Nikki and I have been searching for new things to try. Culinarily, we've been in a bit of a rut, but I've recently come across a treasure trove of new ideas, mostly from the very traditional tables of Provence. I guess I've always had this idea of French cuisine being too technical, too rich, or too inaccessible, but discovering the homey earthiness of Provençal cooking has really exposed an entirely new world of flavor accessible with almost nothing more than the ingredients I already have in my kitchen.
I peruse cookbooks like most people read magazines; it's not a major pastime, but it does get me through little bits of boredom. When I found these recipes, though, I think I wasted about three hours just trying to decide which I'd love to eat first. Then I went to the kitchen and realized that I only needed a little bit more to get started. The first dish appealed to me for its simplicity, a new spin on an old favorite. I've seen, eaten, and of course made stuffed peppers before, filled with rice and beef and braised in a rich tomato sauce, but I never considered other vegetables being appropriate. In Provence, however, the onion is the primary candidate for stuffing and it brings so much more complexity to the table.
For the first stab, I chose a mushroom sausage stuffing, made from onion , portobello mushrooms, garlic, and a sweet pork sausage with heavy notes of fennel and red pepper. The onions are peeled, cut on the top and bottom, and then scooped out to make a hollow cavity for the stuffing. I keep all of the insides of the onions and sauté them in butter with the sliced mushrooms, add the mixture to the browned sausage and garlic, and then spoon it into the onion shells. After that, it all gets baked in beef stock just long enough for the onions to soften. The sweetness of the onions and the savory complexity of the stuffing intermingle in every bite and, when one of the onions is cut open, the filling almost explodes out. The first night I made these for supper, we finished off three apiece in a little under twenty minutes. They're filling but not heavy, and the normal astringency of the onion flavor is mitigated by the gentle baking, so all the flavors meld together. As a bonus, the beef stock that gets used to braise the onions takes on a deep earthiness as well, and, when strained, creates the perfect base for another traditional French favorite, onion soup.
The onions look beautiful by themselves, garnished with a bit of hard cheese and parsley and served with a simple spinach salad. I wasn't wrong to identify this as one of the first recipes to try. In fact, I've made it at least six more times since then, mostly by request. I've also tried the stuffing in red peppers and have intentions of doing the same with zucchini squash later in the season. These turned out to be a real treat, not terribly difficult (though somewhat tearful with the highly sulfuric onions available here) to make, and a joy to eat. Quite simply, these stuffed onions are wonderful.
