WEEKLY MENUS 2025

March 17 – March 23, 2025

 

Monday:                               Leftover Roast Chicken and Onions

Tuesday:                               Cottage Pie / Corned Beef Apps

Wednesday:                        Smashburger with Special Sauce

Thursday                              Liver and Onions at the PFC

Friday                                    One-Pot French Onion Pasta

Saturday:                              Ham, Bacon, Jalapeño and Pineapple Pizza Before Baking

Sunday:                                 Leftover Pizza with Caesar Salad w/ Pancetta

 

 

 

 

Onions and Patience

Caramelized onions are one of mankind’s greatest inventions – up there with the light bulb, the wiffle ball, and for those of a certain age, the two-foot long shoe-horn. 

I do not mean to disparage the raw onion:  sliced thinly, a layer of this takes the already superb ripe tomato and mayo sandwich and lifts it to the Kuiper Belt;  sliced just a bit more thickly and layered over some braunschweiger on lightly toasted rye slathered with mustard it is a burst of flavor strong enough to lift you to the Kuiper Belt (which, SWMBO has informed me, is the precise distance I need to be from her before eating such a sandwich).  And all praise goes to boiled onions, onions on pizza, chopped onions in soups, onions roasted with chicken or beef, and so on.

But the savory sweetness of caramelized onions on a hot sausage sandwich or in a French Onion Soup, is a flavor worthy of its own Michelin star.

Here’s the thing – caramelizing onions takes patience.  Not much patience, but in modern America patience, along with politeness and correct English usage and pronunciation is not all that easy to come by.  When I say ‘not much patience,’ let me be clear:  to successfully caramelize onions will take about 35 minutes, more or less, of regular stirring, the addition of water as needed, deglazing as needed – in other words, 35 minutes devoted to the onions, away from your phone and your email.  If you can do that – if you can steel your soul to exit the spider-like trap of the web – you can caramelize onions and amaze family and friends with one of the great tastes.

You can use those onions any way you like, but I’ve added a recipe below which is an absolute home run – or perhaps I should say three-point shot at the buzzer.  It’s unusual, addictive and, once you’ve got the onions caramelized, easy.  Enjoy and sorry for the crying that slicing the number of onions called for in this recipe will cause – ladies, I’d lose the mascara if I were you.

One-Pot French Onion Pasta

(adapted from bon appétit – April, 2025)

Timing:                                                  85 minutes

Ingredients:                                        4 – 6 Servings

4 large onions, thinly sliced

1 lb. pasta – this recipe calls for lumache (snail shells), we used trumpets which are easier to find but any short, hollow pasta would work

3 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, 2 tsp. kosher salt, plus more to taste, 1 tsp. ground black pepper, more to taste

6 garlic cloves, finely chopped – I used 1, 4 tsp. chopped thyme, ¾ cup dry white wine

1 oz. finely grated Parmesan (1/2 cup), 5 Tbsp. butter, 1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard, 2 tsp. sugar

2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce, 8 oz. Gruyère, coarsely grated (2 cups) Jarlsberg would also work

Finely sliced chives for serving (you can omit these – maybe finely chop some parsley to give a bit of color)

Prep:

Assemble all your ingredients and put a Dutch oven on the stove. Peel and slice the onions. Fill a pitcher with 5 ½ cups of water. Grate the Gruyère.

Cook:

Heat the oil in the pot over medium-high or a bit lower if you have a high btu burner.

Add the onions with a pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper and cook, stirring occasionally and adding 1 Tbsp of water and deglazing when the onions begin to burn.  Keep doing this until the onions are a deep mahogany.

Now add the garlic and the thyme to the pot and cook for about a minute stirring constantly – don’t burn the garlic.  Add the wine and cook, stirring occasionally, until reduced by half – 2 -3 minutes – then add the 5 ½ cups of water and bring to a simmer.

Now add the pasta and cook, stirring often, to stop the pasta from sticking to the bottom of the pan.  Cook until almost all of the liquid has been absorbed and a thick sauce has formed and the pasta is al dente – maybe 12 minutes or more.

Remove the pan from the heat and add the parmesan, butter, Dijon, sugar, Worcestershire and 2 tsp. Kosher salt and 1 tsp. pepper and stir until the Parmesan is melted.

Scatter the Gruyère over the top and place in the oven and heat broiler.  Cook for up to 5 minutes (keep an eye on it).  You’re looking for the Gruyère to be melted and golden brown.

Scatter chives or parsley over pasta before serving.  This will taste so much like French onion soup that you will be confused at first.