Utilizing Yellow Onions

Hey friends!
You ever log onto your online banking account and go "Oh my god! Where did all my money go!?"  Well, that's what happened to me the other day when I found out that a significant personal check given to me bounced!  Fortunately, pay day was only a few days away, but I still needed to make something for dinner and my funds were seriously limited so I needed to make due with what I already had lying around in my pantry and refrigerator.

I had purchased the ingredients for a quick, go-to soup recipe I learned from my mom a long time ago so I knew I could whip that up easily enough, but this soup is always much better with some bread and I didn't have any.  I also didn't want to spend precious dollars on a loaf of good bread and then I remembered a recipe I had in a copy of Cooking Light magazine for a Basic Beer Bread and I had all the components I would need to make it at my house.  Success!!!

You're probably wondering what the common denominator these recipes have that connect to my share - unless you read the headline for this post in which case you already know - YELLOW ONIONS!  Getting onions in my share is always a great thing since you always need them.  This was kind of a fun chance to highlight them since they're usually just an extra instead of the focus of a post.  Here's your chance to shine onions!

I was able to find the recipe for the Basic Beer-Cheese Bread on Cooking Light's website (yay!), but the soup recipe is something I think my mom might have made up on her own so I'll have to walk you through that in the text (boo!). For the sake of clarity, I'll go through one recipe at a time.

Basic Beer-Cheese Bread

I had three yellow onions from my share last week and decided I'd use them all up for this meal.  The bread only calls for a half cup of finely diced onion so I measured that out and saved the rest for the soup. The diced onions need to be sauteed with a little bit of olive oil until browned. Once the onions are cooked, add the diced garlic and cook for another minute or so.

As the onions are cooking, whisk together all of the dry ingredients in a large bowl.  Then create a well in the mixture, add the onions and garlic, the cheese (the recipe calls for Monterey Jack, but I used Cheddar and Mozzarella since that's what I had in the refrigerator), and a bottle of lager (I used Sam Adams Boston Ale because that's what I had in the house).  The recipe doesn't specify if the beer should be chilled or room temperature.  It might not make a difference, but I've made this bread a few times and always used room temperature beer.

Mix everything in the bowl until moist (it takes a little while to ensure that all of the flour mixture is incorporated into the dough), and then dump all of the batter into a 9"x5" pan that's been coated with cooking spray.  The cooking sprayed pan cannot be emphasized enough!!!  The dough is really sticky and if you don't coat the pan thoroughly it WILL stick and be a big ol' mess.

Melt a tablespoon of butter and drizzle it over the top of the dough and cook at 375 degrees for 35 minutes.  Take the pan out of the oven, drizzle another tablespoon of melted butter over the top and continue to bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Chick Pea and Ditalini Soup

There's no hand written recipe for this soup, but it's pretty basic.  Here's what you'll need:

• Half a box of ditalini pasta
  
• Can of chick peas
• Small can of tomato paste
• Yellow onion
• Garlic clove, minced
• Salt
• Pepper
• Oregano
• Parmesan cheese
• Other spices/herbs to taste (I've used onion powder and garlic powder in the past)

Once the onions are cooked, add the garlic for a minute or two and take off the heat.

In a large pot, add the can of chick peas (use the liquid as well), the can of tomato paste and one chick pea can full of water and increase to a boil.  Stir occasionally to ensure that the tomato paste dilutes throughout the liquid.


Once the liquid is boiling, add the onion and garlic mixture and the pasta.

Continue to add water as the pasta cooks and until it reaches your preferred consistency.  I actually like this recipe best when it's almost stew-like with very little liquid, but if you want it more like a traditional soup you'll want to add water accordingly.

As the pasta cooks, add salt, pepper, oregano, parmesan and other spices and herbs to taste.  There's no real guide here...just keep playing with it until you think it's delicious!



Remember to stir the pasta frequently.  If the liquid boils down too much, the pasta starts to stick to the bottom of the pot.

Once the pasta is cooked to the right tenderness, you're done!

A few notes: 

• You can add hamburg to this recipe if you want to make something a little hardier.  
• You can also use tomato sauce instead of tomato paste, but I never like it as much.
• I love this soup, but it's VERY simple and is only what you try to make of it.  Seasoning is the most important part!

So if you ever find yourself of a tight budget, you can pull this whole meal together on the cheap (I'd estimate about $15) and it makes enough food for a single person to eat for about three or four days.

Hope you enjoy it!