Nanban sauce glazed onions

Whenever I am working in a particular vein or train of thought foodwise, I tend to try to come up with as many riffs and variations as I can. Last year, I spent a few days experimenting with nanban sauce recipes, including coming up with an alcohol-free version that I’m quite proud of. (Classic nanban sauce always has alcohol in it.) After that, I had a ton of nanban sauce, and tried many ways of using it.

One such experiment that turned out well were these pan-glazed onions. They have since become a firm household favorite, but for some reason I haven’t posted the recipe before. We just made a batch the other day, when I was reminded anew why I love this so much. It’s salty, sweet and sour all at once. Interesting on its own, it’s a rather eye-catching sidekick to a roast. It goes wonderfully with plain rice, so it’s good as part of a Japanese meal too. It’s also very nice instead of lettuce or raw onion slices on a roast pork or beef sandwich. Try it as a sandwich filling all on its own too, on a nice crusty loaf.

This is a very simple recipe, but you do need to be gentle with the onions to ensure they look their best.

Regular yellow onions work best for this. Slice in half crosswise and cut out nice, even slices from the center parts, about 1/2 cm / 1/4 inch thick. I can usually get 2-3 slices out of one onion. Save the end bits of onion for other dishes.

Pour a little oil into a large frying pan, then wipe around with a wadded up paper towel so that you just have a thin coating of oil. (You can use a non-stick cooking spray instead if you prefer.) Put the onion slice in a single layer in the pan, and turn the heat on to medium-low. (Note: if the heat is too high, the sauce will burn before the onions can get tender and sweet all the way through.) Pour the nanban sauce over the onions, tilting the pan a bit to distribute it evenly. The more sauce you add, the more intense the flavors will be.

Cook with a tight fitting lid on for the first 3 to 4 minutes, then take the lid off. The liquid will slowly cook down. When the sauce has reduced by about half, take a peek under one onion slice by lifting it up with a spatula. It should look well on its way to becoming golden brown. Flip the onion slices over carefully with the spatula, and continue cooking until the liquid is getting sticky. Flip the onion slices over once more, rubbing them around the pan a bit until they pick up the residual sticky sauce.

For show, serve good-looking side up, preferably in a single layer.

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Life patience, enjoying the process & growing cipolla onions

Gardening is often a test of patience in both playing in the dirt and navigating life. Weeding, sowing seeds, trimming, clipping, pulling, building plots, aching backs and harvesting a little bit everyday is like a life metaphor. It seems as if each garden task tests tests our patience and endurance for everything outside the walls of our home farm.

Take for instance, these cipolla onions we sowed last year in November 2010. These gorgeous Southern Italian long red onions would be new to our garden and before the seeds were sowed, we were already planning recipes. But maybe we were too anxious, and every few weeks we’d head out to the garden to check on their progress, salivating at the thought of caramelized cipolla onions, pickled cipolla onions and many more recipes to come.

But for the longest time, the seeds didn’t sprout. While the other onion seeds were in full bulb glory, these cipolla onions didn’t even break the earth. After about 3 months, we almost gave up on the plot and came close to sowing lettuce seeds in their place.

Patience is a virtue in life, and when it comes to gardening, the same principle applies. Sometimes we get so anxious to yank out something that doesn’t fruit or flower when we want it to. It’s often easy to do that and give up because it’s easier to head out to the nursery and buy a new plant or in our case, sow different seeds.

Then we always remind ourselves that the process is what really matters more, not the end product. The process of gardening, practicing patience and the daily task of nurturing a plant to full fruition is what really matters.

The same principle applies to life, to always remember to enjoy the process.

So, we continued to clean this cipolla onion plot of weeds even when there were no signs of cipolla onion. Why? Because the principle of patience and just enjoying the whole process of gardening became the priority again.

Finally, after about 4 months of staring at bare dirt, these onions seeds started to sprout. We squealed and hoorayed not because we we were going to finally get some gorgeous cipolla onions from the garden, but because we reminded ourselves of why we love gardening so much.

The process of watching, waiting and nurturing this cipolla onion plot was worth the 9 months of wait. No farmers market onions could have been fresher nor satisfying to us.

Playing in the dirt reinforced our life patience and reminded us of always to enjoy the process, which is what really matters.

Thank you Cipolla onions,

diane and todd

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