experimental onions

I’ve been cooking lots of onions recently.

I’ve been extremely tired (I’m working lots of hours) and when I get home and finally finish all my work, there’s not much I want to do besides flop down on the couch and watch Community. It’s been a challenging summer.

But y’know, food is important. And we don’t have a blender, so I actually have to do more than dump a bunch of fruit and veggies into it.

So I’ve tried lots of things, some of which I’ve posted about (see: Curry) but mostly they waste away in my recipe file (see: flopping down on the couch).

A few weeks ago I made some fajitas that turned out really well; before that there were various pasta dishes. Recently there was a not-so-magic curry that I can’t bring myself to eat.

The common factor here is onions. Mostly yellow onions, mostly sautéed. Even within that narrow category I’ve found endless variations.

In case it wasn’t obvious, let me tell you: I love onions. I know a lot of people don’t, including the fastidious Dmitry (“It’s not that I don’t like them, I just don’t understand why you use so many“)

Those people tend to be sad with my cooking.

In any case, in today’s experiment, I made caramelized onions. I have a lot of trouble with these, partly because I’m impatient and get tired of waiting on them, and partly because I actually like the crispy burnt ones. However today I managed to stand around in the kitchen for a while, patiently stirring them over a medium heat (probably because I’ve been so tired).

They turned out well. I did a little experimenting (adding butter, adding sugar) and the result was very tasty, but very rich. Almost too rich. Next time – less sugar, maybe only 1/3 tsp or less. I think they needed to be cooked longer as well to brown them more, but at that point I was too hungry to wait.

In the end, I just put them over some plain pasta with a little salt.

I ate it with sparkling water while watching community on the couch.

And you know what? It was delicious.

magic curry

Every so often you have one of those days were you can do no wrong in the kitchen.

Last Thursday was one of those days.

I got home from work and decided to make curry. I didn’t have a recipe or much of a plan at all. Or for that matter, many ingrediants.

Not to mention, I burned the onions, used a lime instead of a lemon, didn’t measure the spices, added way to much sirarcha sauce, forgot the whole thing on the stove for about twenty minutes, and forgot to make rice so that it had to be reheated before I could finally sit down for dinner.

And yet it somehow produced one of the best curries I’ve ever made. I probably will never be able to reproduce it exactly since I didn’t take measurements or watch the time but, here’s hoping.

There probably is some kind of cooking lesson in there somewhere for me isn’t there?

Magic Curry

As I mentioned, I barely know what I did here, so… improvise! Maybe that’s the lesson of this recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 can of chick peas
• 1/2 a yellow onion
• 1 clove garlic
• Sriracha sauce
• Garam masala
• cumin
• tumeric
• 1 lime

Rinse the chickpeas, and put them in a small pot covered in water. Bring it to a simmer. Dump a bunch of spices, srirarcha sauce and lime juice in. (seriously, this is what I did)

Meanwhile sauté the onions, adding the garlic towards the end. I burned them, but they were still delicious, so I added them anyway about half way through the cooking time.

Cook it all until the chickpeas are soft enough to eat and are breaking apart. Add more water as you need to prevent it from burning. Remember to make rice ahead of time!

and then… MAGIC