Know Your Onions

I used to work with someone who was very particular about how her coffee was made. I'm not talking about simple fussiness issues like the amount of sugar to add or what type of milk to use. Those things mattered, but it was much more than that. It did have to be one level teaspoon of sugar and the semi-skimmed milk had to be added before the water and not stirred into the coffee. The water had to still be boiling in the kettle when it was added and it had to be poured from a height so that the coffee frothed in the mug. It was impossible to get it right for her. I think in the two years we worked together, no more than half a dozen mugs of coffee that I made for her matched her standards. Although that is obviously because I gave up trying after a couple of months because nobody who is that fussy can be tolerated for long.

The thing is though, I reckon that if you asked ten people to make you a cup of instant coffee with one sugar and milk and if you got them to make it the way they would normally make it, the end result would be ten different cups. They'd all be pretty similar, but they wouldn't be the same. There would be differences in strength and milkiness, the level of sweetness and then there are the subtle differences like when the milk is added before or after the water.

Now we're not talking about anything complicated. This is instant coffee. Something so simple, most coffee drinking nations reject it as an insipid and fowl substitute for the complex tastes of the real thing. Making a cup of instant coffee should be foolproof. A teaspoonful of coffee, some milk and some hot water. I mean its hardly a complicated recipe but as I said, I'm pretty sure it'll taste differently depending on who makes it. So if that's true of instant coffee, how the hell are we supposed to produce consistant results when we're making something more intricate and involved like a casserole or a soup. Something with multiple steps and measures and timings.

Let's take as an example something relatively straight forward like onion gravy. Sausages and mash has become a staple on the menus of most gastropubs and hearty food bistros in the last few years and onion gravy is the standard accompaniment. Making it at home is easy and there aren't many ingredients but even if you confine yourself to some onions and some vegetable stock, the end result can be very varied depending on so many factors.

To start with, how do you chop your onions? Thin slices or thick chunks, rings, half rings or finely chopped little pieces? What do you fry them in? Do you use butter, olive oil or something that gives a higher heat like sunflower or ground nut oil? Then there's the big question, how long do you cook them for and how high a heat do you use?

My Dad (I'm sure he'll come up again in future posts) insists on adding sugar to pretty much everything he cooks. If you meet him, ask him about sugar in cooking and he'll tell you that chef's the world over don't know how to cook properly and that they all miss a trick by not adding sugar to their dishes and sugar, he says, enhances the flavour of the whole dish. The thing is though, one thing my Dad lacks when it comes to cooking, is patience. Patience in cooking is as important an attribute as any because sometimes, just sometimes, its important to wait, to let things in your pot work slowly. Its important to let the chemical processes that take place when things are heated, work, and this is never more true than when it comes to onions. If you slice an onion finely and cook it gently and slowly, the carbohydrates in the onion break down into sugars and the end result of your labour and patience can be the most complex sweet, bitter and piquant, sticky and soft conglomeration. However, if you get it wrong, if you don't chop the onions finely enough, if you cook them on too high a heat and if you don't take your time, you can end up with burnt crunchy onions with a balance of flavour that quite literally doesn't cut the mustard.

So what am I saying?  Well firstly, I'm saying there are so many points of variation when you're cooking something, its a wonder it ever turns out the same at all each time its made.  I'm also saying that its important to have at least a little understanding of what is going on when your cooking something.  Its important to know why something has to be cooked over a low heat or a high heat, why you fry in butter or in sunflower oil, why you chop thinly, finely or into large chunks.  Its also important not to be too fussy and to realise that often, there are no absolute rights and wrongs.  If you like the end result then that is really all that matters.  However, it is worth being self critical too.  It is always worth asking yourself what you could do differently to make it better next time.  How a recipe evolves is fascinating too I think, but that is for another time.

For now, here's how I make my onion gravy most of the time at least.

I use: two or three medium white onions, olive oil, a knob of butter, a pint of stock (beef if I have a choice but sometimes just vegetable,) Arrowroot, Tabasco and Worcestershire Sauce.

Start by slicing the onions.  I slice mine pretty thinly but in quarter circles so that you get long stringy bits of onion in the finished product.  Once all the onions are sliced, I pour a good slug of olive oil in a heavy bottomed saucepan and add a knob of butter too.  Put the pan on a gentlish heat and when the butter has melted into the oil, add the onions.  Now for the patience bit: You have to let the onions cook.  Turn the heat up just enough to let them sizzle a bit and stir them now and again.  Keep doing this until they start to brown a little at the edges and when this starts to happen, turn the heat down and leave them to cook for as long as you can.  The longer they cook, the better.  If you haven't got time then turn the heat up and just cook them more quickly but they may burn a bit and they wont be as nice.  So if you can let them cook slowly, then do. Stir the onions now and again (but not too much) and let them soften, sweeten and turn slowly dark golden and brown.  When they've gone as far as you can let them, if you like, add a glug or two of alcohol, maybe some white wine or something sweet like marsala but if there isn't any to hand, I don't think it matters that much.  If you do  though, turn the heat up and let it bubble off almost to nothing and then add the stock.  Just a little at first and then stir in the rest.  Bring the gravy up to a gentle simmer and then get ready to add the arrowroot.  Mix a teaspoon of the stuff in enough cold water to make it very runny and then pour it into the simmering gravy while you stir it.  Let the gravy carry on simmering for twenty minutes or so and just befrore you're ready to use it, add a dash or two of tabasco and a good couple of dashes of Worcestershire Sauce.  If you want to add some salt then soya sauce is useful because it darkens the gravy nicely.

All this sounds complicated but it really isn't and the end result is worth it.  Try it through the coming winter as often as possible and you never know, you might even get some consistant results after a while.  Get used to making it and the cool thing is, it probably wont taste like mine, it'll be your own onion gravy, made your way.