As the Scouts say ,"Be Prepared"

I do not consider myself a 'novice cook' however there are some lessons that I seem to need to repeat over and over. After posting yesterday's blog I was determined to begin my cooking sojourn immediately. So I grabbed my cookbook, my husband, my basket and beat feet down to the Pike Place Market. My husband, also known as The Main Eater, had to drive because I needed to plan my dinner on the way. The result was rushed, disorganized and somewhat less than satisfactory.

I decided to make Fillets of Sole Poached in White Wine found on page 88 of the book and Stuffed Onions from page 302. The sole was both straight forward and relatively easy but the onions much less so.

Our first stop was the wine shop for a white French vermouth that I have noticed in many of Julia's recipes. The sommelier didn't stock it but recommended an Italian vermouth that he said was very similar. Who knows what Julia would have said but I bought it. Then to the fish monger for the sole, the bakery for the white bread for making bread crumbs, the dairyman for the heavy cream and butter, and various green grocers for the lemons, Walla Walla sweet onions and shallots. Of course it is a crime to visit the market and not pick up a $5 bouquet of fresh flowers. Also, as an afterthought I also stopped at Delaurenti's which is rumored to have the best chocolate chip cookies in the city. We ate those in the car on the way home and it would be hard to turn one down.

On arrival back home I began to organize myself. When making a meal that takes more than a minimum of thought I regularly write down the various tasks associated with each dish, estimate how long they will take to accomplish and then list them according to start times. That way I know what I need to be doing and when I need to be getting on it.

That's when I noticed that the Stuffed Onions needed to boil before peeling, then boil again for 15 minutes, then get stuffed and finally bake for 1.5 hours! Dinner was obviously a ways off. Thank goodness that I had bought an additional bottle of wine.

The initial boiling was to make the skin removal easier, which is pretty easy anyway, and in retrospect it probably would have saved time to just peel the suckers and be done with it. I was a bit apprehensive about digging the centers out with a melon baller and making sure to leave 3/8" worth of onion but that turned out to be fairly easy too. So while the onions were in their 10-15 minute preboil I got busy with the stuffing.

To begin with you dice a cup of the onion that you have previously removed with the melon baller and saute it in 2 T of butter. Then you blend in a cup of cooked rice. Cooked rice? Yikes! Thank goodness The Main Eater and I had East Indian food the night before and had brought home the left over rice or this dinner would have been a really long way off. Then you add 2 T of bread crumbs. I searched that cookbook from stem to stern but could not locate any difinitive directions on how to create bread crumbs which I normally buy in a shaker at the grocery store. Luckily the internet was also available and some nice cook somewhere advised just slicing the bread and baking it for a few minutes at 350 degrees, putting it in a baggy and rolling it with a rolling pin. Worked like a charm. But then it turned out that the parsley I had intended to use from the garden had gone to seed, that I had forgotten to buy basil and the Swiss cheese I thought I had in the refrigerator was actually gorgonzola. My enthusiasm was definitely at a low ebb. But necessity is the mother of invention so I substituted the gorgonzola, moved past the basil and parsley, got those babies stuffed and in the oven, and turned my attention to the fish.

That required buttering the bottom of the baking dish, dicing the shallots and dumping half of them in the bottom of the pan, laying out the sole fillets on top of the shallots, salt and peppering the fish, throwing on the rest of the shallots, pouring in enough dry white French (or in this case Italian) vermouth to cover the fish 1/3 of the way up and topping the whole thing off with a buttered piece of wax paper (buttered side down). Then bake it for 6 or 7 minutes at 350 degrees. A piece of cake after sweating through those onions.

So how did it all turn out? I'm pretty sure the Stuffed Onions turned out pretty much like Julia intended them to, at least mine looked about the same as hers did and they met her tests for readiness. The stuffing was pretty tasty, but neither The Main Eater nor I really liked eating large pieces of soft onion. In addition it was a huge amount of work and I think that the work ought to correlate with the greatness of the dish, which in this case it did not. The Fillets of Sole Poached in White Wine however, was delicious, easy, fast, relatively cheap and pretty low in calories. In other words, perfect.

The Bottom Line:

Poached Sole in White Wine Sauce

Stuffed Onion