DIY Network

Enjoy Spring with Sweet Onions and Leeks (Tested Recipes)

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By Al Sicherman
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune

Between the first asparagus and the local sweet corn comes spring, and with it leeks and the many varieties of sweet onions. If this brings a tear to your eye, it must be from sentiment about the changing seasons and the hope of renewal; neither leeks nor sweet onions (Vidalias, Texas 1015s, Walla Walla Sweets and more) should make you cry when you cut them.

These days, it's true, thanks to crops from distant growing areas and controlled-atmosphere storage, it's easy to obtain even what used to be distinctly seasonal crops -- such as specialty onions -- almost all year long. But it sure can't hurt in these times of instant gratification, instant millionaires and instant mashed potatoes to retain an awareness of the connection between the dinner table and the earth. And in that spirit, it's nice to celebrate the arrival of the spring onion season with some dishes involving sweet onions and leeks, members of the family that provide one of the most ubiquitous -- but nonetheless one of the most appreciated -- food flavors.

Leeks aren't onions, but they're awfully close. They look like green onions on steroids. Cultivated leeks have been around longer than sweet onions have -- thousands of years longer, in fact -- but they are probably less familiar to most American cooks. If you know how to use a regular onion, you pretty much know how to use a sweet onion, but leeks are clearly something else. Not many folks who aren't already familiar with them would pick up a few leeks at the supermarket without having a recipe in hand. That is precisely why we are here. Leeks are onion-like in flavor, but milder and some would say more subtle. Although their large dark-green leaves are swell for flavoring homemade broth, only the white and pale-green portions are used as a vegetable. As is done to produce white asparagus, growers pile dirt around the shoots of the leek to extend the white portion, "blanching" it by preventing sunlight from reaching it. That makes the desirable portion of the leek larger, but unfortunately it also results in dirt getting in between the layers of the leek as it grows. So no matter how you're going to cook leeks, they need to be cleaned well first.

Leeks are used much more widely in some European cuisines, notably French and Italian, than in American. We are told that many of European leek consumers refer to them as "the poor man's asparagus." This goes to show not so much that they love leeks but that they aren't buying them here. For a vegetable in limited demand in U.S. markets, leeks can be kind of pricey. Typical leeks with about 5 inches of white were $1.49 a pound recently at one Minneapolis discount supermarket -- before chopping off half their weight in tough green leaves. But at another market -- an upscale one where one doesn't usually find bargains -- slimmer (more tender) leeks with twice that length of white and all the waste leaves already trimmed off were only $1.29 a pound. So when you lust for leeks, look high and low.

Sweet onions are a different kettle of onions. You might not even recognize that you were dealing with sweet onions instead of regular ones until you tasted them and noticed the almost complete lack of bite -- and realized that you hadn't cried when you cut them. Well, you would have had to ignore the signs in the store -- and the onions' shape (many sweet varieties are somewhat flatter than regular yellow onions, which usually are spherical), their price (typically 20 or 30 cents a pound more than regular onions) and the fact that nowadays almost every sweet onion carries a little sticker naming its variety.

There are really three components that distinguish sweet onion varieties from regular supermarket onions:

1. The sugar content is higher.

2. The water content is higher, in part because they don't keep well, the way regular "storage onions" do, so they can't have dried out as storage onions do over time.

3. And, perhaps most important, they have a lower level of the sulfur-containing compounds that react with enzymes in the onion when they are brought together by cutting or chewing. Those reactions produce the compounds that give raw onions their characteristic bite and their power to cause tears. Cooking pretty much disarms those reactions, leaving the difference between cooked sweet onions and cooked regular onions to be largely the sugar and water. ( if you like onions but they don't "sit well" with you, you might try a sweet onion to see if the lower level of lingering sulfur compounds makes a difference.)

If you saute sweet onions, they will weep a lot of water into the pan, so you need to cook that water off quickly or you'll get onions that are boiled, not sauteed. In any case, using sweet onions in a dish that is otherwise very strongly flavored certainly won't show them off very well. To get a sense of them if you don't want to try them raw, you might want to fry some in your favorite onion-ring batter, try one or more of the onion-intensive recipes here, or one of these simple ideas:

• Baked: Peel sweet onions, cut them in half, rub them with olive oil and put them cut-side down on a foil-lined pan in a puddle of chicken broth or wine. Cover with more foil and bake at 350 degrees for about an hour, adding liquid occasionally as needed. Salt and pepper and serve.

• Caramelized: Peel and slice sweet onions, fry them over medium-high heat in butter or olive oil until they are translucent and any water that forms has cooked off, then reduce heat to very low and cook, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. Stir in just a little white wine, white vermouth or chicken broth to scrape up the browned bits that stuck to the pan. Yumm!

Preparation:

1 cup (4-oz.) coarsely chopped pecans
4 large sweet onions
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine
One 15-oz. can cream-style corn
2/3 cup condensed chicken broth (1/2 of a 10 3/4-oz. can)
1/3 cup dry Sherry (or chicken broth)
3 Tbs. flour
1-1/2 cups soft (fresh) bread crumbs (from 3 or 4 slices of bread)
1/2 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Preparation:

Toast the pecans in a frying pan over low-medium heat, stirring occasionally, until they begin to color and become fragrant, about 7 minutes. Pour them out of the hot pan and set aside.

Peel the onions and slice them about 1/2-inch thick. In a large frying pan saute the onions in the butter until they are translucent -- turning the heat up to high when the onions begin to render their liquid (to boil it off) and reduce to medium-high when most of the liquid is gone. Stir in the corn, chicken broth, Sherry and flour; and cook, stirring, until the mixture is no longer runny. Pour into a 9-by 13-inch or other 2-quart casserole dish.

Combine bread crumbs and cheeses and sprinkle over onion mixture. Top with pecans. Bake 20 to 30 minutes until the top is lightly browned and bubbly.

Serves: 6

Nutrition information per serving: Calories: 465,. Carbohydrates: 34 g, Protein: 11 g, Fat: 34 g, including sat. fat: 14 g, Cholesterol: 54 mg, Sodium: 674 mg, Calcium: 140 mg, Dietary fiber: 5 g. Diabetic exchanges per serving: 1 vegetable exch., 2 bread/ starch exch., 1/2 med-fat meat exch., and 6 fat exch.


Leek or Sweet Onion Tartlets

Ingredients:

2 medium leeks OR 2 medium to large sweet onions
2 single prepared pie crusts (or 1 recipe for double-crust pie dough, prepared)
3 Tbs. butter
3 eggs
1-1/2 cups heavy cream
Dash of hot pepper sauce
1/2 tsp. salt
Pepper to taste
1/2 cup shredded Swiss cheese

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Liberally grease a 12-hole muffin tin.

Cut away the root end and the deep-green portions of the leeks, cut the remaining white and pale-green portions in half lengthwise and rinse them thoroughly, fanning them out under running water; blot dry and slice thinly. Or peel and coarsely chop the onions. Roll out pie crusts, cut 12 (4-inch) circles and fit the dough into the prepared pan. Saute the leeks or onions in the butter until they are tender. Beat the eggs and beat in the cream, hot pepper sauce, salt and pepper. Stir in the prepared leeks or onions and the cheese. Divide the mixture evenly among the tartlet shells. Bake 25 to 30 minutes, until the tops are slightly browned. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Note: This appetizer recipe works equally well with either leeks or sweet onions. You could even saute half-quantities of both leeks and sweet onions and a whole recipe of the egg mixture and make six tartlets of each kind. Note the subtle differences between leeks and sweet onions and see which you like best.

Serves: 12

Nutrition information per serving: Calories: 290, Carbohydrates: 16 g, Protein: 6 g, Fat: 23 g, including sat. fat: 11 g, Cholesterol: 98 mg, Sodium: 350 mg, Calcium: 85 mg, Dietary fiber:1 g. Diabetic exchanges per serving: 1 bread/ starch exch., 1/2 med-fat meat exch., and 4 fat exch.


Vichyssoise

Adapted from an Atlanta restaurant recipe.

Ingredients:

2 Tbs. butter, margarine or oil
3 large leeks
1 medium onion (a sweet one is swell)
1 lb. (2 large) potatoes
One 10-3/4-oz. can condensed chicken broth
1-1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp. salt
Pinch of freshly ground pepper
Dash hot pepper sauce
2 cups fat-free half-and-half
1 medium mango, diced, optional

Preparation:

First you take the butter, margarine or oil. (You thought I was going to make that silly leek joke, didn't you? Well, I didn't!) Put it in a large pot.

Cut away the root ends and the deep-green portions of the leeks, cut the remaining white and pale-green portions in half lengthwise and rinse them thoroughly, fanning them out under running water. Then cut them into thin slices. Peel the onion and cut it into thin slices. Warm the butter over medium heat, add the leeks and onions to the pot and saute, stirring occasionally, until they are softened and the white parts are translucent.

Meanwhile, peel the potatoes and cut them into thin slices. When the onions and leeks are soft, add the potatoes, chicken broth, 1-1/4 cups of water, salt, pepper and hot pepper sauce. Bring to the boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes or more, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are very soft.

Working in batches, puree the mixture in a blender or food processor. (The blender does a much better job of pureeing, producing a smooth result that's velvety in the mouth. If you use a food processor, strain out the solids with a sieve after you've pureed the mixture and whomp them again along with some of the liquid.)

Stir in the half-and-half. Cover and chill several hours. Serve garnished with diced mangoes if you like.

Note: This French-sounding cold, creamy soup (which is also very nice served warm) is perhaps the leek dish most widely known in this country, so it belongs here as an introduction to leek cookery for those who have never used them. In fact, it isn't French -- it was created by chef Louis Diat at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York. (The same man also gave us Crab Louis.) Cooks already familiar with vichyssoise might like to add a touch from tropical Minneapolis -- some diced mangoes (making it perhaps Vichyssoise Alain). With surprisingly minimal sacrifice in flavor, the fat-free half-and-half makes this a much more healthful version than the original, which used heavy cream.

Serves: 6 Nutrition information per serving: Calories: 170, Carbohydrates: 24 g, Protein: 10 g, Fat: 5 g, including sat. fat: 3 g, Cholesterol: 13 mg, Sodium: 620 mg, Calcium: 220 mg, Dietary fiber: 2 g Diabetic exchanges per serving: 1/2 milk exch., 1 vegetable exch., 1 bread/starch exch., and 1 fat exch.


Sausage Stuffed Sweet Onions

Ingredients:

6 large sweet onions
2 Tbs. olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 lb. bulk sausage
1 tsp. marjoram leaves
1 tsp. thyme leaves
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
Salt to taste
Hot pepper sauce to taste
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
Orange Beurre Blanc
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp. minced shallot
1/4 cup dry white vermouth
1 tsp. grated orange zest
1 Tbs. orange juice
1/4 cup heavy cream
6 Tbs. (3/4 stick) cold butter

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Peel the onions, cut about 1/2 inch from the bottom and a little more from the top. Cut an X into the center of each onion's top and scoop out the center with a sharp spoon. Make plenty of room for stuffing, but leave several layers of onion to form the casing. (Don't worry if the bottom is no longer intact when you're done.) Set the onion centers aside.

Rub the onions with the 2 tablespoons of olive oil and put them on a jellyroll pan. Roast about 40 minutes, until the onions yield easily to pressure.

Meanwhile, chop the onion centers coarsely. Put them in a frying pan with the sausage, and cook over medium-high heat, stirring to break up the sausage. When no pink remains in sausage, drain off fat and stir in marjoram, thyme, Worcestershire, salt, hot pepper sauce and 1/2 cup of the cheese. Cook, stirring until the cheese has melted.

Pack the stuffing into the baked onions, sprinkle on the remaining 1/2 cup of cheese and bake another 5 minutes, until the cheese has melted.

Meanwhile, prepare the orange sauce: In a small pan over high heat, combine the tablespoon of olive oil, garlic, shallot, vermouth, orange zest and orange juice. Reduce to about 2 tablespoons. Add the cream, and reduce to about 1/4 cup. Remove from heat and stir in the butter one piece at a time, stirring continuously and adding the next piece before the last of the previous one has melted in. Return briefly to low-medium heat if necessary to keep the butter slowly melting in. Serve with the baked onions. (Keep the sauce warm if necessary in a double boiler over barely simmering water, stirring from time to time.

Serves 6.

Nutrition information per serving: Calories: 430, Carbohydrates: 16 g, Protein: 15 g, Fat: 35 g, including sat. fat: 16 g, Cholesterol: 82 mg, Sodium: 540 mg, Calcium: 195 mg, Dietary fiber: 3 g. Diabetic exchanges per serving: 1 bread/ starch exch., 11/2 med-fat meat exch., and 51/2 fat exch.


(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)