those are not wimpy blond onions.
• The French Lady Onion Tart recipe from Pink of Perfection cooks the onions for one and a quarter hours. That's a proper attitude toward caramelizing an onion. I'm a bit dubious about the addition of mustard, but I'm adding it to the list anyway.
• For a cheesier version, the Caramelized Onion and Gruyere Tart from DigginFood looks pretty good.
• Caramelized-Onion Tartlets from Epicurious aren't quite what I had in mind - you bake the shells, then dump in creme fraiche, then the onions. But they look good.

That looks like plenty to start with.

Image: By Flik R. Wikimedia Commons.

Food: Wrong Food: Deep Fried Macaroni And Cheese

“I don’t know what kind of salad it is.  I’m eating a salad, okay?  I’m doing it.  Do I have to know the names?  There’s no difference between them.  It’s a bowl of weeds.  Some of ‘em have cheese.  This isn’t the kind with cheese.  Does that answer your question?”

Toby Ziegler, West Wing, Season 4, Episode 21, Life On Mars

We're throwing a party soon. We throw parties now and then. And they have food. Sometimes the food involves green vegetables. Or even leaves.

This isn't the kind with leaves.

It's called the Fat Of The Land party. The general theme is fat, preferably lovingly locally raised fat. Like, y'know, Southern Oregon cheese and butter.

For this particular dish, we're taking Southern Oregon cheese and butter and milk, adding some macaroni that comes from who-knows-where, throwing in a few other things, and baking it all into a macaroni and cheese casserole. This is certainly evil all in itself, but it calls for an extra touch, doesn't it?

Alton Brown tells us how to add that extra touch: Refrigerate the casserole overnight. Cut it into pieces. Bread them with egg and panko crumbs. And deep fry them.

I don't have a photograph, because we haven't completed the operation yet. But, yum.

(Oh, and if you wanna watch Toby, somebody posted that scene on You Tube.)

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Gardening: Leafy Gluttony - Squash Blossoms (And butter! And cheese!)

I don't like summer squash. I agree with Hercule Poirot that they taste like water.

But I love squash blossoms, whether they're from summer squash, winter squash, or pumpkins. And they continue the leafy gluttony theme of food that's better from the garden than any other way. Groceries do sell baby squash with blossoms attached, but they're generally sadly wilted - squash blossoms aren't good for more than a few minutes away from the garden.

So when I grow squash, it's for the blossoms. That means that ideally, I'd grow squash that produce plenty of male blossoms, and a minimum of fruit-producing and therefore energy-wasting female blossoms. A hunt through Google points me to Butter Blossom summer squash, but fails to find me a source for seeds. Sources suggest that Costata Romanesco and Sunray, both from Johnny's Selected Seeds, are also good producers of male blossoms.

So once you've gotten the seeds and have a handful of blossoms in the kitchen, what do you do with them? Fry them in butter, of course!

At least, that's one option, and the simplest. I rinse the blossom, pull the petals off in one flat sheet, dust them in flour, and fry them, carefully, in a generous pool of foaming butter over medium-low heat. Let them cool from the pan just long enough to allow them to crisp, and eat them. This is not a plated dinner party dish; just as the raw blossoms aren't good for more than a few hours out of the garden, the fried ones are at their best a minute or two out of the pan.

The less simple options? I've never tried them yet, but gathering some nice-looking links, I see:

Five Ways to Eat Squash Blossoms, from Apartment Therapy The Kitchn. Cheese-stuffed and fried, cheese-stuffed and baked to steamed, or in pasta, quesadillas, or soup.

What to do with squash blossoms, from Gastronomical Three. A detailed gorgeous-picture-laden description of how to do the stuffed fried blossoms.

A bruschetta version of the stuffed blossoms, from MyRecipes.com.

A version filled with pulled pork, from the Food Network.

Basil-stuffed blossoms from SippitySup.

And finally, baked squash blossoms with ricotta and honey, from NYMag.com.

Yum. I'm not going to have enough blossoms.

Photo: By Rasbak. Wikimedia Commons.

Link: Food: Slow Fried Chicken

You've got to have fried chicken!

But this blog has barely a word on the subject yet, so I wanted to link to the Slow Fried Chicken recipe over at Obsessions.

That is all. Go fry some now.

Photo: By DougsTech. Wikimedia Commons.

Food: Frances Grilled Cheese (Too Simple To Be A Recipe recipe)

When the bell rang for lunch Frances sat down next to her friend Albert.  "What do you have today? said Frances.  "I have a cream cheese-cucumber-and-tomato sandwich on rye bread," said Albert.  "And a pickle to go with it.  And a hard-boiled egg and a little cardboard shaker of salt to go with that.  And a thermos bottle of milk.  And a bunch of grapes and a tangerine.  And a cup custard with a spoon to eat it with. What do you have?"
Bread and Jam for Frances, by Russell and Lillian Hoban

One of my favorite books when I was small was Bread and Jam for Frances. Frances is a little-girl badger who declines to eat anything but bread and jam. Her mother provides lovely meals; Frances wants her bread and jam. Her friend Albert brings elaborate lunches to school, and offers to share. Frances still wants her bread and jam. Eventually, Frances comes to appreciate her own grand school lunch, complete with a vase of flowers. I loved the ending, and went on refusing to eat anything but peanut butter and jelly. (And fried chicken.)

So what does this have to do with grilled cheese? Well, when I make this sandwich, I like to add a number of added touches to the plate - a peeled tangerine for each person, and a few cucumber spears, and a few okra pickles, and a few marinated artichoke hearts, and some olives and grapes if we have them, or even a hard-boiled egg - and call the whole thing "Frances lunch".

So, on to the sandwich. I could just say "make normal grilled cheese, but use seedy bread and add chives to the cheese and sesame oil and salt to the butter". But, as I recently mentioned, I'm not concise. So:

Ingredients, per sandwich:

• Two slices of white bread, preferably one with a nice seedy crust. My preference is Beckman's Three Seed Sourdough.
• Cheddar cheese, preferably a good one that's a bit sharp, sliced barely thicker than those prewrapped cheese slices, enough for two slices thickness per sandwich.
• Lots of butter.
• Sesame oil.
• Chives, dried or fresh thin-sliced.

Cooking:

• Assemble the sandwiches, with bread, cheese, and a sprinkling of chives on the cheese.
• Melt a nice generous base of butter in the bottom of a frying pan, on medium-low heat, high enough to make the butter very gently foam. Mix in a modest amount of sesame oil - somewhere between a couple of drops and a teaspoon, depending on taste. Sprinkle some salt into the foaming oil/butter.
• Drop the sandwiches on the oil and butter and fry slowly until the bottom goes from butter-soaked to a gently crisp crust. The slow frying is essential for a proper break-through crust and for getting the cheese thoroughly melted all the way through.
• Flip the sandwich and fry the other side, adding more butter if necessary. You need a nice generous pool to get that evil crisp crust. 
• Flip the sandwich out and quarter it into triangles or cut it into fingers. Yes, you can just leave it in plain halves, but that reduces the silly.
• Put it on a nice plate with whatever sour or bitter or salty or fresh or fruity bites you can find in the kitchen. And a cloth napkin. And maybe an itty bitty vase of flowers. And if you have any of those tiny individual salt and pepper shakers, that would make the whole thing complete.
• Eat, keeping a napkin handy for buttery fingers.

Photo: By Garitzko. Wikimedia Commons.

Wrong Food: Candied Yams

Buffy: It *is* a sham. But it's a sham with yams. It's a yam sham. 
Willow: You're not gonna jokey-rhyme your way out of this one. 
(Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 4, Episode 8, "Pangs".)

I like candied yams. (Sweet potatoes, to be technically accurate.) Or perhaps I should say that I like butter and brown sugar, and I like them even better when they're yam-flavored.

You might, too, so I offer my candied-yam method, extensively tested this holiday season. It's not fundamentally different from anyone else's, except possibly for the alarming amount of butter and sugar, and the long slow cooking. Well, and the lack of marshmallows.

Wrong Food: Chicken Chips (Link)

You've got to have all the wrong food in the right place. So I wanted to link to the Chicken Chips recipe over at the Obsession blog.

Photo by Stephen.job. Wikimedia Commons.

Past Posts: Cooking (Link)

Click here to reach all of the Recipe posts from ChickenFreak's Obsessions.

Illustration: Wikimedia Commons.