Baked Onions with Truffled Egg Yolks

Several months ago Connie and I were lucky enough to go to Jungle Jim's in Cincinnati.  If you're not familiar with it, it's a grocery store that's the size of seven football fields.  They have just about everything.  One of the goodies we found was frozen kangaroo tenderloins.  Needless to say, those went in the basket!

So, the question became, what do you serve with kangaroo?  And, how do you cook kangaroo?  I finally solved the first riddle when I found a cookbook by a couple of Australian chefs.  I turned it over to Connie and asked him to figure out what he'd like.  While he was hunting through the cookbook, I was researching kangaroo on the internet.  Turns out you marinate it with oil and wine.  Ok, that's easy.

Connie comes in the kitchen with the cookbook and points to a recipe for salt baked onions with truffled egg yolks.  YUM, that sounded fantastic.  And, I had all of the ingredients.  Even better. 

So, what did we think?  We loved the baked onions.  They're a good bit of work to fix so they're not something you want to do for a large dinner party.  And, next time I'll peel the onions after the first baking instead of not peeling them at all.  The kangaroo?  Not so much.  As Connie said, it tasted like a mixture of liver and steak.  We like both but like them as separate dishes. 

Baked Onions with Truffled Egg Yolks

Ingredients

1 lb rock salt
2 Vidalia onions
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
1 tsp butter
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1/2 c cream
2 oz romano cheese, finely grated
2 egg yolks
1/2 t truffle oil
1 oz parmesan cheese, finely grated

Directions:

Spread the salt in the bottom of a baking dish. 

Preheat your oven to 300.  Make a small slit in the top of each onion. 

Stick the rosemary sprigs into the onions.  (Connie would've preferred two per onion.)

Put the onions on the salt and roast for about an hour.  They'll be very soft when they're done.  Remove the onions from the pan.  Don't toss the salt, you'll need it later.  Allow the onions to cool for about 10 minutes.  Slice the top off each onion and gently peel the onion - not the first layer, just the peeling.  Reserve the tops for a garnish if you'd like.
Be sure to save the rosemary to crumble onto the finished onions.

Scoop out the centers of the onions, leaving the outer two layers. 

Dice the onion you've scooped out. 

Melt the butter in a small skillet.  Saute the onion and the garlic until they're soft and golden brown.  Pour in the cream. 

Cook it, stirring regularly, until it's reduced by half.  Remove the skillet from the heat and stir in the grated romano.

Stir until it's melted.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Spoon half of the onion mixture into the onion shells.  Add an egg yolk to each and drizzle with truffle oil. 

Add the rest of the onion mixture

and top with the shredded Parmesan.

Put the onions back onto the salt and bake for 10 minutes until the Parmesan is melted and golden. 

Top with the cooked, crumbled rosemary.

adapted from Surfing the Menu