I love caramelized onions. They take so long to make, but they're so delicious. The Week 36 challenge, caramelizing, was a repeat of a challenge I did in 2014 when I also made caramelized onions, but I was definitely going to do it again because I like caramelized onions so much. I found a bunch of recipes online that sounded good, but then realized that the next recipe we were going to try in Ottolenghi's Jerusalem would be great with caramelized onions instead of fried onions, so decided to make that instead.
The recipe was for roasted eggplant with fried onion (here, caramelized onion) and chopped lemon. I was a little skeptical of the chopped lemon with raw garlic being added on top of the eggplant, thinking that both had some very strong and overpowering flavors, but I've trusted Ottolenghi many other times with combinations I didn't think I'd like, so I tried to follow the recipe as closely as I could (omitting the green chiles and substituting with just a dash of cayenne so it wouldn't be too hot for B).
The ingredients for the eggplant dish were:
- 2 large eggplants ($4.33)- 2 tbsp + 1/2 cup olive oil ($1)
- 3 medium onions ($1.89)
- 1.5 tsp ground cumin ($0.10)
- 1 tsp sumac ($0.10)
- about 1/4-1/3 cup crumbled feta ($0.50)
- 1 lemon ($0.79)
- 2 cloves of garlic ($0.10)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.03)
- dash of cayenne pepper ($0.01)
We ate the eggplant alongside some turkey meatballs, since the recipe suggestion was to serve it with the turkey and zucchini burgers (which I made for a challenge in 2016). I had a feeling I was going to have enough to do with the constant monitoring of the caramelized onions that I wasn't going to have time to make something else from scratch (and I was right), so we just made some meatballs in the microwave that are one of our freezer staples from BJ's. The total for the eggplant was about $8.85, and the whole meal cost about $11.85 (not really sure how much each meatball portion cost). It was enough for the three of us for dinner, although maybe we would have been less full if B had actually liked the eggplant.
The steps for making the eggplant (our version with caramelized onions) were:
1. Slice onions into thin slices.
2. Heat 1-2 tbsp of olive oil over medium heat until shimmering. Add the onions and stir until coated with oil. Spread the onions evenly and let cook for 10 minutes.
3. While the onions are cooking, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Wash the eggplants, and then halve lengthwise with the stem on.
4. Score the cut side of the eggplants with a criss-cross pattern, and then brush the cut sides with olive oil (the 1/2 cup). Sprinkle with salt and pepper. [Don't be me - I forgot to do the salt and pepper, and had to pull it back out of the oven a couple of minutes in to do it.]
5. Place the eggplants on a greased baking sheet cut side up, and put on the top rack of the oven. On the bottom rack, put a baking pan filled with a shallow layer of water to keep the eggplants from drying out.
6. Roast the eggplants for about 45 minutes until the flesh is golden and cooked.
7. After the onions have cooked for 10 minutes, add a little salt, stir around, and cook for at least an hour until caramelized. Stir every few minutes, letting them brown a little bit (but not burn) and then stirring, deglazing as needed. Adjust the heat if needed to prevent burning. [Ours took over an hour... That set dinner back a bit.]
That does not look like THREE onions
8. Once the onions are done, add the cumin, sumac, and cayenne pepper. Cook for 2 minutes, then add the feta, and cook for another minute before removing from heat.
9. Mince the garlic, and put in a small bowl to be combined with the lemon.
10. Remove the skin and pith from the lemon, and coarsely chop the flesh, removing the seeds, adding the flesh and juice into the bowl with the garlic. [This was the (paraphrased) instruction from the recipe. I had never done this before, so I wasn't sure if I needed to remove everything but the pulp. I ended up pulling out all the inside juice segments and adding them to the bowl, breaking them up with my fingers and squeezing out whatever juice I could. Where was the juice supposed to come from if you were chopping the lemon on a cutting board? This whole instruction confused me, and this was the first recipe in the book that didn't show the finished product so I couldn't examine that for hints.]
11. Assemble the eggplants in a serving dish when done, topping it first with the lemon and garlic mixture (rubbing it into the flesh a little bit), and then spooning over the onion-feta mixture.
The entire process of making this dish took me about 2 hours between the time it took to caramelize the onions (plus some extra time since there was some unexpected mold on the outside layer of the onions to deal with) and all the other tasks that just added up. Unfortunately, it wasn't an unqualified success. The onion-feta mixture was delicious. I could have eaten a giant bowl of that by itself, but three onions once caramelized became such a small bowl! (That's the worst part of caramelizing onions. You get so little when it's over.) The part I was most worried about - the lemon and raw garlic - worked really well with the eggplant and wasn't that overpowering for me, just a nice hit of garlic and citrus.
The eggplant, however, had tough skin (other than the middle) and some tough flesh near the stem and the cut parts of the skin, and I was just so disappointed. It wasn't as dry as the last time I made eggplant, but it wasn't what I hoped it would be, and the parts with tough, chewy skin just ruined the whole thing for me, so I ended up scraping out a lot and leaving the skin. A bite of soft skin from the middle with the tender eggplant and the onions and cheese and lemon and garlic all together was actually delicious, but there were so few of those perfect bites.
Would I make this again? The onion combination, maybe, although it took a while and would be easier to just saute it or roast it and then add those seasonings. The whole dish, probably not. Why can't I roast eggplant properly? Why was the skin so tough? I re-checked the recipe after dinner to make sure I hadn't messed up and wasn't supposed to also oil the outside skin of the eggplant, but it definitely only said to brush the cut side, so what did I need to do differently so that all the skin would be soft enough to eat? Also, B wasn't a fan of the eggplant at all, and I didn't even give him the skin, so I'd rather make something he likes better.
Jerusalem Cookbook Project Rankings:
1. Roasted sweet potatoes and fresh figs (pg 26)
2. Baby spinach salad with dates and almonds (pg 30)
3. Na'ama's fattoush (pg 29)
4. Roasted eggplant with fried/caramelized onion and chopped lemon (pg 33) (if we were just ranking the onion mixture, this would be higher!)
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