Vidalia Onion Pie

American Entree

VIDALIA ONION PIE

INGREDIENTS

3 Vidalia onions
4 tablespoons butter
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons flour
¼ cup milk
1 cup sour cream
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
2 9-inch pie shells
⅓ cup grated Parmesan cheese

Makes 2 pies. Takes 50 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Thinly slice Vidalia onions. Add butter and onion slices to pan. Sauté on medium-heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Add onion and its drippings, eggs, flour, milk, sour cream, pepper, and salt to large mixing bowl. Blend well with whisk. Pour into pie shell. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Bake in oven at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Lower temperature to 325 degrees and bake for an additional 20-to-40 minutes or until center of pie is firm.

TIDBITS

1) Vidalia onions are too flat to be used in onion bowling. You need a completely round onion for onion bowling. The onion’s root must not stick out.

2) Don’t show up at the Onion Bowling Championship in Scalene, Iowa with ovoid and misshapen onions. Your onion will go into the gutter time after time. People will laugh at you. And have you tried to pick up a 7-10 split with a lumpy onion? Well, it’s difficult!

3). The roundest onions come found Roundia, Tennessee.

4) Onion bowling was particularly popular during the Civil War. Union and Confederate armies fighting in Tennessee would periodically declare three-day truces to hold onion-bowling tournaments. A good time was had by all. The Southerners usually won, having been raised since infancy to bowl onions.

5) Many culinary historians believe onion bowling would have won out over baseball in the South had the Rebels won the war. But the Yankees prevailed, Reconstruction followed, and the Southern states had to adopt baseball as their primary sport in order to be readmitted to the Union.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.