This is likely not going to be surprising to anyone, but I am not a huge fan of poetry. However, as a kid and teenager, I was really not a fan of poetry. I thought it was over serious and trying waaaay too hard. I was a poetry hater. Usually poetry is only mentioned in schools in conjunction with having to memorize poems. Memorization, despite my success in the K-12 system, has always been one of my least favorite academic tasks. But in high school I needed to take an English elective, and the teacher teaching Poetry was a good one. So, I signed up, and the result was largely me writing comedy poems to amuse me and my friends. (Funnily enough, this is a tradition I kept up at Milk Bar, so I guess I applied some of what I learned in high school in the real world.)
BUT, I will begrudgingly admit that I also learned that not all poetry is bad. In fact, I grew to really like some of the poems I read, and was at least proud of myself for being able to deconstruct poems a bit better. I still think a lot of it is over-serious and trying too hard. (I still hate metaphors.) All this to say though, one of my favorite poems is this poem called Onions that the teacher read us, I believe as an example to try and convince us that not all poetry has to be about grandiose themes. And they can still be good even if you don’t read in to the metaphors! No wonder I liked it.
I think of that poem whenever I have caramelized onions, or whenever my mom makes caramelized onions. But I am actually very bad at caramelizing onions myself. It takes too much time, and I’m impatient. I always put the burner on too high. I can never get them to be as good as my mom makes them. However, I love the taste. So when I stumbled across this recipe, it seemed perfect. Let the oven do all the work for you, and just leave them in the pan for an hour.
This recipe may take a bit of time in total, but the actual active time is very minimal. Chop your onions (not even dice it! just chop into slices!), empty out a jar of sundried tomatoes, add some spices. Then, 45 minutes later, boil some pasta. Then, pulling it all together just means pulling the pan out of the oven, adding some coconut milk, and then your pasta. Add protein if you want (I microwaved meatballs – another low effort task). It’s great because the sauce practically makes itself!
As with most “real food” cooking, I can already think of a few things I might want to mix up next time. I want to add some greens of some kind, probably spinach, and definitely basil (included in the recipe, but it was out of stock at the store). I might add some tomato paste to the sauce with the coconut milk, and then add more spices. But all the more reason to keep this recipe in my back pocket – I’ll keep playing around with it! As with most recipes I use to cook, it’s a very solid based recipe!
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PinIngredients
5 small yellow onions sliced, or 3 large
3 cloves of garlic, diced
1 jar sun dried tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp paprika
½ cup coconut milk
3 cups of your pasta of choice, cooked
1 handful fresh basil, chopped
A protein of choice (Optional, but I think this would be good with meatballs, chicken, tofu, chickpeas, etc.)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400F.
- To a casserole dish, add the onions, garlic, sun dried tomatoes, paprika, salt, pepper and dried parsley. Drizzle the entire dish with the oil from the sun dried tomatoes. leftover sun dried tomato oil. Cover with foil, and then put in the oven for 1 hour, tossing halfway through. The onions should be caramelized by the time it comes out of the oven.
- About 20 minutes before the casserole dish is done, prepare the pasta according to package directions, reserving a cup of pasta water.
- Once the onions are out of the oven, add the fresh basil and coconut milk to the pan. Stir until a sauce forms. You can add some of the pasta water if needed. Add in your cooked pasta and protein and stir everything together.
- Serve and enjoy!
Notes
Adapted from this Instagram post from Plant You