The Detour...

Sometimes you have to take a different route when you are on the way to the airport (but more on that in a minute).

I've been in the process of recruiting a new person to head up our sales effort. I've been talking to some pretty heavy "hitters." These are folks who have headed up sales organizations with revenues that reach as high as $300-$600 million in sales per year. I have been flying them in from as far away as Florida and California to our corporate headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin for our discussions. When they come, one thing I like to do is have them over for a quiet dinner.

These dinners may be quiet for the guests, but many times they are not quiet for me--especially in advance. Depending on my schedule, I might be scrambling to put dinner together. One such dinner this week I had to put together on the heels of coming in from my office in Chicago. I was planning to serve a simple chicken piccata with Parmesan-black pepper mashed potatoes, roasted broccoli, Zola nuts, buttermilk toffee cake and a caramelized onion tart as the appetizer. I blasted into the grocery store to get the ingredients and got the cake safely into the oven at home, but I was running out of time when I was making the caramelized onions for the tart. Then I got "the call." There was an underground fire downtown; power and traffic lights were out and traffic was completely snarled throughout the downtown area. I wasn't going to be able to take my usual route to the airport to pick up my guest. I was going to have to take a much longer way. Now I was REALLY running short on time.

My husband agreed to take the cake out of the oven for me when the buzzer went off, but I realized I didn't have time to stick around while the onions caramelized on the stove. What could I do?

In regular Zola fashion, I devised Plan B.

I decided they could be "baked" and caramelized in the oven. Caramelizing the onions is the secret to the success of the tart because caramelizing them makes the onions sweet. A sweet onion sounds like an impossibility if you've never caramelized one but, if you cook an onion slowly enough, you can make it sweet without adding any sugar. The onion's natural sugar will come out all on its own. So I cooked the onions in the saute pan on the stove with olive oil to get them started and then transferred them to a cast iron pan at the last minute and put them in the oven at 350 degrees as I headed for the outside door. I figured they'd be in the oven for about an hour until I returned from the airport, guest in tow, and I could then finish the tart. The onions would be baked and therefore caramelized. Great idea.

When I arrived at the airport, you guessed it, the flight was delayed--delayed a half hour. I called my husband and asked him to stir my onions. He did. I decided to relax and wait but, since I'm Type-A, I changed my mind and instead I called a guy and did a phone meeting and crossed another thing off my to-do list. Boy, that felt good. Then my interview guest arrived and we drove home. The onions had now been in the oven an hour and a half. That's a little too long but they were perfectly usable and definitely caramelized. I finished assembling the tart and we sat down for a drink with the Zola nuts and talked for the 30 minutes while the tart baked. It was well worth the wait, and the leftovers two days later at another dinner were even better. I hope you all enjoy it too.

Zola

Caramelized Onion Tart

2 large yellow or white onions, thinly sliced
1 Tbl olive oil
3 Tbl fresh tarragon, minced
1 pre-made refrigerated piecrust
6 paper-thin slices of prosciutto ham
1 cup Gruyere cheese, shredded (or Swiss cheese)
1 cup Parmesan cheese, grated (divided in two)
1 cup heavy cream
2 eggs

Put your sliced onions in an ovenproof pan (a cast iron pan is best but any ovenproof pan will do). Drizzle on olive oil and sprinkle on tarragon. Bake in a 350-degree oven for at least an hour. Stir every 30 minutes until lightly browned on the edges of a few of the onion strings. You don't need to brown them all, and they don't need to completely shrivel. You just want them to get gummy and completely cooked.

The nice thing about this part of the recipe is you can be doing other things while you're caramelizing the onions. Set the table, arrange the flowers or do some of the other cooking.

Unroll your piecrust into a 10-inch spring form pan or other tart pan with a removable bottom. If the piecrust has been out of the refrigerator for 15 to 20 minutes it will unroll more easily. Just fit it into the pan and, if you need to, you can turn over the edges to form a crust along the sides that is one-half to one inch high. You don't have to be too picky.

Lay your prosciutto slices across the bottom to cover the entire bottom of the piecrust. They will overlap each other. Put in your onions and spread them across the prosciutto. Mix the eggs and cream with a fork until well mixed. You don't have to beat the mixture; just make sure the eggs are well broken up and the mixture is well blended. Spread the Gruyere and half of the Parmesan on top of the onions. Then pour the egg/cream mixture over the top.

Gently transfer the tart to your oven and bake for 30 minutes more at 350 degrees until the top is lightly browned and the filling is set. When you take the tart out of the oven, sprinkle on the rest of the Parmesan and it's ready to serve. Cut into pie-shaped wedges, large or small.