Onions and a Dead Bunny

Cooking Adventure: Green Onion & Cheddar Popovers
Source: Cooking Weekends

The Bellydance Soundtrack: Houllou Houllou by Emad Sayyah

Prep Time: 10 min.

Cook Time: 25-35 min.

  

"You want to see him do dead bunny?" Well, of course I want to find out what this could mean. So I grab my camera while my friend, Anya, lays her pet bunny, Oli, on her back in the crook between her outstretched legs. She coaxes him for a few seconds. "Come on! Come on! Do the dead bunny! Be a dead bunny!" Oli proceeds to go stiff with her feet sticking straight up in the air, to which Anya jokingly laments, "...Nooooo! The bun-bun's dead! Come back BUNNAY!" It's not a pigeon in a diaper, but I will never cease to be entertained by my friend's pets.

I solemnly swear that this bunny is indeed alive and is in no way included in the following recipe.

Meanwhile, I recently made some chocolate chili and have found myself in the possession of an exceedingly large amount of green onions.  Why do markets always sell them in bunches of five? Has anyone here ever used that many in one recipe? Apparently this is a common problem, as several other Google search results yielded other Internet cooks lamenting their overstock of the stuff. As using them in a salad is out for me**, I opted to go the yummier way and make cheddar & green onion popovers.

If you don't own a popover pan you can make these in muffin tins; however, I highly encourage using a popover pan. They'll taste the same, but you just can get as good of a bubble with the muffin tins. You can find the pans at most cooking stores for about $40, but a good chunk of people seem to not know what they're for. Hence, I tend to see them at Goodwill quite often. I also highly advocate borrowing - as I have yet to meet anyone who lives off a daily, or even weekly, popover supply. I imagine that, after a while, you'd start to transform into the shape of one if you ate that many.

This weekend is my last in town before my husband and I head up nort' der ya you betcha for the annual Iron County Fair. I'm thinking I'll enter a pie in the competition this year. Not sure it's going to beat the one I had last year, though: Chocolate Pecan Bourbon pie that sold at auction for $180 (These Yoopers are serious about their pie.).

*A note about this recipe: If you're using a muffin tin the amounts should give you enough batter. For a popover tin you'll want to increase everything by 1/2.

Ingredients

- 2 tbsp canola oil (I used olive oil & it worked fine.)

- 2 eggs

- 1 cup all-purpose flour

- 1 cup milk

- 1/8-1/4 tsp salt, to taste
- freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 1 tbsp green onion, sliced or jalapeno, finely diced

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

2. Pour some oil on to a clean cloth or paper towel and coat the insides and top edges of the muffin tin/popover cups. (Gerlinde just put a tsp. of oil in each cup for hers, but she had some sticking. If you coat the cups with oil then you get a very clean popover with nothing sticking to the sides.)

3. Place tin into oven to heat about 5-10min.

4. While the tin is heating whisk together the eggs, flour, milk, salt and pepper until smooth & even. Whisk in the cheese & onion (jalapeño also an option; especially if served with chili).

5. Remove the tin from the oven and pour batter into cups about 1/4 inch from the top.

6. Return to the oven and bake for about 25-35 minutes or until the popovers are a nice, even brown. If you want dryer and stiffer ones you can turn off the oven and leave them in for 5 more minutes (Though I've always been partial to the softer, doughier kind - more fun to pull apart.).

 

 

Thank you to Gerlinde for her wonderful popover recipe! Definitely check out her blog, Cooking Weekends. She has a wonderful collection of recipes and very yummy looking photos.

 

 

**Main course salads make me angry. Like the Hulk angry. I eat all that food but I always end up still hungry after. But I can't eat any more because I already technically had my meal. If ever you sense that my blog post is angry, ask me if I tried to eat a salad. The answer is most likely, "Blue Faerie SMASH!"