Have you noticed that Brussels Sprouts are just the “in” thing this season. I’ve always liked them, but now that roasting is also such a big deal (I agree – that caramelization that goes on in the pan is amazing, or in a hot oven), brussels sprouts have become the new favorite vegetable. For good reason! These are EASY to do and take but a few minutes to make, start to finish.

We had a fantastic dinner at our daughter’s house the weekend before Christmas. She outdid herself with a prime rib, a lovely salad and cheesecake for dessert. And this dish – so very easy to make. She found the recipe in Bon Appetit, the October issue, 2012. The Brussels are cut in half (through the root end so they hold together as they cook), turned cut side down into a very large nonstick skillet. They sizzle away (my daughter had done all the prep work, all I had to do was cook them) in a little bit of oil, then once they’re golden brown they’re stirred so you hopefully brown the other side. Once they’re cooked to perfection you add some butter and a healthy jot of real maple syrup with some herbs on top to garnish. Stir and serve. Absolutely fantastic! Since I subscribe to Bon Appetit, I must have breezed on by this recipe because it was just those few ingredients. Mistake on my part! I also don’t seek out recipes with a lot of maple syrup because of my DH’s diabetes. This calls for 1/4 cup for 2 pounds of Brussels. Not all that much once you divide it up amongst a lot of people.

What’s good: everything about them – how easy they were to make, how quickly they cooked, and the maple syrup is just like the icing on the cake. It’s not all that sweet – you might think they’ be overly sweet, but they’re not at all. Fantastic. Great to serve to guests, too.
What’s not: nothing whatsoever.

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Oh, my. Can I just tell you to make this? Do you trust me? Have you learned that when I say that, it’s something that’s sensational? Worth making? Fabulous. All those things? Yes, YES!

We have a local restaurant in Tustin, where I live, called the Tustin Roadhouse. It’s a kind of a dive, but not in a bad way. Cement floors, melamine topped tables and a few benches. They serve Que – mostly. The restaurant used to have a different name (Beach Pit BBQ) but awhile ago they branched out just a little bit, provided some optional menu items and sides. We went a month ago and ordered appetizers and a side dish – corn. We had delicious – absolutely wonderful fried calamari with a fab remoulade sauce. Then they brought the corn. Oh my gosh! It was SO good. When we went back there a couple of weeks ago, all I really cared about was ordering more of that corn. I quizzed the waitress about what was on the corn, and promptly came home and made it myself.

You’ll find some other recipes online if you search for Mexican Street Corn. Some recipes suggest Parmesan. Most called for the cotija cheese. Some don’t have the cheese at all. Some used cayenne in the mayo. I like the depth of flavor from chipotle, so I used that. I made up my own recipe for it. I know it’s not corn season right now, but I did find corn at our local Trader Joe’s. It wasn’t the best tasting, but hey, it’s December as I write this, so I took what I could get! Those of you readers who live in the Southern Hemisphere – buy some corn right now and make this.

First you grill the corn, then while it’s sizzling hot you brush on a mixture of mayo, chipotle chile in adobo added in, and a tad of lime juice squeezed into the mix also. Then you roll the corn into crumbled cotija cheese. You don’t need much – maybe 2 T. per ear is sufficient. If you love the cotija, then add more. Cotija is a salty, aged cow’s milk Mexican cheese. It has the texture of feta, but it’s not like feta in taste, just the crumbly aspect of it. If you use Parmesan, be sure to grate it – don’t shred it. You don’t want big threads of cheese – you want crumbles. That’s IT. See? I said easy.

What’s good: the cheese, the flavor, the texture. You don’t use much mayo (the amount above – about 3 tablespoons was enough for 4 small ears) mixed with the chipotle and lime juice. Yum is all I can say.
What’s not: absolutely nothing. Do use corn holders in the end to hold the corn while you’re brushing on the mayo mixture – they’re really hot right off the grill.

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Are you ready to hear about how fantastic this dish is? OM Gosh!! It was – truthfully – the star of our Thanksgiving dinner. I asked, while we were finishing up our meal, what was everyone’s favorite – and of course, the children said pumpkin pie – but the adults all said “the Brussels sprouts!” And yes, these are COOKED Brussels sprouts, not raw, even though it’s called a slaw.

This is where the recipe came from . . .

I told you about this cookbook, The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century in mid-2011. My friend Linda gave it to me for Christmas, 2010. To say that I treasure it . . . well, that’s an understatement. It has no photos in it hardly. A few for decoration, but it’s a huge tome of just recipes. With headnotes (I love those headnotes that tell me why I should try the recipe just below it). Compiled by Amanda Hesser, who has her own website, along with her culinary journalist partner Merrill Stubbs, they run Food52, an online treasure of a website if I ever saw one! And the book, in case you live in Timbuktu and haven’t heard about what it is, contains Amanda’s favorite recipes from the archives of the New York Times going back to the dawn of its known printed history!

So impressed with how the book was written and how it was researched that I wrote up 3 posts about it last year, 3 posts over 3 days – here, here and here. At that time I’d really just started reading it – that was mostly the pink post-it notes you see above. In between times I inserted some more of the yellow hue. And recently I’ve been trying to go through the rest of it (I’m not done) and I’m on to purple post-its. The bookmark at the back is where I am (obviously). When I read a recipe I think I want to try, I write an upside-down post it (meaning the sticky part is at the bottom) and I write on it a quick title then attach it as a flag. So if I’m in a hurry, I can sort-of scan the flags to see if anything suits my fancy.

There’s another view. Maybe 20% to go, do you think? And part of that back part is an index, so maybe I’m closer to the end than I think! Sometimes I do breeze on by a few recipes – at the moment I’m in the candy section, and I just about never make candy, so there aren’t many flags in this chapter. But invariably I find something every few pages.

So, when I was planning dinner for Thanksgiving Day this year, I did go look at the flags. I’d already decided to do asparagus (the crumbled asparagus – that’s not in this book – that my whole family loves) and I wanted something new for Brussels sprouts. I found it here. And oh, am I glad I tried this recipe. It is SUCH A KEEPER!

Until a few years ago I really only prepared Brussels sprouts one way – a cold Marinated Brussels Sprouts Salad. But I’ve been ever so glad that chefs ‘round the world have begun giving B.S. their just due. I love the things, and I think one of the ways I’ve made it (with cranberries) is on my “Favs” list. This one is going on there too.

Truthfully, though, my daughter-in-law, Karen and our daughter, Sara, made the recipe. I can’t take any credit other than selecting it, bringing along the cookbook (we were at our Palm Desert house for the weekend), providing the herbs, butter and mustard. Karen brought 2 pounds of Brussels, and we in the kitchen contemplated that perhaps 2 pounds was too much for one dinner (there were 9 of us including 3 children). Am I glad we didn’t listen to that nonsense. There’s about 2 tablespoons of it left over, and I can’t wait to eat it! We did make one change – we used half of the butter called for. Amanda Hesser wrote a note about it –  she halved it also, so that’s the recipe I’m including below. We used all the seasonings, but half the butter.

The most complex (read: time consuming) part was finely slicing up the Brussels sprouts. We could have used a mandoline, but many hands made fairly quick work of the pile of cleaned and trimmed little cabbages. Karen mixed up the butter – with the herbs and mustard (good, imported Dijon style) and the lot of it is cooked briefly (about 5-7 minutes) and it’s done. Do cook it to your desired done-ness. Some folks prefer a really truly cooked Brussels sprout – if so, cook it a bit longer. The recipe is a bit vague, suggesting you start with 5 minutes and cook just until it’s “done.” You can add caraway seed if you want, but we used celery seed and I thought it was a fabulous counter-taste in it. The lemon slices are also an important element – DO squeeze some of it onto each serving or serve the lemon wedges in the bowl.

What’s good: everything about it. The just mild crunchiness of the leaves. The celery seed. Well, the butter of course. The mustard, you might think, would overpower the Brussels sprouts, but it truly does not. The herbs are lovely too, and the lemon juice squeeze over the top. I loved every single bite I had, and I’ll definitely be making this again. For guests or not.
What’s not: nothing, whatsoever. DO make this dish!

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No, I’m not joshing you. And no, these aren’t made of cardboard, either. Cardboard would have carbs perhaps? From tree bark and fiber? Nope, these are made from tofu and some kind of
Asian yam. I’m sure I have some readers who, after just seeing that word tofu – will not even read further. I might have been one of those some years ago. I don’t eat tofu, as tofu, but if it’s in other things, well, yes I do. These noodles have almost zero calories, nearly zero carbs, zero fat in a single serving.

It’s not news on this blog that we are a family of two try to limit carbs, what with my Type 1 diabetic husband. And certainly I can cut down on them myself. But I’ll tell you true – I miss pasta. Once in awhile – a big splurge for us – I make a huge batch of spaghetti sauce from one of my numerous recipes (my favorite one this year is Ina Garten’s Weeknight Bolognese Sauce). I freeze some of it for other dinner splurges months hence. Well, we’re now going to be able to have all we want because of these fantastic new products.

I’d heard about them several months ago when I got an email from one of the daily deal emails I subscribe to, offering me “Miracle Noodles” for some unbelievably low cost. I knew nothing whatsoever about them. I talked to a friend of mine, a recent Type 2 diabetic, who is struggling with her revised diet, to ask if she’d like to share the box with me. It was 29 packages or some odd number. She said no. Knowing so little, I opted not to buy it, either. Then I visited a local Asian market, thinking that surely they would have them – indeed they did, although it wasn’t the “Miracle” noodle, but Tofu Shirataki (the fettucine and angel hair varieties shown here), and it took the store manager’s involvement to find them in the store. Aha! In the refrigerated area – not really near anything in particular – and they were lying flat, so you couldn’t see the package front very well. FYI: a 4-ounce serving (half of the above package) contains 20 calories, .5 grams of fat, 15 mg of sodium and 3 g of carbs. And 1 g of fiber. As I’m writing this, I haven’t had the Miracle Noodle yet – I’ll probably write up another post after that with more info.

Each package holds about 8 ounces including the fluid – and about 4 ounces of net wet noodles – enough for 2 side servings. And just maybe enough for a small serving of a pasta main dish. These packages need to be refrigerated and they’ll keep for about 6 months. They don’t ever spoil, really, but eventually, the noodle may dissolve into its primary form of glucomannen (that’s the tofu and yam product).

I threw together a side dish to serve them the first time. I had no recipe, but wanted to make it a little special for the first time we’d eat them since I wasn’t certain my DH would eat them – he did and he liked them. He loves pasta too, and encourages me to NOT make it very often since it wreaks havoc with his blood sugar. The thing you need to remember is that these noodles, like most tofu products, don’t have much taste straight out of the package, so you must add flavorful ingredients to them, so they’ll soak up the flavor. Don’t just heat them with a little oil or butter and expect them to have great flavor. They won’t.

The other thing about these noodles is that they’re packed in a rather unappetizing fluid (that you drain off). It smells something like Asian fish sauce. In case you haven’t ever taken a sniff of Asian fish sauce, well, it’s not pleasant – kind of like rotten fish, actually. Tastes great, but doesn’t smell all that nice. So, there is a process of getting the noodles ready to eat. First, drain them, then rinse well under running water. According to the package instructions, I put them on a plate and microwaved them for 60 seconds. You can also “cook” them in a nonstick pan until they make a kind of squeaky sound in the pan, but microwaving is almost easier. I rinsed them again, drained again, then they went into the skillet. They’re already cooked, you see, so they don’t really need further cooking – just heating – but they need to absorb flavor. So I stirred them around, added the dairy stuff, some herbs and cayenne, and let them sit in the pan just barely simmering. I had to add a little water as the creamy ingredients boiled away, tasted it for salt and pepper, added the grated cheese and served it piping hot.

What I liked: the fact that they’re very similar – not identical – to a wheat noodle, but have so few calories and carbs. That’s the logical answer, of course. Why would we bother to eat these unless they were giving us some kind of nutritional boon. Or if I needed to restrict gluten. Obviously these are GF also.
What I didn’t like: if you forced me to say something negative (I’m trying to be at least neutral or unbiased), the texture of these noodles aren’t the same as a wheat pasta fettuccine noodle. It doesn’t have the same kind of “chew” as a wheat noodle – more like a rice noodle to me. But if you know going into it that you’re wanting a vehicle for the SAUCE – it’s the sauce we love, right? – then these noodles absolutely work. All in all, this is a great alternative to a much higher calorie wheat noodle.

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Most often I buy the 2-lb. packages of haricot verts (those little thin ones) from Costco. I cook them all and store in a ziploc bag. Then I do something different with them as I parcel them out over 2-3 meals, my favorite being the Garlic Green Beans. This was a really quick throw-together one.

Back about 5 years ago I went to a cooking class and had a magnificent version of this – a more complicated preparation for sure, and it was delicious. It’s here on my blog – Green Beans with Roasted Shallots and Balsamic Glaze. This time, though, I wanted something much simpler – no time for roasting shallots or making a glaze. I had shallots, so I just sautéed them in some olive oil and a bit of butter until they were golden. I did this part ahead a couple of hours. The green beans were already cooked (barely). I wanted them under cooked when I first simmer them, knowing I’m going to cook them some more in the frying pan.

Just before serving, then, I poured the green beans into the pan with the shallots and gently tossed them around so they were all covered in the oil and shallots. Once I was sure they were completely heated through, I drizzled on about 2 teaspoons of Trader Joe’s Balsamic Glaze and I carefully stirred that around the beans and poured them out on a serving bowl/plate . Just before serving I sprinkled on some flake salt and freshly ground black pepper. Done. Easy. Tasty.

What I liked: mostly that they came together quickly. I almost always have shallots in my kitchen for just this kind of occasion. And the balsamic glaze lives in my refrigerator door.
What I didn’t like: maybe not the most complex of flavors, but hey, this was an “easy” dish. It’s hard to get complex flavors when it’s just cooking in a sauté pan!

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Sorry the photo isn’t better – I brightened it up as much as I could. It’s orzo. And corn, and dark greens, loaded with flavor – I mean LOADED. Yes, it has cream in it too. No wonder it’s so good!

Someone asked me just this week why, if I’ve cooked for so many years, do I still go to cooking classes. Surely (they thought) I would know everything there was to know about cooking anything. Perhaps I do know a lot about technique (but not as much as a professional chef, someone who’s gone to culinary school – I’m just a good home cook). But I never tire of finding new ways to cook things. Not methods, but food combos. Like this one – corn added in, plus the greens. I wouldn’t have thought to add cream to orzo, either. But why not? So I go to classes (usually with my dear friend Cherrie who also loves to cook like I do) to learn something new. And we always – always – learn something. I can count on one hand the number of classes I’ve been to over the years where I didn’t want to cook at least one of the items demonstrated. Just recently we went to a class and I knew I’d never make a single one of the dishes. That set of recipes went into the trash. But that’s very, very rare.

All that said, let’s get to this recipe, which was a real winner. It was a Tarla Fallgatter class, and we met in the home of a lovely friend who lives in Laguna Beach and has about a 210° hilltop view of the Pacific Ocean. It was a gorgeous day, but the ambient light in her stone-lined Tuscan-style kitchen was not the best for taking close-up food photos! I’ll be making this orzo one of these days, so I’ll take a better picture.

If you glance at the ingredient list below you’ll see “Mediterranean” herbs. Tarla called for “Mediterranean Spices” which she buys (labeled as such) at a local ethnic market. It’s sold in a little tiny box (about 1 inch square) and she uses it up within a month or so and buys more. She’s buying most of her herbs and spices this way instead of the big jars that end up aging on our pantry shelves. I don’t actually know what is in that boxed combination, but I didn’t think this dish would work so well with the spices from Morocco, for instance (saffron, cumin, lemon, cinnamon) so I interpreted the combination as more Southern European (France, Italy, Spain), which meant herbs not spices. If all you have is thyme, that’s fine. Go easy on the rosemary since it’s so potent. Italian herb mixes would be fine with this too. It only calls for 2 teaspoons of it, anyway.

The fresh corn, cut off the cob, is tossed with the spices and roasted for about 10 minutes in the oven, then you cook the orzo as you would with any pasta, except barely under-done, and combine everything in a big sauté pan, adding the bitter greens along the way, and the cheese as the very last thing. This dish tastes much like risotto – but it’s pasta instead of rice. And yes, there is cream in it. You might be able to use less cream – next time I’d try using half a cup and using more chicken broth instead. It might be just fine!

What I liked: well, once I realized there was cream in it, what can I say? It’s delicious. Creamy for sure, but I loved the flavor combo with the corn, spinach and arugula. All things I love. The Parmesan cheese adds a lot of flavor too – there’s not all that much in it (just sufficient)!

What I didn’t like: gee, nothing. It was scrumptious. Tarla’s original recipe had called for kale, but when she’d served it, most people weren’t so crazy about the kale, so she changed the recipe to include spinach and arugula. Similar, but less chewy probably.

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A rice side dish that’s just bursting with all kinds of Asian flavors from fresh ginger, coconut milk, lime juice, a little sprinkle of curry powder, some hot chili sauce, a tiny bit of soy sauce and toasted sesame oil. All that combined with fresh pineapple, dark raisins, toasted almonds, red bell pepper, onions and cilantro.

We’d been invited to a dinner at the home of some new friends. Friends who enjoy cooking and regularly imbibe in good wine. A great combination. The hostess said she was going to grill some beef and salmon (both with an Asian bent), and would make a crab first course. Their other guests were going to bring an appetizer. So, I filled in the rest with this salad above, the honey lavender ice cream I made the other day, and some thin ginger cookies which will come up in a day or two.

Since we didn’t know these people very well, I had to wrack my brain trying to figure out what to make. I wanted my side dish to blend well with the kind-of Asian grilled meat and fish. So I turned to my favorite (1993 old) Hugh Carpenter cookbook, Pacific Flavors: Thai and Chinese Cooking for an American Kitchen. You may have noticed that I don’t have a lot of Asian recipes on my blog – I do have some, but I almost never prepare a full-on Chinese or Thai dinner. Way too much mincing and chopping for me! Plus, we have several really good close-by restaurants if we want them. My DH rarely wants to go to a Chinese restaurant because as a diabetic, it’s very hard to estimate carbs. I often help him estimate carbs on a plate – was that 1/2 cup rice, or 3/8 cup, or 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons, how big are those won ton wrappers? how much sugar is in that sauce? – all those things can cause him a lot of grief trying to figure out how much insulin to take – not taking enough means his blood sugar goes way too high – too much can give him an insulin reaction – meaning not enough food in the body for the insulin to work on to convert to energy/sugar which puts his body into distress. So he avoids rice-based cuisines, pretty much. If I crave Asian food, I do it when my DH goes to San Diego to work and play on our sailboat. (I don’t go because I get seasick, unfortunately.)

But this rice dish sounded so good to go with the meat. I will tell you that making this dish is not a quick 20-minute deal. More like an hour, or close to it. There IS a lot of mincing and chopping and measuring. Part of it, though, is while the rice is cooking. Not altogether bad. If you were preparing this as part of a big meal it might be overwhelming – do it for something special. Because it IS special.

What “makes” the dish is the combination of liquids (broth, coconut milk, soy sauce, lime juice) and seasonings (curry, chili garlic sauce and lime zest). Then you toss in all the other stuff – pineapple, of course, toasted almonds, raisins, red bell pepper, and I added cilantro. I saved some of those additions to sprinkle on top (I had forgotten the almonds when I took the photo – I added them later – you didn’t miss them, did you?). Everybody raved about it. I’d definitely make this again – but the morning of, perhaps, or even the day before (adding the almonds and cilantro at the last minute). I made two changes to the original recipe: (1) I added some sesame oil for flavor; and (2) I added cilantro.

What I liked: the overall combo of flavors – I just love it when I taste of something and it just bowls me over with flavors in my mouth. Such it is with this dish.

What I didn’t like: well, if I had to complain about anything, it would be that it took a lot of time to make. It could, however, be a main course if you added in some chicken, maybe. Or some left over pork roast cubes, perhaps. But actually, I think this dish is worth the effort. You’ll be rewarded with some great tastes.

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Throwing this dinner together was very last minute. But fresh produce from our corner farm stand just made it fabulous. And the grilled double pork chop? Oh my goodness! Read on . . .

The day I fixed this dinner – a Saturday – I wasn’t even planning to cook dinner. We were heading to San Diego, to spend the afternoon on our boat and with friends and would eat dinner at our yacht club. But traffic got in the way. It took over an hour for us to drive 20 miles. The freeway was just jammed. Where in the world were all these people going? There was no accident, yet my trusty iPhone traffic info said it would be stop and go for another 35 miles at least. We were in my DH’s convertible. Top up, of course, but still it was over 100° and I was sitting on the passenger side, in full sun, with the A/C barely keeping me cool. In bumper-to-bumper traffic very few car A/C’s can keep cool. We eventually got off the freeway and turned toward home. We stopped at our corner farm stand and bought another big box of the less-than-perfect tomatoes ($10 for 10 pounds), 2 ears of corn, some squash and a bunch of asparagus. Walking into our house (heavenly A/C) I stopped at the garage freezer and poked through the contents until I found one last 2-rib pork chop.

The chunk of meat was plunged into a big bowl of cold water and defrosted in a couple of hours, with some weights on top of it. I sliced a big honkin’ tomato and made a caprese with it. Easy. I sprinkled the corn with a new seasoning mix I have – from Savory Spice Shop. If you have one in your neighborhood, try this mixture – called Peruvian Chile Lime Seasoning. I sprinkled it all over the corn which I’d sprayed with Trader Joe’s canned olive oil spray. Wrapped in foil, it cooked in about 10 minutes or less.

The pork I sprinkled liberally with Montreal Seasoning and spread with some grapeseed oil, then I sprinkled on a brand new ingredient – smoked cinnamon. Oh my goodness was that ever delish. So easy, and so very wonderful!

Then I quick-like researched asparagus and found this recipe which was quick and easy too. I had shallots. I had an orange and sherry vinegar. And I had sliced almonds too. It came together in a flash. It was thin asparagus, so it took no more than about 4-5 minutes to cook from beginning to end.

What I liked: I don’t usually do this – 3 recipes in one post – but all of these were so easy I decided I should just post them all together. The pork and the corn were so simple they hardly even require a recipe! Fabulous meal.

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Extraordinary green beans might be a more apt name. Oh my gosh were these delicious! You know when you’re reading my blog and I write “make this,” I really mean it? Yup! Make this!

I made a big pot of these beans for our big family birthday celebration recently. And I’ll tell you, discounting one particular young man in the crowd who doesn’t like vegetables, everybody ate these, including the young children. Everybody loved them. Many went back for seconds, and the last one who did was very dismayed to find one tiny bean left. She was most disappointed. Normally 2 pounds of green beans would be sufficient for 12 people. Nope. If I’d had 3 pounds, I think they’d all have been eaten!

Okay, so what makes them different? Well, first it’s the numerous spices – paprika, cumin, coriander, curry powder (but you’d never, ever know there is curry powder in it – curry just adds something to the mixture of complex seasonings), bay leaves, garlic. Maybe it’s the white wine? Maybe it’s the crème fraiche in it (2/3 cup in the 12 servings)? The almonds add lovely crunch (I didn’t take the time to toast them as I should have). Oh, and maybe it’s the golden raisins in there too. I read about this recipe over at Heidi Swanson’s blog, 101 Cookbooks. But she said the recipe came from Anna Getty’s Easy Green Organic.

First off, though, I must say that I altered the recipe slightly. Firstly, intentionally, I cooked the green beans for more than one minute – instead of really crunchy they were still just slightly crunchy. I didn’t add the tofu called for, as I was making this as a side dish. I also reduced the amount of paprika (instead of hot, I used the half sharp and used half the quantity even, of that), and put in just an itty-bitty pinch of red pepper flakes. With young children in our group, I was sure they wouldn’t like a lot of heat. And even so, making a double batch of these, with 1/2 tsp of half-sharp paprika and the tiny pinch of chile flakes, it was plenty warm. I liked the warmth – it was just right in my book. I also used less golden raisins and perhaps a little less of the crème fraiche too, but not by much. So, the recipe below has my modifications. If you want the original, go to Heidi’s blog above. In any case, PLEASE make this. Your taste buds will be richly rewarded.

What I liked: the subtle seasonings – you might think they’d be overpowering, but they were not in the least. You’re aware of seasonings, but that’s all. It has lots of complex flavors. I see why Heidi ate them as an entrée (with tofu). Loved the texture contrasts too (nuts and raisins). Overall, an outstanding dish.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all! Worth making. Just have everything out and ready (I didn’t, so there was a bit of scrambling for things at the last minute). My daughter-in-law Karen was helping with the stirring at the last and I did the running for golden raisins and almonds and crème fraiche. Please make this, though. Okay?

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What’s there not to like about a sweet onion, bacon and butter? Nothing that I can think of other than the fat in the bacon and butter. A lot of the fat melted off into the bottom, so what you’re left with after baking an hour is a succulent onion with some delicious snippets of bacon to eat alongside it.

Again this year our friends Joan and Tom shared some of their Noonday onions from East Texas. Tom’s parents send a shipment to all of their kids each summer. This year’s crop was smaller-sized than in some years – about 2 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter I’d guess, but it made for a really nice onion portion.

Just recently I started watching Trisha Yearwood on the Food Network. I just read on Trisha’s website that her cooking series has been “picked up” for a season, so there will be more than the initial 6 episodes already aired. Besides being a terrific singer (although I’m not into country music at all), she is a really good cook. She’s married to Garth Brooks and they live in Oklahoma. I’ve printed out half a dozen of her recipes so far. This is the first one I’ve actually prepared, though. She had her Uncle  Wilson visit the show one episode and he made one of the family favs, these onions that make an appearance at every family gathering. And they’re easy to make. Truly they are. The recipe is from Trisha’s 2008 cookbook, Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen: Recipes from My Family to Yours.

The most tedious part was peeling the onions. Since this recipe calls for sweet onions, I didn’t want to lose any more of them than absolutely necessary, so I didn’t peel off another layer like I would normally just to get it done in a hurry. Then you hollow out a cone-shaped core, about 1-inch down – easy to do with a short, pointed paring knife. The onions get wrapped in a couple of slices of bacon, secured with toothpicks, then a pat of butter is put into the little hole. They’re wrapped in foil, leaving an opening for the steam to escape, then they’re grilled for an hour. Or baked at 350° for an hour. Be sure to remove the toothpicks, then either serve them whole, or cut them in quarters (if they’re large) and serve with the bacon. I think if they’re really large, they’d need to oven bake for more than an hour – at least 15 minutes longer. But test them with the tip of a sharp knife to make sure they’re done. Sweet onions contain more water than traditional onions, so they should cook in less time.

In the recipe Trisha suggests cutting the onions in quarters to serve them – depending on how big they are, cutting in half might be fine, or in my case I served a whole onion per person. There were lots of juices in the bottom of the foil packet – some of it water from the onion itself, some bacon fat, and probably some of the butter, although I’d hoped it would stay housed in the onion layers. No matter, as the onions were delicious. Juicy, moist, and so very good with a little bite of bacon with each mouthful. I forgot to salt and pepper them, but it made no difference whatsoever. We didn’t miss the sodium or the pepper. Next time I might add some dried thyme into the hole, since that’s my favorite go-to herb. They also re-heat well in the microwave (take off the foil, obviously).

What I liked: how easy they were to make. The juiciness of the onion, and the smoky taste the bacon added. Altogether good. Yes, I’d make it again.

What I didn’t like: nothing. I’ll be sad when I can’t find sweet onions to make this with, though!

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