Category Archives: cheese

Rustic Caramelized Onion Tart

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I must preface this recipe with a warning: do not ever make it for another person. If you do, they will beg you on a very regular basis to make it for them again. It’s delicious and easy enough that you’ll do it.
I love a lot of food, so rarely will I insist that you make something right this instant, especially if it’s summer and it involves turning the oven on. But you need this. If you love caramelized onions even a little, you need this. If you love cheese even a little, you need this. If you love flaky, buttery pie crust, you need this. If you love all those things, you should already be at the grocery store.
I think my favorite thing about this is how perfectly everything comes together: the incredible dark sweetness of the onions, the salty tang of the cheese, the pure fatty deliciousness of the butter, and the freshness of the thyme just work. Perfectly. Plus, onions are totally a vegetable, so they cancel out the cheese. This is a fact.
Another bonus is that it looks pretty, so it’s great for serving at parties if you cut it into smaller wedges. Personally, I like to eat half of it for dinner. Like I said, onions = vegetable = health.


Rustic Caramelized Onion Tart (adapted slightly from Cooking Light)
1 pre-made refrigerated pie crust (I used Pillsbury, but feel free to make one yourself)
1 medium yellow onion, cut in half and sliced thin
1 medium red onion, cut in half and sliced thin
2 tablespoons fresh thyme (pull a ton off the stems and measure–it doesn’t have to be exact)
1 teaspoon sugar
generous 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/3 cup non- or low-fat feta cheese, crumbled
1/3 cup shredded gruyere cheese (I use Trader Joe’s swiss and gruyere mix)
1 egg, beaten
olive oil

Preheat oven to 425 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.

Heat a large, non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Pour in enough oil to lightly coat the bottom of the skillet. When oil is hot, add sliced onions, thyme, salt, pepper, and sugar. Stir to mix seasoning in well and taste. It should not be as salty as you would like–the cheese will take care of that. Cook, stirring often, until onions soften and begin to caramelize, about 30 minutes. Remove from heat.

Unroll pie crust onto prepared baking sheet. Top with feta cheese, leaving a border of about 1 1/2 inches on all sides. Carefully pile onion mixture on top, staying within this border. Top with gruyere cheese. Take a small section of pie crust and begin to fold it up and over the filling, pleating as you go so it looks like the picture above. Brush crust liberally with beaten egg (if your kitchen can’t even fit a pastry brush, like mine, get creative with a spoon and your fingers). Bake for 25 minutes. Crust should be golden. Remove from oven and let cool at least ten minutes before slicing into four wedges. Count how many days until you use the second pie crust in the box to make another tart.

Spinach Quesadilla With Sriracha Sour Cream

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There are a lot of dangerous things you can do in life. Swim in shark-infested waters. Get in a cage with an angry lion. Lick a subway pole. But perhaps the most dangerous is drunk food shopping.

Have you ever stopped at the store for bread and eggs after happy hour? Don’t do it. Oh sure, you’ll get your bread and eggs. But you’ll also get all sorts of things you don’t need. Like a giant bottle of sriracha.

Don’t get me wrong. I love sriracha. I visit the Schnitzel Truck on a regular basis not so much for the schnitzel but for their sriracha mayo. But the supermarket sells smaller bottles of sriracha–drunk me just thought that the biggest bottle possible was the only acceptable option, so that I could make a gallon of sriracha mayo. Do you see what it says? I own more than one pound of sriracha.

Here’s the thing about the sriracha mayo though. I don’t like mayonnaise. I can tolerate it if someone else has smeared it on a BLT for me, and I can enjoy the sriracha mayo because I think of it as a sauce, but mayo and I, for the most part, do not get along. It’s just so…gloppy. In fact, I am morally opposed to buying it. When I was growing up and my mom bought mayo, my dad and I would throw out the bottles as soon as we found them. She had to resort to stealing little packets from delis and hiding them.

So when I sobered up came to my senses, I had to think of something else to mix my giant bottle of sriracha with. What’s close to mayo in consistency but far less gross? Sour cream. What’s sour cream best with? Quesadillas. Quesadillas with lots of cheese. And some spinach, because healthy vegetables cancel out cheese. Fact.

Another fact: you can use the leftover sriracha sour cream on everything. Dip chicken nuggets/cutlets in it. Put it on sandwiches. Have it with your eggs. Make more quesadillas. If you choose to just eat it with a spoon, I won’t tell anyone. I promise.

Spinach Quesadilla With Sriracha Sour Cream (serves one but can be easily doubled)
8 oz. container of sour cream
1/2 tablespoon sriracha
one large or two medium whole wheat tortillas
2 cups chopped frozen spinach (measured frozen)
3/4 to 1 cup shredded cheese of your choice (i use Trader Joe’s lite three-cheese mix)
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper
small pinch red pepper flakes

To make the sauce:
Open container of sour cream and remove about a tablespoon. Add sriracha and mix until well combined. It will keep in the container (no extra dishes, yay!) for about as long as the date on the bottom of the container.

To make the quesadilla:
Defrost spinach according to package directions. Dump out into a clean, colored dish towel, roll up and wring out as much extra liquid as possible. Unroll. Spread two tablespoons sriracha sour cream on half of large tortilla (or on one medium one). Sprinkle half of cheese mixture over, followed by salt, pepper, garlic powder, and red pepper. Top with spinach, followed by the rest of the cheese.

Heat a grill pan or other non-stick pan over medium-high heat until hot. Spray with non-stick cooking spray or, if you’re me and keep forgetting to buy non-stick spray, pour a little vegetable oil into the pan and spread with a paper towel. Cook quesadilla for about four minutes until cheese starts to melt, then carefully flip and cook another three to four minutes until cheese is completely melted. Cut into wedges and serve with more sriracha sour cream if desired (and I think that you should).