WineLovers Discussion Group

To follow the onion theme, I tried this tonite after a friend made it for us on boxing day. Very tasty even if somewhat tricky to get the such huge onions to get properly boiled. My friend had an easier life ... she used onions of 80g each, mine were 300g+ each!

Anyway, here is the recipe ... also posted on my blog.



Serves: 6

Ingredients:
- 6 large onions (2 Kg)
- 250g ricotta cheese
- 30g grated Parmesan cheese
- 2 XL eggs
- 1 tsp nutmeg
- Oil, salt, pepper and breadcrumbs as needed

How-to:
1. Remove the skin from the onions. Rinse them in cold water and boil them in salted water for about 1 hour (or until very soft). Drain them and let cool down.
2. Remove most of the inside of the onions. When an opening starts forming at the bottom, do not worry. Simply use some of the removed internal layers to close the gap.
3. Chop half of the removed onion and discard the rest. Mix it with the cheeses, nutmeg, the egg yolks, salt and pepper. Whip the eggs white to stiffen and fold them in gently.
4. Fill each empty onion with this batter. Dust the top with some breadcrumbs and oil. Bake on a greased baking tin in an hot oven at 180C for 40' for a suffle-like filling or 30' for a more creamy filling.
5. Let rest and serve at room temperature or sligthly warm.

Francesco

Oh, thank you! This is now on my "must try" list.

Francesco, those are seriously beautiful. And so yellow! Is that the lighting?

They are really yellow!
The onions themselves were fabolous! We are lucky where we live since we have a market with really fantastic produce. Anyway, the got very yellow after the boiling and a little bit more in the oven.

Francesco

This looks delicious! I also enjoyed looking through your site! Bravo!

Francesco, indeed you're lucky, they look like little orbs of sunshine. I would have to add saffron to get color like that.

I will keep it in mind as a trick .... we'll try a variant of this dish, basically fill with ricotta and some sauteed mince with curry and some of the onion. Let's see how it goes ....

Francesco

Do you make your own ricotta or do you buy it ready-made? I've been meaning for some time to seek out a ricotta-centric dish on which to try a homemade version: this recipe would be the perfect vehicle.

I buy it. I have made some try out for cheese home making, but I was never satisfied with the results.
I would be curious to hear how it goes if you try!

Francesco

In what way were you not satisfied, Francesco? Would be handy to know before I try myself.

I tried to make hard ricotta cheese, but I never managed to get the marinatig step well. It either was too salty or to unsalty.
When I will have some free time, I might try again.

Francesco

I see; but it's not a hard ricotta in this recipe, right? It's soft?

The recipe needs the soft. I tried the soft ... and well, i never glued in one piece

Francesco