As I made the creamed onions a couple of days ago I faced a dilemma -- how many to cook. One of the challenges Julia poses for me from time to time is that her recipes call for ingredients in quantities that they are not sold in. These little white onions are one of them -- when she calls for "2 pounds" of the onions, but they are sold locally in 10 oz bags, I have to do some sort of math to figure out what I need to use. As I'm frequently told: "A pints a pound the world around!" Yeah, I get that. I also can now convert 2 pounds into 32 ounces.
Obviously, the easiest way to convert this would be to use 32 bags of the onions (320 ounces) and then I could just multiply all of the ingredients by 10 and plan on lots of leftovers. To avoid leftovers I suppose I could always invited a lot more dinner guests. The real problem would be that Julia says I'm supposed to use a pan big enough to have the onions only one layer deep so that I can roll them around in the pan while they cook. I don't even have a cauldron big enough to hold that many onions, much less a stove top large enough for a skillet 6 feet across.
This was obviously a problem so I ended up with four 10 ounce bags of onions. Then the decision was whether or not to use 30 or 40 ounces of onions. I opted to risk it and only used 3 bags (30 ounces) of onions -- after all, that was only 2 ounces off -- and save the other bag for later. All of that leads me to why this recipe was such a small serving. I only had one 10 ounce bag of onions left! Besides, Julia says that only 3-4 onions are needed per person if you're using it as a garnish. I actually was pretending this was a side dish but I guess we'll just call it the diet plan.
The other reason I cooked these onions this way is that this is the basic recipe used before turning them into creamed onions. As I prepared the creamed onions previously, I did what any good chef is supposed to do -- I sampled the braised onions before adding the cream sauce. It was delicious! I was ready at that point to serve them but since I had a sauce pan full of fresh bechamel sauce it seemed I should finish the creaming process. Since then, this lonely bag of onions has been sitting on the counter with a forlorn look every time I walk past. I could almost hear them calling out to me to help them fulfill the purpose of their creation -- they wanted to be cooked and given a glazed look.
So, once again I found myself trimming off the ends of these little buggers and peeling the two layers of skin away. All this so they could turn into Oignons Glaces a Blanc (White-braised Onions, Glazed Onions). Once again, the peeling of the onions was the longest part of the process (other than letting them cook slowly for about 45 minutes). I once again used some of the cheesecloth that my sweet sous chef, Elizabeth, said I'd never use and which I'm almost out of because I use it so often! With the cheesecloth I made a little packet of thyme, parsely, and basil. Interesting side note there -- the recipe actually calls for bay leaves, not basil, but when I cooked these last time I pulled out the jar of "bay leaves" and used them. I didn't notice until this time that the jar was actually "basil leaves." Ooops. We're out of bay leaves (or I couldn't find them in my haste) and since it worked so well last time I just repeated it intentionally this time!
Some butter and chicken broth went into the pan with that little herb bouquet and once they'd all melted together the onions went in. This is one of those fun recipes where you get to move the pan around a lot. Every couple of minutes the pan was swirled around to completely coat the onions with the liquid and to have them cook evenly. Of course, this was covered the entire time and the heat was left on low so that they slowly cooked and absorbed all of that flavor. Grape juice or wine could have been used in place of the chicken broth -- might be something I'll try in the future to change the taste a bit.
Julia says to cook them for 40-50 minutes until tender. I did have to add a little additional chicken stock while cooking to keep a little liquid in the pan. Personally, I find their tenderness to be perfect around 45 minutes into the cooking process. The final step was easy -- remove the herb bouquet and make tea with it (just kidding, don't try that) and transfer the onions to a serving dish.
These turned out really nice with the only complaint being that there weren't more. I suppose I should have gone for 32 bags of onions after all...
Bon Appetit!
Sure wish there had been more.