Chef Geena's Baked Onion Bhajis

With less than three weeks to go, I've realised there are a few things I still need to tick off of my blog to do list.  One of those was to make onion bhajis again.  I had a disaster with a recipe on day four (I have no idea where the year has gone) and vowed that I'd make them again so, having had this recipe in mind for some weeks, I finally got round to trying it.

The good thing about these bhajis is that they are baked and not fried.  Although there is oil involved to soften the onions and to give them a 'fried' taste, it's probably not quite as bad as slinging them in the deep fat fryer.  Plus there's much less risk of them disintegrating.

Bhajis with lime pickle

The mixture is pretty easy to make and, unlike my last attempt, came together and actually looked how I would expect bhaji mix to look.  I used two smallish onions - I didn't weigh them - and this produced two bhajis.  I'm guessing you'd get 6-8 decent sized ones from the 1lb of onions the recipe suggests.

On the down side, I used the full recipe quantity of spices, even though I was only making a fraction of the other ingredients but you couldn't really taste the spicing and I think it would be lost if you had more onions and flour.  I'd definitely recommend doubling the spices if you use the full recipe.

As for the baked vs fried bit.  They were okay, if a little stodgy in the middle.  Then again, if you can put up with the grease, things taste so much better when they're deep fried.  But we all know that's bad for you so let's not go there.

Far happier with this recipe than the last attempt.  I think they'd go well with a healthy curry meal if you're looking for that kind of thing.  I had them for tea with a random leftover Waitrose samosa which also snuck into the picture, just because that's how I roll on a Thursday night.  Sometimes.

You can find the recipe here.

Caramelised Onion and Goats Cheese Tarts

Back last year, I asked the husband to buy me a proper cookery book.  And by proper, I don't mean one of these glossy, celebrity-chef endorsed, tv-series inducing bestsellers, but a real proper cookery book like my mum used to have when I was a kid - one that explained the basics of cookery, teaches you how to cook simple food that tastes great and is all about the instruction rather than the presentation.

I picked Leith's Simple Cookery and spent about a week reading through it but never got round to making anything.  Despite a few poor reviews from some cynics on Amazon (well there were some on there when I ordered my copy), it seemed to be a great book for getting back to basics and learning the art of how to make classics well and recipes that can be adapted and won't fail if you've only got low fat creme fraiche rather than soured cream.

So last night, I figured that I'd use it to find a good recipe for that French onion soup I've been meaning to make ever since Ocado delivered eleven million tonnes of onions that the child accidentally ordered via the Android app.  And would you believe it?  It's obviously not simple enough to make the book.

My pictures would be so much better if
the husband would lend me his X100!

So instead, I plumped for the caramelised onion and goats cheese tartlets, thus using up yet more things (pastry, cheese, onions) from the fridge that is due to go to fridge heaven tomorrow.

It's a great light lunch or tea and would make a fab starter too.  Lovely combination of salty feta with meltingly sweet onions.  Must admit I cheated a bit as I was supposed to caramelise the onions in the oven for 45 minutes but after a long day (up running at 5am, full day's work, mummy duties, three different dinners to cook) I caramelised them in a frying pan - and I was only doing a quarter of the quantity so it probably made more sense anyway.

Recipe as follows to serve four

• 500g block of puff pastry - one day, I will get round to learning how to make my own
• 600g onions, finely sliced - roughly six medium onions
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 2tbsp brown sugar
• 60g feta cheese, crumbled

1. Roll the pastry out into a rectangle until it's about 5mm thick.  Cut into four.
2. Score a line around the edge of each piece about 1cm from the edge, taking care to not cut right through.
3. Use a fork to prick the inner rectangle of each piece.
4. Bake for 15 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, lightly fry the onions in a frying pan until they start to soften and caramelise - add a little water as necessary to stop them burning.
6. When soft, add the vinegar and sugar and continue to cook over a low heat for 3-5 minutes.
7. Remove the pastry from the oven.  Top with the onions, crumble over the cheese then return to the oven for a further five minutes.
8. Serve with a green salad and a glass or several of Chablis (not that I had any...sob...sniff)

Onion Bhajis (or not!)

Day four and disaster number one.  At this rate I am due to have 91.25 disasters over the course of this challenging.  Now there's a heartening thought.  Not!

I'm not having a good week.  Make that I'm not having a good month.  Roll on October.  But without whining on too much, last week I stupidly managed to order two huge bags of onions from Ocado.  Or maybe Miss A did it when she was playing with Talking Ben on my phone?  Whatever.  I'm now inundated with onions.

My first plan to make lots of lovely French onion soup with cheese croutes has been slightly scuppered by the appearance of the Indian summer.  It's just too hot for soup and cold soup is just so wrong.

Next option - make onion bahjees.  Something I've never attempted before so a great idea for the recipe challenge.

Now this is where I should have just stopped.  At the thinking stage.  But no, I Googled for recipes and found several on www.onionrecipes.co.uk.  Did I heed the warning bells at this point?  No.

What is it that people say about Chinese restaurants (or Indian or French or any other national restauarant)? If there are no Chinese (or Indian or French or yadda yadda) eating in the restaurant then don't go in no matter how good it looks.

This transpires to a lot of recipes.  If they're not written by someone who is from said country or who has at least visited said country, then steer well clear.

I ended up with 'curried onion half moons in a pile'  Not even curried onion rings.  Never trust a recipe that says it's good and simple.

Lesson learnt.   No tea for me tonight. Tomorrow, I shall mostly be baking onion bread.

If you want to try and prove the recipe works though, you can find it here