three wise men

What is an onion essentially?

We eat them, they are also smelly. Can you remember being a child and finding onions repulsive? It's almost as if they're not made to be eaten. We get used to them though as we grow older, just like coffee and booze - and being treated like we don't have feelings.

Onions can be white, green, red and probably some other colors as well. Before industrialized food production I bet there was blue and orange onions as well as some in the shape of a donut. We also have shallots - which are a little bit smaller with different flavour, then there's spring onions (or scallions as you might call them) and these are popular in Asian dishes.

I have an intimate feeling about onions which places them as one of the basic food ingredients of life. There's a certainty to them, like dirt and gravel and pavement. Onions are like taxes or having to do some necessary chore, it's always there - it's an inevitable part of life. Onions serve a purpose, they have a kind of boring agreeableness to them.

When I was growing up, onions were a part of most dishes that Mum and Dad cooked up. I had a taste for them quite early on - making onion and baked bean toasted sandwiches at the age of 11 of 12. What an after school treat!

My dad actually grew onions in our home garden, and I remember them drying on the deck outside. On an otherwise pleasant afternoon one of my crazy school friends took a bite out of one, I can only imagine how incredibly astringent that was for him. It was either Tristan or Smitty, I can't remember. At any rate they were both involved because the other lad who didn't bite the onion took a bite out of a garlic clove, which is apparently a great home remedy for the onset of a cold of flu.

Something about an onion doesn't want to be eaten - it's too intense, yet when we slice it really thin and mix it in a salad, or cook it for a bit then it's quite tasty. With the dressing and the oil dispersing that acrid flavor somehow becomes pleasant. Onions are like the sad parts of life, a little bit of sad make the good bits better. It's all about contrast.

There's the endless meme of how chopping onions make you cry. This hasn't happened to me in a long time, but I can remember years ago literally having to go outside and air out my eyeballs. If you ask me, the whole scuba mask thing is just plain stupid - that kind of equipment doesn't belong in the kitchen. Just like the kitchenhand with his headphones in, it's a recipe for someone accidently getting burned by a hot tray or stabbed with a knife.

Chefs have a particular wives tale about how if your knife is properly sharp then you won't get those acidic fumes. Purportedly the jagged edge of a 'blunt' knife will rupture the plant cells, wheras a perfectly aligned edge will leave the cells intact. It's certainly an interesting theory - and one which provides fuel for chefs to chew each other out about how blunt each others knifes are.

There is a certain nostalgia with the onion, it's a remembrance of being a poor student and looking into the pantry - I see dried pasta, a tin of tomatoes, and some onions - I am hungry and depressed and it's all I have to make a delicious dinner. Somehow it works out, thanks to that one fresh ingredient which gives it some life.

The onion is a symbol of humility - and it lends its self so well to those rustic European cuisines that we all love so much. It's soul food. This whole idea was played out in a TV show that some of you might be familiar with called Game of Thrones. My relationship with the show stopped at around end of season two (or was it three?) Anyhow I do remember a guy known as the onion knight. He smuggled food into a starving city under siege, and was knighted for his deeds. Other noble families resented his humble background. They were probably used to eating roast pheasant or something.

Of course we have Disneys simplistic Shrek onion metaphor - onions are like ogres and onions have layers. Yes onions have layers, have you even been frusrated peeling an onion and not knowing where to stop? The confusion begins when the layer you are peeling is both brown and green. Perhaps skillfully removing the brown bits and leaving the fresh bits is the only way out. Which leaves you with an imperfect half to chop up - what a conundrum!

Shrek's other famous food reference:

minty ogre load

Elite Skills

I have worked in professional kitchens for about a decade, and I now know that there is quite a few ways to chop an onion. I saw some crazy guy on YouTube chopping them in his other hand in about 2 second apiece. You won't find me aiming a knife at my hand, but I do like to be a little bit technical when I chop one up. A colleague of mine once told me that the half circles are more your European style, whereas if you rotate it 90 degrees you can get the Asian style onions strips. Interesting stuff 😆

onions go into many foods - they are also incredibly cheap to buy. Yet the thing I found most fascinating about them is the different terms that chefs use to describe what happens to them when they cook them.

You can simply saute them, which is some kind of French way to say cook in a pan on low. Some recipes tell you to 'sweat' them. For this I generally imagine a kind of 'thug' character exclaiming "ay yo don't sweat me man" as a way to say 'back off'. They can also be caramelized, which mean burning them a little bit - but not too much. The line between bitter and sweet is oh so thin my friends.

Chefs generally describe the flavor of an onion as 'sweet'. "it adds sweetness to the dish". On some level this might be true, and if you've made a 'french onion soup' you might know that it does taste quite sweet until you put in some stock or salt to balance it out. For me it's less of a sweetness and more of a delicious savoriness. Some people call that umami, if I start talking about that then I will be coming dangerously close to writing a wanky 'foody' article. This is what an onion is though, it's a kind of background flavor that delicious savoriness is built upon. The ground layer of any soup or stock.

The Yoga of Onions

In my current life, onions are taking on a new meaning to do with health and well-being. I have slowly been refining my diet, first becoming vegan, quitting drinking, and more recently giving up coffee (It's day 25 and I feel great).

Onions may well be something I will be looking to remove soon - according to the Ayurveda health system, onions (and all Aliums such as garlic, shallots, spring onions) shouldn't be eaten regularly and daily. This is because onions are a neuro stimulant. So just like coffee, the continual use of the stimulant eventually creates a certain insensitivity to life. I can say for sure that without the ups and downs of coffee, I have an almost unnatural clarity in seeing life. I seem to be able to focus in on small details that I had never even noticed before.

Onions can also be sliced and placed on the feet before you go to bed, this is a powerful way to detoxify you pineapple gland. I am jokingly referring to this here, but PLEASE research this before you do it - because it's a very strong detox and you might come down with flu like symptoms. I have also heard of cut in half onions used to absorb chemical smells when you've been doing some industrial task.

I hope you enjoyed this rambling exploration my friends, it's my simple way of saying "yes there is a story in every small thing" there is life in a patch of dirt or a board with a nail in it - we just need to bring it out and write a speculative article about it.

Peace Love Gratitude