A Blanc Stare

Petits Oignons a la Creme - Creamed Onions

These little white onions may be petite but Petits Oignons a la Creme (Creamed Onions) sure to pack a lot of flavor inside of them. This was a delightful dish that does not have the pungent onion taste you might expect. Creamy, savory, sweet, and scrumptious all at the same time! It was also a chance to actually do four of Julia's recipes from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" done in the following order:

1. Oignons Glaces A Blanc (White-braised Onions - Glazed Onions)

2. Sauce Bechamel (White Sauce)

3. Sauce Creme (Cream Sauce)

4. Petits Oignons a la Creme

Sauce Bechamel (White Sauce)twork but it actually went pretty quick. Most of the actual "work" went into peeling all of the little white onions and the bulk of the cooking time was the 40 minutes or so that it took to braise the onions after they were peeled. I need to digress a bit to discuss peeling the white onions.

I've used these little guys in a couple of recipes so far and when I've been peeling them I always seem to lose too much of the actual onion. I made a discovery this time around and finally figured out how to properly (I think) peel the little buggers. I'm inserting three photos here to show what I'm talking about so hopefully you might learn something too. Then again, it is possible that the entire world, besides me, already knew all of this and have been properly peeling their white onions for a couple thousand years.

Heres' the deal... When you first take the onions out of their bag you'll notice onion is wrapped in the typical papery type of onion skin. Just as you would with regular size red/white/yellow onions, that skin is just peeled off and discarded. Then you'll notice the tricky part -- you'll then be holding an onion that looks nice and smooth but if you look closer you'll see that the remaining onion is still covered by another layer of skin that is, although smooth, is still very tough and needs to be removed. Previously I'd just slice down through one ring of the onion and peel and remove it. This time around, however, I noticed that I could catch the edge of that last tough layer with the edge of the paring knife I was using to trim the onion's top and bottom. By just catching the edge of the skin I was able to pull it off in pretty much one piece. You can see in the following photo the two layers I was able to remove. This also greatly sped up the process. At first I was thinking this was going to be like the peeled asparagus recipe that took f...o...r...e...v...r. Not so, by the time I finished up my third bag of onions (with some help from Kathryn, my sous chef) it was only taking about 30 seconds per onion. My family and friends are in luck, I'll have time to make these again!

Once the onions were peeled, I prepared an herb bouquet with thyme, bay leaf, and chopped parsley wrapped and tied in several layers of cheesecloth. The bouquet went into a large skillet with two tablespoons of butter and then all of the onions were added. It is important to use a pan large enough that the onions fit in one layer. After that the onions were added as well as a 1/4 cup of chicken broth and some salt and pepper. The onions were rolled around in the pan to coat them and the were then simmered, with the pan covered, on low heat for about 30 minutes. I just rolled the onions around in the pan every couple of minutes to keep them from browning and added a bit more broth partway through to keep them from drying out. Julia called for 40-50 minutes but the onions were tasty and tender at 30 minutes so I removed the lid for a couple of minutes to boil off the remaining liquid and then removed the pan from the heat to keep them from getting mushy .

While the onions were doing their thing I whipped together the cream sauce that was needed (yes, I actualy was mutitasking!) for the final step. The sauce started with the basic bechamel sauce I've made before (butter and flour cooked together to make a roux, then two cups of boiling milk added off heat and thoroughly mixed in using a whisk, then placed back on the heat to thicken the sauce.) and then to that 1/2 cup of cream (a "cream enrichment) added and cooked for a few moments to thicken the sauce.

Once the sauce was ready, I added a few drops of lemon to the sauce and then folded the cream sauce into the onions. Two tablespoons of softened butter were stirred in and the onions and cream were cooked together for 5 more minutes with a little pepper and then transferred into a serving dish. The top photo at the beginning of this post sow the final result -- and you may notice that I forgot to sprinkle some chopped parsley on top of the dish before serving it. It would have added some color to the dish but no one at dinner seemed to mind!

There were no leftovers and the servings quickly disappeared off of eveyrone's plate so I think the consensus was they were delicious. Even my two-year-old granddaughter loved them -- she's my favorite food critique! Hmmmmm, I have another bag of onions left...I think I know what I can do with them!

Bon Appetit!