Officially we’re well into Spring, but it doesn’t always feel like it. On one raw, wet morning lately, I had an urge to make a warm, comforting dish for our lunch. I had a recipe in mind called Cheese and Onion Pudding, which I’d seen in The Greens Cook Book. Normally I don’t find “pudding” an attractive name for dishes other than desserts, but this one seemed interesting.
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For a half recipe, to serve two, I was to peel and slice ¾ pound of yellow onions. Clearly, you’ve got to like onions for this dish! We do. The ones I had on hand were mostly red, but I didn’t think they would hurt the dish.
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I tossed them in two tablespoons of butter in a skillet, sprinkled on salt and dried thyme, and let them cook very slowly, stirring frequently, for 30 minutes, until they were very soft.
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Meanwhile I was to beat an egg with half a cup of milk or light cream. What I had in the refrigerator was heavy cream. Undaunted, I measured out a scant cup of it and made up the difference with water, to lighten it a bit. My egg turned out to be a double-yolker, which I thought would probably be all to the good. I finished the batter by beating in two tablespoons of flour and seasoning the mixture with salt, pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg.
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When the onions were ready, I stirred them into the batter along with three generous tablespoons of grated gruyère.
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To bake the pudding, I had the choice of a single pie plate or individual gratin dishes. I chose the latter, topping each dish with a little more grated cheese. They bubbled away merrily in a 400° oven. The recipe said they’d take only 30 minutes, but at that point my puddings were still very wet in the centers. They needed 45 minutes to firm up. (Could that have been due to my red onions, the extra egg yolk, or the heavy cream? I wouldn’t have thought so.)
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Though nothing extraordinary, the little puddings made a pleasant enough – and welcomely warm – lunch. You could think of them as crustless onion quiches.
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One day I may try the recipe again with the exact ingredients called for, and see if the result is any different. Or else, since both Tom and I felt the puddings would have liked more cheese presence, maybe I’ll try it with a more assertive cheese than gruyère, or simply more of it.