A MULTI-LAYERED DELIGHT
EMILY HORTON shows love to a kitchen staple, the humble onion
½ This soup gets its earthy flavour from a handful of dried porcini mushrooms. To balance the sweetness of the onions, be sure to use a good baguette or sour dough loaf for the toast.
Serves 4 4½ cups water, 2 cups worth brought to a boil 14g dried porcini
mushrooms 425g yellow onions 3 tbs extra virgin olive oil 1tsp sea salt 2 cloves garlic, minced 2tsp fresh thyme leaves 1 cup dry white wine ¼tsp fresh racked black pepper, or more as needed 8 baguette slices or 4 slices sour dough bread,
cut 2cm thick Pour the 2 cups of boiling water over the dried mushrooms in a bowl; soak for about 20minutes while you cook the onions.
Cut the onions in half, top to bottom. Cut each half crosswise into thin half-moon slices.
Heat a wide, heavy pot over medium-low heat. Add the oil and swirl to coat, then stir in the onions and half a teaspoon of salt.
Cook for about 30minutes, stirring a few times, until the onions begin to break down somewhat but are not falling apart. Reduce the heat as needed to keep the onions from sticking or browning excessively.
Stir in the garlic and thyme; cook for 5minutes, then add the wine. Increase the heat to medium-high and cook for 5minutes or until the wine has reduced by about half.
Place a fine-mesh strainer over the pot; pour in the mushrooms and their soaking liquid, reserving the rehydrated mushrooms.
Add the remaining 2 ½ cups of water; once the liquids in the pot start to bubble at the edges, partially cover and cook for 10minutes.
Chop the rehydrated mushrooms into small pieces. Add them to the pot along with the pepper and the remaining half a teaspoon of salt. Partially cover and cook for another 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200°C. Toast the bread until crisp and barely golden.
Place the slices in the bottom of individual soup bowls. Ladle the soup over the toast; serve hot. Once the beets are roasted, this earthy, tangy salad comes together quickly. Ume vinegar can be found at Asian grocery stores.
Serves 4–6 340g small to medium red
beetroot 1 small red onion 2 tbs ume (umeboshi, or
plum) vinegar 1 tsp sesame seeds, preferably raw/ unhulled 1 tsp fresh lemon juice 1 tbs extra-virgin olive oil Preheat the oven to 200°C.
Trim the beetroot ends. Wrap each beet in just enough aluminium foil to cover with one layer.
Place directly on the middle oven rack and roast for 45minutes to 1 hour or just until tender.
The beets are ready when they are easy to pierce with the tip of a sharp knife.
Let cool, which may take up to an hour.
Unwrap the beets; loosen and discard their skins under cool running water. If the beets are small, cut them into small wedges. If they are medium-sized, cut them into 3cm cubes. Transfer the beets to a mixing bowl.
Cut the onion in half from top to bottom. Cut each half lengthways into thin slices.
Transfer the onion to the bowl with the beets.
Add the ume vinegar to the bowl, toss well and let sit for UTUMN and winter are not my favourite times of the year. As seasons go, I rank these seasons last, in the kitchen and everywhere else. I’m cold, there’s nothing fresh to cook, and it makes a curmudgeon out of me. But increasingly, I’m realising that winter cooking has an upside.
With less to work with, you focus on what you do have. You think past your typical impulses, reframing the usual suspects. For the often overstimulated and overwhelmed, this can be freeing. At mealtime, it means paying due attention to one of the most common yet underestimated ingredients of everyday cooking: onions. Not spring’s precious bunching onions with their grass-green tops, or even the sweet speciality onions of summer. I mean plain, round storage onions, the ones we rarely think about. 10minutes.
Meanwhile, toast the sesame seeds in a small skillet over medium heat for a few minutes, tossing occasionally, until they darken a shade and smell fragrant. Let cool.
Whisk together the lemon juice and the oil in a large liquid measuring cup until
Onions are both foundation and finishing touch, so common to our cooking habits that to leave them out must be deliberate. Yet despite this reliance, how often do we summon the onion for its own sake? Not often enough, and perhaps that’s because we tend to undervalue anything we have perennial access to, anything dependable and ubiquitous. Winter, with so few fleeting distractions outselling this humble vegetable’s charms, is my annual cue to yield more space to them on the plate.
You should always, when cutting onions (or any other vegetable, for that matter), use a sharp knife.
A dull one will bruise the flesh, which leads to ragged slices that are prone to stick to a pan’s surface.Avoid non-stick cookware when cooking onions; it discourages proper (and delicious!) colouring. – The Washington Post emulsified, then pour over the beets and onions, tossing to coat.
To serve, spoon on to plates and sprinkle the sesame seeds over each portion.