Week 23 - Stinky

I am not a fan of stinky cheese, which is where my mind immediately went upon reading the theme for Week 23. That and durian, which I'm still a little afraid to eat/purchase. After looking around a little bit, I stumbled on a thread on Reddit where someone wanted suggestions for things that smelled really stinky but still tasted good. That was an idea I could get behind for choosing this meal. Among the ideas, which included things made with fish sauce, asafoetida, and others, was a recommendation for bagna cauda. I had always wanted to try that, and it was already on the list for the Italy part of the AtWCC (who knows when that will be, as we're still in A), so bagna cauda was the plan!

If you've never heard of it before, bagna cauda is a garlic and anchovy dip that originated in northern Italy in the Piedmont region. The primary ingredients are olive oil, garlic, and anchovies, with some variations adding in butter or cream to make the dip even richer. It's served with bread, lots of raw vegetables (like endives or peppers or other crunchy things), and onions, which are roasted whole and skin-on.

Following recipes from Marcellina in Cucina and Serious Eats, I intended for ours to be made with olive oil, garlic, anchovies, and butter with sides of toasted country bread and some raw crunchy vegetables. Of course, life happens, and we ended up being in quarantine thanks to a potential COVID exposure at the time we made this, and we couldn't get a grocery delivery order in time, so the plan had to be adjusted. The main ingredients remained the same, but I ended up serving ours with toasted wheat sandwich bread (the old loaf of country bread we had was ... a little too old; I need to start freezing bread instead of putting it in the fridge) and the whole roasted onions instead. I think I just missed the discussion about the onions the first time I read the recipes, because otherwise they would have always been part of the plan. Not a very colorful meal, but it would have to do.

The first thing I did was roast the onions. I'd never actually roasted onions whole before, but I think I kind of love it now. I could just eat onions whole like this as a snack. I ended up covering them in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then roasting them at 375 for about 25 minutes. I don't remember what site I got that from because I read 5 or 6 of them when I was looking into this, but they then said to raise the temp to 400 degrees for another 15 minutes. As soon as the temperature went up, oil started splattering all over the inside of the oven, which was making me incredibly uncomfortable, so I turned it off and figured they would be done enough for dipping by that point anyway. They probably cooked a little longer, because I just left them in the oven until it cooled off. I don't know what the onions are supposed to be like for this, but for us, they were actually the perfect texture for dipping at that point.

The next thing was to prep the garlic - peeling all 30 cloves, removing the germ if it was starting to get some color, and then slicing it up. That, as expected, took forever, but at least I could watch YouTube videos while doing it. The garlic then was simmered in some water for about 10 minutes to help it soften, and then combined with the olive oil in a cold pan over low heat to soften some more. This was supposed to take about 10 minutes, but it was still not smash-able at that point, so I raised the heat a bit, figuring maybe our low heat was actually too low. It got better, but it did take longer than 10 minutes even after poaching it first.

Anchovies were next, and this was my first time ever cooking with them. I guess anchovies are packaged in all different ways, but the only ones I could really find were canned. I drained them, and then added them to the sauce so they could melt. That happened far more quickly than I expected, especially considering some of the garlic was still not very smashed at the time. I added a few tbsp of butter at this point, and then after some more stirring and smashing, the sauce really did come together.

I usually try to make our cooking challenge meals toddler-friendly and accessible to all of us, but I had a feeling (which turned out to be correct) that this one would be for just me and A with the strong fishy and salty flavors and also B's current aversion to sauces. We thought this was really good. Very salty, far more salty than what we would normally make at home (at least on purpose), but quite tasty. The best bites were the ones with the onions, which seemed to both temper the saltiness a little bit and add another layer of flavor. Those bites were amazing. We did enjoy it, but I don't know if I would make it again, partially because of the saltiness and partially because B probably won't eat it until he decides he likes sauce again. But the roasted whole onions? That I would 100% do again.