This recipe highlights two of the items that we are offering this week at the market. The cipollini (pronounced chip-oh-LEE-nee) onion and your preference of cherry tomato…sun gold and/or the heart-shaped tomato-berry tomato.
The cipollini onion differs from regular pearl onions in that they they roast up sweeter and have none of the typical onion “bite”.
Ingredients:
1 pound cipollini onions
1 pound cherry tomatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
Coarse salt
4 slices of country or ciabatta bread, one-inch thick
1 15-ounce can of white beans, drained and rinsed or 1 1/2 cups cooked beans of your choice
Garlic clove (optional)
Few fresh basil leaves, slivered
Preheat oven to 375°F. Boil a small pot of water and blanche the cipollini for 10 seconds, then plunging them into cold water. Use a paring knife to make a small slit in each, and slide them out of their skins and outer layer.
Spread peeled onions and tomatoes in a roasting pan. Drizzle with olive oil and a few good pinches of coarse salt. Toss everything together until well-coated and roast in preheated oven for about 45 minutes, reaching in every 15 minutes with a spatula to roll the tomatoes and onions around to ensure all sides get blistered.
Just before you take the tomatoes and onions out, place your bread slices on the oven rack (or a tray, if you’re more refined than us) and let them toast lightly. You can rub the toasts with a halved garlic clove, if you like, while still hot. Use tongs to arrange toasts in one layer on a serving platter. Dump the white beans over the bread, and using a pot holder, scrape the entire contents of the tomato-and-onion roasting pan, still hot, over the white beans. Do not skimp on the juices that have collected, all of them — don’t leave any in the pan. They could make a religious person out of you.
Sprinkle the dish with the basil and eat at once.