Onions

You know that vegetable everyone cries from or about?  The smelly leftover in your refrigerator that can make other foods taste weird?  Well let’s look at them in a different light. I love onions but, here comes the food snob, I’m very particular about my onions. I don’t just grab the small mesh bag and take them home. Oh, no!

The first criteria; where are the onions grown? I have a mental calendar for fresh onions as they are available to me. It used to be that OSOs from Chile were the onions I started looking for around the December holidays as well as Maya Sweets from Mexico. Now the Mayas are available in November or late October. Another group of sweet onions come from Peru around the first of the year into February, if I am lucky. Then there can be a little gap where only stored onions are available. April brings the 10-15 onions and the beginning of the Vidalia’s. This last week I was ecstatic to find both onions in my stores.  I bought five pounds of each.  What I did with 10 pounds of onions will come later. Vidalia’s can be around for several months but they are best in the early spring. In early summer the Walla Wallas from Washington show up. Then sweet onions from other places in the US take me back to October and the Mayans. Now mind you, this schedule is very dependent on what the stores are able to get from their suppliers.

The second criterion is how I pick an onion. I have to smell them. What do I smell?  I smell to see if they smell like an onion. What does that mean to me? Well the best one’s have no smell at all. The next would be does it smell sweet?  If it has an edge to the smell or even a little moldy I put it back. One day I was picking out onions in our local grocery store and a man across from me was watching as I smelled onions. He eventually came on my side of the produce aisle and told me I was very fussy about my onions and would I ever find one I liked. I told him that it had to smell right. He just shook his head, grabbed an onion and walked away.

The onion has to be right or it can spoil a whole dish. One of my favorite ways to use onions is to sauté them until they caramelize. I take out a big cast iron enamel frying pan and put in 4 to 5 pounds of slivered onions with a little oil and butter. Then I let them cook slowly for about 30 to 45 minutes depending on how many onions are in the pan. Be careful that they don’t burn from the natural sugar in the onions.

My favorite use of caramelized onions is pizza. Just a simple pizza of crust, onions, and olives.  Sometimes I add thinly sliced tomatoes.  Bake for 10 to 15 minutes @ 450° and Voila!  Your answer to Provence at home. Now you know what happened to the ten pounds of onions.

Here is the pizza dough recipe I use (gluten free pizza crusts can be purchased ready made or as a mix).

4 cups flour

1 package yeast

1 tablespoon olive oil (flavored olive oil can be used)

1-1/2 cups tepid water

1. Dissolve the package of yeast in the tepid water.  Let it bloom.  When the yeast is bloomed, the water looks foggy and bubbly.  This can take 5-6 minutes.
2. Add the oil and blend.
3. Slowly add the four cups of flour.  You may not need all of it.  Add until you have a non-sticky dough.
4. Knead for ten minutes.
5. Place dough in an oiled bowl and let rise until double in size.
6. Put on floured board and knead for another 2-3 minutes.
7. Leave on the board and let it rest for 10 minutes.
8. Roll or press out onto baking sheet the desired size.

 Remember to smell the onions!