<< Front page Commentary December 5, 2003

Onions: the great unwashed

In his Eighteenth Brumaire, Karl Marx discusses the social reality of the lumpenproletariat — that ragged sector of the proletariat that does not engage in legal, well-behaved proletarian work. Rather than receive the weekly wage, the lumpenproletariat does their work under the table or under the bridge.
Rarely receiving recognition outside of their stigmatized demi-monde, the lumpenproletariat work away invisibly.

If Western cuisine was Paris in the wake of the 1848 Commune, garlic would be the head of state and onions would be the lowly lumpenproletariat. Garlic gets credit for pretty much everything distinctive and delightful about cooking, and it doesn’t even contribute a discernible texture to the mix.

I’m not trying to hate, but onions are present in nearly every cuisine in the world, and there are distressingly few dishes that pay them tribute. Whether they’ve been chopped and sautéed into a sauce or sliced into graceful, tapered crescents for a salad, onions are as crucial as they are underrated.

Perhaps our collective phobia of openly displaying grief has led us to fear onions in quantities that might threaten our composure. We find crying awkward.

Despite our aspirations toward being a culture of emotional automatons, we seem to be able to tolerate just enough onion-chopping to add that necessary bite to marinara sauce and stir-fry, maybe enough to throw a couple rings on a burger.

We may be living in a culture of fear, but our reliance on onions triumphs over our aversion to tears. We won’t tolerate too much emotion in the kitchen — just enough to relegate onions to the status of condiment.

Onions are translucently succulent. They humbly step aside on crowded streets to make way for outrÄ and self-important spices that, much like the ruling class, would be nothing without someone upon which to exert their wills. Spices, indispensable though they are, are the ice on the wrist.

Onions, my friends, are the wrist that steers the Humvee to gustatory greatness. Onions bear the heavy load by imparting dimension to brothy soups that would otherwise be as flat as so much water and salt. Left to linger over low heat for half an hour, onions sweeten like long-separated lovers. They can be the sweet pavement at the bottom of your frittata or glisten in the luxuriant disarray of an unmade bed atop a thin layer of phyllo dough.

It’s frankly astonishing that there are so few onion-centered dishes in Western cuisine. Onion rings are a humiliating exception, a testament to our belief that anything is good if you drop it in a fryalator before inundating it with ketchup. French onion soup is about as much about onions as carrot cake is about carrots; all we want is the melted cheese, just as we dream of scooping fingerfuls of cream cheese frosting off the top of the cake. If French onion soup contained demoralized chunks of boiled celery instead of onions, but the cheese still formed a salty membrane sealing the mouth of the bowl, I doubt anyone would notice. If eating is about experiencing satisfaction, the cake should be as enticing as the icing.

Here is a recipe for an onion soup that, for its simplicity and wholesale lack of cheese, will inspire you to drop out of the lonely hearts club, tear up your crush list, take your name off Friendster and devote all your private time to standing at the stove patiently and adoringly stirring.

Cut up four to six large yellow onions into very thin circles. Sautée three tablespoons of butter in a heavy pot. Add onions and stir over lowest possible heat. Add a bit of salt and pepper and put on the lid. Lift lid every few minutes to stir.

Go on like this for as long as you can stand the suspense. A half hour to an hour is good. The more softened and toward caramelized you can go, the better.

Then add 2 cups of red wine and enough stock to make it seem soupy but still thick. You can use any form of stock: beef, chicken or vegetable. Add a bay leaf and a pinch of thyme. Cover and simmer 30 minutes.

Let stand or, if possible, refrigerate overnight to improve flavor. If you’d like, shave some Parmesan on top of the soup when you serve it, but it’s not crucial.

   

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