I made up a small batch of polenta last night and let it harden on a buttered plate. I just needed one more thing--some fresh farmstand onions to caramelize.
Now I'm ready!
Ingredients
- about a dozen (or more) small white onions
- big bunch of spinach or chard
- 4 T butter
- polenta that you've made & hardened in advance (my recipe was a fast-cooking kind, I used 3 cups chicken stock to 1 cup polenta, added 3 T parmesan cheese, all according to the package)
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 T olive oil
Assembly
Wash the spinach. Here it is again in our drying rack. HUGE!
Cut the top & bottom off each onion and slice it into sticks/crescents. Melt 2 T butter in a pan and start sauteing onion slowly.
Keep stirring now and then for about 20 minutes, keeping covered while it cooks. Add another pat of butter once in a while. If you have the time and the butter, you can do this on super-low heat for up to an hour. The longer you cook, the sweeter and smaller the onions will get.
Next, prepare the spinach. Cut it into 2-3 inch strips and put it, still wettish, into a large pot with 1 T olive oil. Crush 3 cloves of garlic over it. Ideally you'll have enough to fill the pot.
Cover and heat the spinach over medium-low heat. You don't need any water other than what's clinging to the leaves. (But if you get paranoid and add a little extra, that's OK.) It'll cook down a lot.
Meanwhile, heat the other 1 T olive oil in a nonstick pan. Cut your plate's worth of polenta into pie-shaped wedges--as thin or wide as you like. Fry them for about 3 minutes per side, until each side is mostly golden brown.
To serve, spoon caramelized onions over a few polenta wedges, with spinach on the side.
