World's best baked onions - a lucky dip

"I've found it. The best onion recipe - it's smashing, pukka, the absolute dog's kahunas! I love it served with cod but it's also great with roast chicken. You've got to try it." Jamie Oliver

He's not shy of blowing his own trumpet is he? Jamie Oliver that is. But at the same time he is just so enthusiastic, that you have to at least half-way believe him. I mean those few words could not have been written by anybody else could they?

Really I should try this recipe before writing about it. After all it might just be awful - though I doubt it is. I mean there's not much you can do wrong with onions is there? You can even burn them a bit and they still taste good.

The recipe is from Happy Days with the Naked Chef but a reprinted edition that I bought a few years ago. On the back of the book an obviously older Jamie Oliver than the one shown on the cover reflects on its publication.

"This is probably the most beautiful of my three Naked Chef books. I'd just got married when it came out and it represents a really happy time for me. This was my fastest selling book at the time showing that my kind of cooking was fitting in with people's everyday lives. By keeping it simple, people really wanted to give it a go in the kitchen which is exactly what I was hoping to achieve with this book."

He says he likes to be simple so as not to put people off, and, having looked at the recipe I'd have to say that it does look pretty simple. Mind you stuffing things is often not that easy and can be fiddly and perhaps wrapping a bit of pancetta round the onion and securing it with a rosemary twig is also not super simple. But it's not that hard either.

On the back of the book the publisher's have added a recommendation from Delia who says:

"There is only one Jamie Oliver. Great to watch. Great to cook."

And yes I think that this is true - which is why he has had such influence in the world of modern celebrity chefs, largely because of the infectious enthusiasm which can be so easily mocked but which I think is genuine. He no longer has this recipe on his website - well it's old - but there are lots of other websites out there that feature it.

So moving on from Jamie Oliver, what about baked stuffed onions? I did look on the net and of course there are thousands of recipes. I am not at all sure that I have ever cooked baked stuffed onions. Which reminded me of a recipe that I used to tell myself I would make one day, from one of my favourite cookbooks - Provence the Beautiful Cookbook. Oignons farcis it's called in French or Stuffed onions in English and it's by Richard Olney. A much more restrained description of the dish than Jamie's. I have never made it because I was put off by the fact that after boiling the onions, you separate each leaf, and then stuff each leaf separately. Sounded tedious and tricky to me. But every now and then I think about it and wonder whether I should give it a try.

However when trawling the net I found at least two bloggers who raved about Yotam Ottolenghi's version of the dish.

Here is what one of them said:

"Anyway, these stuffed onions are pretty amazing. Poached onion layers are filled with feta, herbs, spring onions and breadcrumbs. The latter provide substance and are gooey and swollen with flavour from the cooking stock. We ate some of them on their own with a salad then immediately ate the rest from the baking dish with our hands. The most unexpectedly rich and comforting dish I’ve eaten in a very long time." - Food Stories

Apparently it's from Plenty and you can find the recipe here. No separating out the leaves here - he just takes the same approach as Jamie, by boiling them whole and then taking out the middles. A more complicated and possibly tastier stuffing though than Jamie.

It's the same approach taken by Nigel Slater for his Onions with barley and mustard cream sauce. This also sounds good although there are no pictures I'm afraid. He also gives a few words about cooking the onions which are pretty useful.

"Very large onions can take an age to come to tenderness in boiling water. It will be quicker to use 8 smaller ones if time is an issue. They are ready to drain and bake once their layers are translucent and they can be easily pierced right through with a skewer. To be good, the onions must be soft and totally tender. If the centre layers of the onion refuse to squash down to make room for the filling, then scoop a little of the flesh out with a teaspoon."

Having gone on about vegetarianism a bit of late I guess this particular dish - and the variations thereof would be a very good example of something that you could cook that would satisfy as a meal. All you would need extra would perhaps be some bread to sop up the juices and a green salad.

And stuffing things, whilst potentially tedious, time-consuming and fiddly can also be amazingly satisfying and creative as well.

Go Jamie.