The sweetness of onions

I have got a lot of love for onions at the moment. Which is just as well, because when I went to my local fruit and veg stall the other day, I was offered a small sack of them for a pound - the price I had expected to pay for six or eight. As well as loving onions, I also love a bargain - and it would have been churlish to refuse, surely?

This meant I had a lot of onions to use. Luckily, I was already getting into the habit of roasting a trayful of them. I love roasted onions. Red onions look a bit better but brown (or white) work just as well, I think. You just cut your peeled onions into eighths, or thereabouts, stick them in a baking tray and give them between 30 and 45 minutes in the oven, until the corners are blackened and the onion flesh is soft and juicy. Any kind of slow cooking of onions will caramelise the natural sugars in them, making them taste sweeter.

Onion and potato soup

I don't think you need any oil for the roasting, though you could drizzle with olive oil first if you wanted - I usually just give them a toss halfway through. I try to do this whenever I've got the oven on for something else. Once you've got your roasted onions, you can use them for almost anything - as a side vegetable, in salads, in sandwiches... Today I ate slices of Camembert with roasted onions on home-made granary bread for lunch, and it was a real treat.

The other approach to roasting onions is to leave the skin on and roast them whole. This takes longer, and you tend not to get the blackened corners - which you might or might not see as an advantage. Peel them and then cut them up, or serve whole as a vegetable dish.

My sack of onions, though, demanded more drastic action. I considered French onion soup, but I wanted something with a bit more body. And I had some potatoes in the cupboard that needed using. So my onion and potato soup was born. It sounds ridiculously frugal, and indeed it does cost just pennies, but it worked rather well. The key is to cook the onions very slowly, to bring out the sweetness.

Ingredients
Serves 4

5 onions, thinly sliced
4 medium potatoes, diced
1 knob of butter/ 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 vegetable stock cube
Thyme - a large pinch dried, or a few springs fresh
Freshly grated nutmeg
200ml milk
1 tbsp chopped chives or 1 wild garlic leaf, finely chopped

Method

Heat the butter or oil and cook the onions over a very low heat. Continue to cook, stirring now and then, for about half an hour, until the onions are thoroughly collapsed and sweet. Do not allow to brown too much.
Add the potatoes, stock cube, thyme and a little nutmeg, milk and enough water to just cover. Simmer for 15 minutes or so, until the potatoes are soft.
Liquidise with a hand-held blender. If soup is too thick, add more milk or water. Taste, season, and add more thyme or nutmeg if necessary.
Serve garnished with chives or wild garlic.