BELLOWS FALLS-The foliage is brilliant this year! Maybe I always say that. But we’ve had no driving rains here to knock the fragile leaves off the trees, nor fierce winds. Of course it depends on where you are in New England with the higher elevations showing a lot more color as I write on this first weekend of October, and many areas were more affected by the recent nor’easter.
Reds are stunning, oranges brilliant, and all the other colors are creating our annual tapestry that brings thousands of leaf peepers to the area each autumn.
That means locals know better than to try and get a restaurant reservation. It doesn’t bother me — I’ll just cook at home and be happy that the farmers market and farm stands are still going strong.
This week, I found some massive onions that I couldn’t wait to do something tasty with and a very large butternut squash as well.
Sadly, this weekend it was a time of “lasts” at many of the stalls at the market.
As I chose a couple of beautiful cucumbers, the farmer told me, with a sigh, that they were her last of the year. Another said there would be one more week of green beans and no more zucchini.
Still plenty of peppers and lots of tomatoes, but they will be picked still green for the next couple of weeks and ripen on their own, depending on the weather, of course. I have some on the windowsill, slowly turning.
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My neighbor, the farmer who hays our fields, stopped by with an armful of his sweet corn, a nice excuse to break up the day and chat. September corn is always a special treat, because we know what we’re losing, but I reminded him it was October, and with the warming climate — no frost yet — we’ll have to start referring to it as such.
More precious than the last corn were his stories, opinions, and best of all, his mother’s tried-and-true recipe for cooking the corn, after he first ascertained how I usually cook mine! Everyone overcooks corn, he said, agreeing that my soaking-and-roasting-unhusked method was a pretty good one as long as it didn’t end up in the oven too long.
Mama LaBerge’s Corn Cooking Technique: Strip the husks from the corn and place in a large stock pot. Cover with cold water until they float. Place over high heat and bring just to a simmer with a few bubbles on the side, not a boil by any means. Cover and shut off the heat and wait for 10 minutes. Then butter up and serve! So good!
The corn turned out delicious with this really easy method. I approve!
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The corn went really well with the stuffed onions I made from that market find. Usually when I stuff an onion, I make a traditional bread stuffing and scoop out the insides of the pre-cooked onion, pack the mixture in, and cook until its nicely browned.
We love it this way, but I was looking for something a little different.
I happened upon Diane Kochilas’s recipe for Greek stuffed onions (salantourmasi), which involved precooking the onion to soften it, then peeling off the layers and rolling them up around a rice stuffing — sort of like making stuffed cabbage, which is always a little fun. My giant onions begged to be stuffed this way.
I used her basic technique, but my own spices and additions because I just can’t leave anything as is. I think of recipes as inspiration, and I look around at what I have in stock and — even more importantly — what I like the best.
I had a small fennel bulb that needed to be used up, so instead of Greek seasonings, I used fennel seeds to enhance that flavor. I kept the mint and parsley because I have lots in the garden right now. I also had some tomato sauce from the night before, so in that went to dress it up a bit, onions being a bit colorless on their own.
As with stuffing any vegetable, this is not a precise thing to measure, vegetable- or stuffing-wise; it all depends on the size of your onions and how much you happen to toss in the stuffing pan.
When all was said and done, I stuffed eight nice fat onion rolls, and I had a lot of filling left over, in part because I added the cores of the onions that were too small to stuff.
You can make 16 stuffed onions from this recipe, stuff some other vegetables, or freeze the rest of the filling, which is what I did. An already-cooked meal for another day — my idea of fast food. It doesn’t have to be used as a stuffing, but as a delicious side starch to any plate. Or top it with an egg and call it supper.
Now, let’s have fun with it.
I used a local goat feta cheese, but you can keep this recipe totally vegan if you like and substitute a vegan feta — there are some good ones out there. I also chose a fragrant brown jasmine rice.
The house smells so good when this recipe is cooking, but cook it only just a bit, because it will finish in the oven. You can season this up any way you like, so have fun with it. I had some marinara sauce sitting in the refrigerator, so I added this to the dish with a light sprinkle of Parmesan. It’s not in the original recipe, which just called for water, but I highly recommend it.
Stuffed Onions with Rice and Fennel
First, get your rice cooking. Rinse well and let soak for about 30 minutes:
¶1 cup brown jasmine rice
Once rested, rinse again and place in a pot with:
¶1¾ cup water or vegetable stock
¶1 big pinch salt
Bring to a boil, cover, reduce to a simmer and pre-cook for about 8 minutes, about a third of the usual cooking time, so if you are using a different rice, adjust accordingly. The rice will continue to cook in the oven. Set aside.
Bring a large pot of water to boil and add
¶1 tsp. salt
Chop off the ends and peel:
¶2 very large or four medium onions
Make a lateral slice halfway through each onion, from pole to pole, all the way to the center, but don’t split it in half.
Dice:
¶1 fennel bulb
Once the water is boiling, drop in the onions, reduce the heat a bit, then cover. Let these cook for about 7 or 8 minutes, or until the layers start coming off easily.
With a spider or slotted spoon, remove the onions from the heat and gently peel off as many layers as you can, resting them on a clean tea towel, and returning each onion to the pot to continue cooking and loosening the layers. It is much easier than it sounds.
While the large layers are cooling, work on your filling.
In a large saucepan, to the onion and fennel, add:
¶2 Tbsp. olive oil
Cook until nicely softened, then toss in:
¶4 cloves garlic, pressed
¶2 tsp. fennel seeds, crushed
Cook another 1–2 minutes and, to lift any glaze on the pan, add:
¶a splash of red wine or water
Note: I also chopped up the inside cores of the layering onions that were too small to stuff and tossed those in the pan, contributing to my surplus but ensuring another meal later in the season.
Toss in:
¶2 cups diced fresh tomatoes, or 1 small can diced tomatoes
Then add the rice from the pan and some of the remaining stock in the pan to add enough juice to keep the mixture very wet but not drowning.
Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook another 5 minutes. Add:
¶¼ cup fresh mint, chopped
¶¼ cup fresh parsley, chopped
¶2 oz. feta cheese (vegan if desired), diced
As you stir, you should be able to see a dry trail on the pan with a wooden spoon, and the cheese will start to melt. Let it cool slightly so you can easily handle it.
Now the fun part. Using a quarter cup measure, place the filling on one end of an onion layer and simply roll it up. Place the assembled onion into an oiled baking casserole dish, seam side down, and continue to stuff the rest.
Make sure enough liquid has reduced so the filling is not wet and soggy. Starting on one end, just roll around the filling.
Bake in a 350 F (180 C) oven, covered, for about 45 minutes. Then, remove from the oven and top with:
¶tomato sauce
Sprinkle with a little Parmesan or vegan Parmesan. Return to the oven and continue baking until everything is tender and starting to brown.
A last spritz of extra virgin olive oil, and you’re ready to serve up a hearty dish with a lovely little side salad for freshness. Garnish if you like. I used some fennel flowers from the garden. (Have you ever tasted them? Delicious!) But you can use parsley or mint or another herb you use in the dish.
Another plus with this recipe is these onions reheat beautifully, tasting even better the next day. I can only imagine how good they would taste after freezing, but we didn’t have any left over to try.
Dorothy Grover-Read’s culinary talents can be found on her blog, The New Vintage Kitchen (vintagekitchen.org), billed as “[a] Vermont innkeeper’s collection of classics reimagined for today’s kitchen.” Her column regularly appeared in The Commons’ long-dormant Food & Drink section but continues in our seasonal special sections, like this one.
This Special section column was submitted to The Commons.