Feral Cooks

Good food shouldn't be tame

Baked Onions with Fennel Bread Crumbs

By Leave a Comment

Pandemics suck. Period. Be smart and responsible and wear a mask when you’re out and about.

Here’s an easy Food and Wine recipe that I’ve had around for about five years and just got around to making. These onions are great as a side dish or even as an appetizer. This is a good side-dish if your refrigerator or cupboards are getting bare because you haven’t been to the store.

There are no special tricks. Just follow the recipe and enjoy.

What you’ll need:

  • 3 medium onions, peeled and halved lengthwise, root ends left intact 
  • 2T extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing 
  • Kosher salt 
  • 0.5 cups chicken stock (I used a vegetable stock, which makes them vegan)
  • 6 bay leaves
  • 1t fennel seeds 
  • 0.25 cups panko 
  • 1.5t minced sage

What to do:

Heat your oven to 425°. Brush the onion halves with olive oil, then season with salt and arrange cut side down in an ovenproof skillet large enough to hold all the onions. Add the stock and lay the bay leaves in the pan around the onions. Cover tightly with foil and bake for about 1.5 hours, until the onions are tender.

While the onions are cooking, toast the fennel seeds in a small frypan over medium heat for about 3 minutes—they’ll smell fantastic. Transfer them to a cutting board and let them cool. When cooled enough to work with, crush the seeds and put them into a small bowl, along with the panko, sage and the 2T of olive oil. Mix well and season with a bit of salt.

When the onions are done, remove the pan from the oven and carefully turn the onions over—cut-side up (tongs work well for this). They’ll be beautifully caramelized. Spoon the breadcrumb mixture over the onions and bake uncovered, until the panko turns golden—about 15 minutes. Discard the bay leaves and serve the onions hot or warm.

Simple Crusty Bread

By Leave a Comment

Yeah, everyone’s baking more durning the pandemic, and this New York Times Cooking recipe makes for an outstanding loaf of bread. The outside is crusty, while the inside is perfectly soft and flavorful. I’m not much of a baker, so I’ve never made a lot of bread without a bread-making machine—lame, I know. I would have been making this stuff for years if I’d seen the recipe (or looked for it before the pandemic hit).

This bread doesn’t require a lot of hands-on time, nor does it require kneading–a lazy bread-maker’s dream. And it’s perfect for grilled-cheese sandwiches!

Don’t let the lack of a pizza peel or a baking stone put you off. If you look up the recipe online, there are many comments showing what others have used instead. It’s really just common sense.

Avoid possibly spreading the virus if you’re asymptomatic and wear a mask when you’re out. It’s the right thing to do.

What you’ll need:

  • 1.5T (8g ) yeast
  • 1.5T (23g) kosher salt
  • 6.5 cups (775g ) unbleached, all-purpose flour, more for dusting the dough
  • Cornmeal for dusting

What to do:

In a large bowl, mix the yeast and salt into 3 cups of 100-degree water. Stir in the flour, mixing it with a spoon until there are no dry patches. At this point, the dough will be quite loose and very sticky. Cover, but not with an airtight lid. Let the dough rise at room temperature for 2-5 hours.

After it is risen (see what I did there, Erik), you can bake it right away or refrigerate it, covered, for up to two weeks. When you’re ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on the dough and cut off a grapefruit-size piece with serrated knife. Turn the dough in your hands to lightly stretch the surface, creating a rounded top and a lumpy bottom. It will be very sticky, so the flour dusting is imperative. Put the dough on a pizza peel sprinkled with cornmeal and let it rest for 40 minutes. Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate it. For me, it divided into 3 small loaves. 

Place a broiler pan or high-rimmed baking pan on the bottom of or the lowest rack in your oven. Place a baking stone on the middle rack and turn on the oven to 450 degrees. Let the stone heat at 450 degrees for 20 minutes before baking.

Now dust the dough with flour and slash the top with a sharp knife three times—you may want to oil it so it slices cleanly. Slide the unbaked loaf onto the stone.

Now for the part that makes that beautiful crusty exterior: pour a cup of hot water into the broiler pan/sheet pan and shut the oven quickly to trap all the steam. Bake until well browned—about 30 minutes. 

Cool completely or rip into it while it’s still hot.

Deviled Ham Salad

By Leave a Comment

Gah! With so many of us working from home because of the Covid-19 pandemic, or worse, being at home and out of work, lunch has taken on more importance. You can’t go to the work cafeteria, and fast food for lunch every day gets pretty expensive. So if you’re looking for something different for lunch because you’ve run out of ideas, here’s a great recipe for ham salad from Serious Eats.

I was such an idiot as a younger adult because I shunned ham salad and egg salad. Little did I know. I had an egg salad sandwich while living in Japan, and never turned back.

A batch of this is perfect for a few ham-salad sandwiches eaten at home with your family or sitting in front of the telly, watching all the grim pandemic news over your lunch break.

Hang in there. Things will improve somehow on the pandemic front. They have to.

What you’ll need: 

  • 8 oz smoked ham, coarsely chopped
  • 0.33 cups mayonnaise
  • 1T yellow mustard
  • 2t honey
  • 1.5t Worcestershire sauce
  • 0.5t ground black pepper
  • 0.25t garlic powder
  • 0.25t onion powder
  • 0.125t ground cloves
  • 0.125t cayenne pepper
  • 0.25 cups minced sweet gherkins, drained, plus 2 teaspoons liquid—sweet relish works, too
  • 2T minced red onion

What to do:

This is easy: put all the ingredients, except for the pickles and onion, and pulse them in a food processor until they form a paste. Stop and scrape the sides and the bottom, then pulse a couple of more times. 

Empty into a bowl and stir in the gherkins/relish and red onion. Try not to eat it all from the bowl. Instead, put on your favorite sandwich bread or buns and enjoy with a pickle and your favorite chips.