Nici Wickes: Stuffed Onions Baked with Tomato Cream Sauce

This recipe is just so divine and though it sounds complicated it really is very simple. My mum would cook this for our family dinners, to satisfy the vegetarians in the family.  

Serves 6-8 

 

Ingredients

3 - 4 very large onions 

450 g fresh washed spinach or silverbeet 

275 g ricotta 

2 eggs 

50g Parmesan cheese, grated 

a good pinch of thyme or oregano 

salt and pepper 

  

Sauce 

250ml cream 

450g tin of tomatoes 

cayenne pepper and salt 

  

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C and butter a large oven proof dish. 
2. Cut the onions (with the skin still on) from top to bottom only half way though, through to the heart. 
3. Put them into a large pot of boiling water and simmer for 20 - 25 minutes. They will have opened up a little. Remove from the pot and let cool. 
4. Now parboil the trimmed spinach or silverbeet until wilted then strain and squeeze all the water from it. Chop. 
5. Mash the ricotta, eggs, cheese and seasoning then add the chopped greens and set aside. 
6. Now the fun part....stuffing the onions: Remove the skin off the onions and separate the layers of onions - you should get 6-7 layers from each onion, place them on a tea towel to drain. The hearts of the onions can be chopped finely and added to the stuffing. 
7. Place a spoonful of stuffing (don't overstuff) on each onion section and roll up and place seam side down in your oven dish so that they all fit snugly. 
8. Now puree the tomatoes and whisk together with the cream and seasonings and spoon over the onions to coat them. 
9. Bake for 45 minutes and spoon over more of the sauce if they look as though they are drying a little. 
10. Lovely served with a salad. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from Newstalks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
EDB tell you all, we've had a disrupted couple of
weeks on Saturday mornings on News talk EDB. So a
fortnight ago, you probably don't remember this, but the All
Blacks were playing, I know, so rude of them to
schedule their game at the same time as that show.
So that meant that we got bumped for the All Blacks.
Can you believe it? Last week at this time, exactly
a week ago, I think I was in a room

(00:32):
with Prime Minister Christopher Luxen and the Chinese President Jinping
in Lima, in Peru, of all places. So that was
one of those kind of amazing and slightly unusual experiences
that I'm very fortunate to have from time to time
in my profession. My impressions of Lima were that it
was a really interesting and exciting city. I've never been

(00:54):
to Peru before. I've been fortunate to travel through other
parts of Latin America quite a bit, through Columbia and
through Argentina, through Bolivia, those sorts of places, and the
thing about Lima is that it's on the Pacific coast,
so immediately there's a little bit of familiarity, you know,
when you're looking out over the Pacific, even if you're
on the other side, it sort of feels a little
bit like home. The food in Lima was incredible. I

(01:18):
think we had sevica every single day, Lots of like
Lomo saltado, which is this kind of amazing beef dish
they serve there, and one of my favorite things. It
sounds so simple, but they have this sort of rotisserie
chicken that they make in Peru that I don't know.
This is something about the chicken that maybe they just

(01:38):
have more fat in the chicken or something. It's absolutely delicious.
So I had a lot of rotisserie chicken while I
was in Peru, and yeah, the cuisine was an absolute highlight.
So a real privilege to go there for a few
days last week. And I want to return to Peru
now because I haven't been up into the Andes. I
think that's one of the one of the key things
you've got to do if you're traveling there, go up
into Cusco, much Upecha, all that kind of stuff. So

(02:00):
that's going to be on the bucket list for the
time being. Right now, it is twelve minutes two ten
on News Talk NB cook Necki Wicks is here with
us this morning. Killed her.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Oh my mouth is watering listening to all of that.
I've not been there either, but I hear the cuisine
is absolutely outstanding.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah it is. It's because they have they have a
real Japanese influence as well. They have the sort of
nique cuisine there in Peru, which is sort of a
cross Pacific cuisine.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
I suppose.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, it's yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah, it's a strange mix. We have those restaurants in
Auckland Azubu that yeah, that cross of Yeah, that's right
across between Japanese and Peruvian. And I was like, where
did that come from?

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Well, yeah, we had we had Koui as well, so
we had which is guinea pig. And it's one of
these things where you go, oh my gosh, if you know.
I was like, oh, okay, guinea pig. I remember. Very quickly,
we went on this tour with this woman who we're
looking at some of the ruins in Lima, and there
are a few ruins in Lima. Anyway, she was talking
to us and she said, she said, in other countries

(03:04):
Koui pet not in Peru and Peru cooy food like yeah,
but it was one of these things that it honestly
didn't feel like it wasn't a novelty like it was.
It felt like a really good yeah, really kind of
a nutritious protein. So so yeah, that's fantastic. Anyways, Oh great, Well,
look there you go.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
Lots of news this morning, and I'm so delighted by
your news, Jack Well, I mean, congratulations on your awards
as well. I mean, what a beautiful, beautiful time for you.
It must be like everything's coming together nicely.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Wow, and you well deserved. Thank you. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, and I have recently fairwelled my dear mum. Yeah,
and that's been a big thing for our family. But
I loved listening to your news this morning because it
made me think about that beautiful cycle of life. And
there's nothing that makes me happier than thinking about new
life coming in as beautiful other lives come to an end.
So I wanted to share this morning one of our

(04:01):
one of mom's favorite recipes, which was for stuffed onions
baked in a Martoi cream sauce. And I heard your
intro and I'm with you on the onions.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
I mean, is the underrated hero of cooking.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Yeah, I love it, and is this recipe is a
chance for the onions to really shine. And Mum would
make this often, and I suspect now I'll be doing
the arduous task this Christmas because it's such a gorgeous
dish and my vegetarian sister's adore it and would always say, Mum,
can we have the stuffed onions. I want to say
to our listeners that the recipe sounds complicated, but it's

(04:36):
really simple, and it really is. So I'm going to
rush through the recipe now, but obviously they can go online.
It's just so delicious. Basically, you've got these leaves of
onion and they are stuffed with spinach and silver beet,
which is rampant in the gardens and the stores at
the moment, Ricotta with some parmesan cheese in there, and
then the whole thing jack is doused in this tomato

(04:59):
and cream sauce that spiked ever so slightly with cayne,
pepper and salt. It's just amazing, and then it's all baked.
So look here you go to get the leaves of
the onion. You cut the onions with the skin still
on from top to bottom, from root to tip, only
halfway through through to the heart. And then you put them,

(05:21):
you know, boil and then you boil them in some
boiling water for twenty to twenty five minutes. And I
remember standing beside Mum when I got it to show
me this recipe, and I was just like, what, you're
not peeling them whatever, you know, and you boil the
betweenty to twenty five minutes and they open up a
little bit and they soften a little bit, So take
them out of the pot, let them call. And while

(05:41):
they're doing that, you can sort of par boil your
spinach or silver beet or whatever and squeeze all the
out of that and make the rest of that stuffing
so you can mash the ricotta the eggs. Use two eggs,
two seventy five grams of ricotta. I've used about five
hundred bout half a kilo of washed spinach and silver beet.
That's half a kilo raw, so it's tons, and about

(06:02):
fifty to one hundred grams of parmesan cheese, good pinch
of maybe oregar, no time marjoram, something like that. Good
dose of salt and pepper, and that's your filling. And
by the time you've done that, your beautiful onions will
have softened. What you then do is take off the skin.
You're going to discard that, and then you can really
easily jack, it's surprising, separate the layers of the onions

(06:24):
so they come away in these beautiful big leaves. And
remember we only cut them down one side, so what
you're able to do is you'll get about six or
seven leaves or layers from each onion. And I just
love that metaphor of separating the layers of the heeling
back the onion dry and pat them a bit dry.
Right in the center. The hearts of those you can

(06:44):
chop those fine men, add those to the stuffing. They
won't be much used to us because they're too small.
But then you place a big spoonful of the stuffing,
don't overstuff, and they'll stitch you up later into each
one of those onion sections and you sort of roll
them up jack and you paste them seamside down in
an oven dish that you've buttered, and they'll all fit

(07:04):
snugly around. And then simple sauce you pure can of
tomatoes four hundred and fifty grams of tomatoes, nice plump tomatoes,
two hundred and fifty mils of cream, bit of cayenne
pepper in there, and some salt. Pour half of that
over your onions, and then just start cooking them. Bake
them at one hundred and eighty degrees for about forty

(07:24):
five minutes. Spoon over a bit more sauces they're cooking
if they look to be drying out, and they are
melting and delicious and divine, and you can have them
just served with a little salads.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
They sound beautiful, they really do. They sound incredible, Nikky.
Thank you. Look what we'll do is we'll put that
recipe of your mom's up on the News TALKSZP website,
and thank you so much. I know it's been a
really trying a couple of weeks for your family, but
we've been thinking of you and we're so glad to
have you back. So sorry for your loss.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News Talks that'd be from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio