Creamed Onion Gratin

from Saveur magazine

This summer, I started subscribing to Saveur magazine, and man, I just love getting that thing. Have I talked about this before? It's such a relaxing, fun treat for me. I haven't subscribed to a magazine in ages, partially because you can find just about all of the content online. (In fact, even though I originally found this recipe in the magazine, I used the identical recipe posted at www.saveur.com.) But there is something I just love about reading the magazine cover-to-cover. So there.

Anyway, doing just that helped me to know exactly what I wanted to make when our friends the Jacobs...Jacobses?...had a group of folks over pre-Christmas for a little holiday potluck. Saveur had a whole article on different types of onions (who knew?!), and associated recipes. Creamed onion gratin stood out as something not too hard, and also as something totally not in my wheelhouse. (Although, as it turns out, the sauce is basically a bechamel, so, you know, it at least has that in common with our family's lasagna!)

Ohhhhh man, this is soooo decadently, richly delicious. So wonderfully bad for you. The photo in no way does it justice - particularly since I took the photo before bringing it to the potluck, where I then quickly popped the dish under the broiler to make the cheese nice and golden and just a little crisp. A great side-dish, especially for the holidays. Great with a little bread.

SERVES 6–8
2 medium yellow onions, halved and quartered lengthwise
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp flour
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup dry white wine
Freshly grated nutmeg, to taste
1/2 cup finely grated parmesan
3 oz gorgonzola, crumbled
1/4 tsp paprika

Heat oven to 350. Toss onions with oil in a 9″x11″ baking dish and season with salt and pepper. Bake, stirring occasionally, until soft and lightly browned, about 1 hour, and then set aside. Heat oven to broil.

Heat butter in a small saucepan over medium-high heat; add flour, and cook, stirring, until smooth, about 1 minute. Add cream and wine, and cook, stirring, until thickened, about 5 minutes. Season sauce with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Pour sauce evenly over onions. Sprinkle with parmesan, dot with gorgonzola, and sprinkle with paprika. Broil until cheese is melted and golden brown on top, about 2 minutes.

Creamy Polenta with Gorgonzola

(adapted from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking) 

I love polenta. Joef hates it. I honestly cannot understand this, but that doesn't make it any less true. So, while Joef's away, expect to see me indulge in recipes with his least favorite ingredients - polenta, lentils, gnocchi (I know, he's crazy), etc. Fortunately, it's not really a long list, but I can indulge nonetheless.

This isn't so much a recipe as a suggestion from Marcella. She casually mentions how hot, soft polenta is great with some gorgonzola, butter, and parmesan cheese melted into it. Of course it is.

I didn't have any parmesan, but this was still delicious. Very comforting. It came out a little like grits, actually. Very creamy, very soft. What surprised me is that the texture of the polenta actually got a lot lighter with the cheese added - I expected it to get heavy. Not to say that this isn't filling, but it had a fluffy consistency.

Also, it takes like five minutes to make, so what do you have to lose?

1 cup instant polenta

1/4-1/2 tbsp butter

0.4 lbs (or so) gorgonzola crumbles

Make the instant polenta according to the package instructions. When cooked, remove from heat and immediately add the butter. Add gorgonzola crumbles in batches, gradually, stirring after each addition until melted and mixed in before adding the next batch. Taste periodically until it has the flavor you want. Sprinkle a couple gorgonzola bits on top for style, and cozy up with some nice hot, melty food on a blazingly hot day!

Walnut-Gorgonzola-Stuffed Portabellas

Yesterday, Joef had a walnut-gorgonzola-stuffed portabella in the "cafeteria" at work (I use quotation marks because it's really so much more than a cafeteria...amazing, fresh, local food - and all at cost. But I digress.), and today, he made them at home, using his own recipe! OK, so I gave him a really hard time at the grocery store ("You want to mix what...with what?"), and boy, was I proven wrong. This turned out wonderfully. Very rich, and very good. It was the kind of meal where after my first two bites, I worried that it wasn't going to be enough to satisfy my typically insatiable hunger, and two bites later, I was in a food coma. In a good way.

So, here is Joef's recipe:
Two portabella mushrooms
Olive oil
Onion salt
3 cloves garlic

STUFFING
3 oz crumbled gorgonzola cheese
3 oz walnuts, ground in a food processor

DRESSING/SALAD
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Stone-ground mustard
Baby spring green salad mix

Preheat the oven to 400. Clean the mushrooms by removing the gills, then hand wash and pat dry. Crush the garlic and mix it with olive oil and onion salt to taste, then brush the mushrooms with that mixture, both top and bottom. Set aside.

Combine the gorgonzola and the crushed walnuts together in a food processor, and blend, scraping down the sides as necessary until they're mixed together.

Put the walnut-gorgonzola blend into the hollowed-out sides of the portabellas, and place in the oven on a baking sheet. Cook until the mushrooms have softened, the cheese is melty, and, ideally, the cheese begins to brown on top. (This time, we added the cheese at the very end, and it melted, but didn't get browned. So we're recommending adding it earlier. Maybe you'd want to broil it?)

While the mushrooms are cooking, make a salad dressing from vinegar, olive oil, and a little stone-ground mustard (more oil, less vinegar). Drizzle to taste over salad greens in a bowl.

When the mushrooms are ready, take them out of the oven, place them on the greens, and serve!

And, there's a beer pairing: "I like that I paired a heavy meal with a heavy beer!", says Joef. This is Dragon's Milk, by New Holland Brewing, an oak-aged ale. 10% ABV, very dark with hints of vanilla.


And a final post-script: Joef gave me my birthday presents last night...oh, just about two and half weeks early. I'm so excited, I have to share them...yup, more cookbooks=more recipes, and that glove and the knife mean...oysters! So, a taste of things to come.

Gorgonzola Mac 'n Cheese

(Adapted...nah, just downright stolen from...Mark Bittman/The Minimalist)

And the secret ingredient is...you guessed it, arugula! Hey, I'm actually really proud because I was able to make this all from ingredients we already had in the house, left over from things we had already made! We are terrible grocery shoppers, so this almost never happens. While Joef is "melting" in the "blast furnace" of a lovely 75-degree evening, it's been a good night in that we worked out, Modern Family was on, and we were introduced to a new beer (Gouden Carolus - Cuvee Van De Keizer, 2008), a blond Belgian, which was absolutely fantastic. And we ate this.

So...right, the recipe! Extremely easy and quick:

3/4 lb pasta
1/2 package cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
A few handfuls of (here it is, folks) arugula
1 cup milk (I use skim)
1 cup crumbled gorgonzola cheese
Ground pepper to taste

Start boiling the water for the pasta. At the same time, in a small saucepan, combine the milk and the gorgonzola and slowly melt together (it's OK if it's a little chunky), at first over medium heat, but then turning to low while you wait for the pasta to cook.

Once the pasta is done and drained, simply add in the halved tomatoes, the arugula, and pour the still-hot melted cheese over all of it. Stir to mix it all together - the arugula will melt. Serve topped with a little ground pepper, to taste.