Real Soup

On onions

Oh, how much mankind is like the variable onion.

Imperfect rounds, we are, concentric, enclosing a pure and pearly core. Thick pungent layers of flesh beneath fragile, transparent skins.

We are of many families, both wild and domestic, loved and loathed, almost everywhere a factor.

We grow, both man and onion, largely underground. We flower, make seeds and multiply.

Eventually we will add our bit of flavor to the soup.

We have, amongst us those who are fanatical about onions.

I have heard otherwise very sensible people rhapsodize about the Walla Walla Sweets and their unbelievable gentility on peanut butter sandwiches, in dessert puddings and cakes.

Recommendations for recipes such as this are usually, in tone, wildly defiant, full of reckless good humor, coaxing, daring.

Perhaps you know the onion mainly as a metaphor for truth, the garden lotus with its visible cells, or as a medicinal herb, baked, halved and applied directly, with strings or long cloth, to the ears for earaches, or mashed and plastered to the chest for lung congestion.

Possibly you know it primarily as a bringer of wanton dreams, or a gurgling sulfurous purgative that awakens you just prior to dawn, or as a subtle discouragement to the borderline amour.

If you have gone through life disliking the onion, finding it harsh and gaseous, offensive, biting, ruinous to your social and professional life, you are in a minority populated heavily with children and dentists.

Winning children over to onions is a task faced by every parent when the age of reason is reached, which is near forty, by my estimation.

Perhaps there is an auntie in your clan whose skills as pollster and analyst extend to the rating, internationally, of french fried onion rings on a scale of one to ten. This undertaking requires a scientific sort of auntie.

If you are not serious about this sort of survey, of course you may not vote.

If you speak of any and all frying in derisive tones or mention calories, you may not vote.

If you do not deign to dip them in catsup, your vote counts only half.

If you speak ill of cats or oppressed minorities or endangered species you are resoundingly ignored.

If you cannot remember where and when and with whom you ate a ten-ranked ring, then you might as well not mention it.

Otherwise there are no rules.

There seems to be a definite connection to this interjection of politics and the sudden, symbolic, coming-of-age acceptance of onions among my children.Rational thought is then, perhaps, the key.

The spring sweet onion is an ideal starting place for strictly culinary adventures with this most able veggie.

Sweet onions, large and heavy with their own distinct flavor, require careful selection and short term planning.

They carry none of the bite of the dour winter keepers, Ebeneezer, and almost no storage capacity.

Choose each onion for its firmness and the absence of blemish. If you see the price slashed and a large quotient of the onions turning faintly gray, be especially careful.

Also consider that, according to and old friend, a broad and sentimental Elizabethan carpenter who loved building kitchens, certain oil-based wood finishes do not agree with onions. The exchange of fumes works against the onion.

So if you buy a few extra pounds, handle them gently. Store them in paper so that direct contact with treated woods is avoided. Give them plenty of air in an open bin or ventilated drawer.

You can also freeze extras.

Dice them, spread them out on cookie sheets and freeze. Bag them up in about an hour, or when they are hard to the touch.

Prepared this way they do not amass themselves into large white brainlike ellipsoids in your freezer. Instead they keep their shape and you can, later, within a month or two, cleverly shake out of the bag just what you need.

I will assume that people who love onions already make an onion soup, and know to slice them into rice vinegar with dill and salt and pepper for addition to sandwiches and for simply straightforward gnoshing.

Therefore we will head into the borderlands of esoteria wherein lie endless variations on the theme of Various Baked Onions.

The guiding principle here is that an onion, halved and seasoned, requires about an hour at 350 degrees to come to its desired state.

As far as a strategy, if you get the onions ready and into the oven or onto the barbecue and prepare the rest of your meal, you should come out just about right.

You can do them whole, in the skins, gouging a small dent in the top and filling it with butter and salt and pepper, then, when done, squeezing the innards and seasoning to taste.

I prefer the following method. Peel and quarter large onions. Place them in an oiled baking dish. Spread soft butter on the cut surfaces and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake, covered, the requisite hour.

Remove from the oven and add any of the following toppings:

Sliced or grated Havarti and toasted walnuts.

Boursin type cream cheese, with garlic, dill, additional pepper.

Fresh tarragon, finely chopped, chopped almonds.

Sharp cheddar cheese, tomato mixed with mayonnaise, basil and chives. Grated Parmesan cheese.

Now return to the oven for 5 minutes or until bubbly and golden.

On a cold day, I personally can eat a whole onion prepared in this approximate fashion. For breakfast. And feel profound and full of mischief all the day.