Channeling Julia

Most of us think of onions as an ingredient in dishes featuring other foods, but today we look at the use of onions as the main dish.

Sogan-dolma (Stuffed Onions) is an Imperial Ottoman dish that has become popular in North America. There are many variations on the basic dish, but most recipes call for a meat (spiced or smoked sausage is traditional), a contrasting vegetable (we used spinach), some kind of grain (bread crumbs or rice) and milk or cream. Many recipes local to the southern US call for Vidalia onions, though any onion of sufficient size is acceptable.

The Ottoman Empire was very food conscious. Cooks and cuisines from every part of the empire converged on the imperial palace in Istanbul, where over a thousand people were directly involved in food preparation and fed over ten thousand people a day. The results spread all over the empire, from Southern Russia to North Africa. Foods from the Balkans, Anatolia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East retain much of the influence of the Ottomans.

North America is such a melting pot of cultures and cuisines that we who live here tend to think that we invented "home cooking" without considering that all our ancestors came from somewhere else and brought their native cuisines with them.