Ready for a Good Cry – Onion Tart with Rosemary and Thyme

When it is cold and rainy outside, nothing warms the spirit as much as stepping into a cozy kitchen, assailed by the smells of roasting meats, stewing soups, and simmering sauces.  Yet for all these wonderful odors, it is the onion who is the hooker at the door, seducing us with her pungent perfume.  Whether roasted, caramelized, or steeped in meat juices, the onion awakens our senses, tickles our nostrils, and excites our pallet, promising us comfort after a long hard day.   Come inside, love, we’ll take care of you.

Red onions, Spanish onions, garlic, leeks, scallions, shallots—nearly every dish calls for their magic.  No substitute will do.  Onions cut a fatty meat sauce, enliven chicken and potato, put tang into beans.  They wake up a sleepy salad or bland omelet, and sweeten a fiery tomato sauce.

But the onion is a subversive food.  Like the egg, it is a perfectly contained package until you break it open; then all hell breaks loose.  As onions are sliced, cells are broken, allowing enzymes to break down amino acid sulphoxides and generate sulphenic acids, creating a gas that diffuses through the air and irritates your eyes.  Then the tears.  Each concentric layer begs to be pealed, one after the other, and, like a lifetime of secrets, once exposed to air, brings another round of waterworks. 

Like the tears of Tita de la Garza in Like Water for Chocolate, onion tears are essential, building character and resolve in any chef.  Only something that causes such suffering could produce such culinary magic.

Onions have a long history.  One of the earliest cultivars, the onion was worshipped by the Ancient Egyptians, who believed that its spherical shape and concentric rings symbolized eternal life.  Pyramid builders were paid in onions, and onions were placed on the eye sockets of dead pharos, bribes for entry into paradise.  Ancient Greek athletes ate large quantities of onions to balance the blood, and Roman gladiators rubbed down with onions to firm up their muscles (or perhaps to knock down their opponents with the smell of their sweat). Throughout the Middle Ages, doctors prescribed onions to facilitate bowel movements and erections, for infertility, and to relieve headaches, coughs, and hair loss.

As with many food myths, modern scientists have discovered that, yes, indeed, onions are healthful. 

Onions contain phenols and flavonoids, serious antioxidant and anti-cancer agents.  With their rich content of thiosulfinates, sulfides, sulfoxides, and other odoriferous sulfur compounds, onions are effective against everything from the common cold to heart disease, and diabetes.  The onion's sulfur compounds work in anti-clotting, preventing the unwanted clumping of blood platelet cells. They lower cholesterol and triglycerides, and improve cell membrane function in red blood cells. Onions may be especially beneficial in fighting osteoporosis by destroying osteoclasts so that they do not break down bone.  Onion also protects against stomach and other cancers, and can improve lung function, especially in asthmatics.

But perhaps the real secret of the onion’s healthful qualities is that it causes people to stand back just little, keeping their germs to themselves. 

Or maybe it is the crying itself that is healthful.  Doesn’t every Mad Housewife need a good cry every now and then?  Pour yourself a glass of Mad Housewife wine, and make an onion tart.  If anyone asks, you have the perfect excuse.

Onion Tart with Rosemary and Thyme

 Onion tarts are delicious as an appetizer or as a side dish with soup.  If you are in a hurry, substitute puff pastry for the crust and microwave the onions.  Serve with Mad Housewife Chardonnay.

 

1-1/2 cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon lemon zest
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
2 tablespoons cold water
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds yellow or white onions
1 tablespoon fennel seed
1 red onion
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 cup Mad Housewife Chardonnay
1 tablespoon thyme
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
½ cup Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
 

1. Whisk together in bowl or food processor flour, salt, lemon zest, and rosemary.  Add butter, softened and cut into pieces.  Mash with fork (or process) until mixture resembles crumbs.  Add water a little at a time, and gently work dough together into a ball.  Refrigerate dough for an hour.
2. Slice yellow onions and sauté in olive oil and thyme and fennel seed for twenty minutes.  Add white wine, and simmer until it is the consistency of marmalade, or about half an hour. 
3. Slice red onions for decorative slices, sprinkle with olive oil, and brown sugar.
4. Removed dough from refrigerator, and roll out to an eleven-inch circle between two pieces of parchment paper.  If dough is too soft, refrigerate until dough is like clay.  Peel off top sheet of paper and slide bottom sheet of paper onto a large baking sheet.
5. Spread mustard over the dough, leaving a 1-inch border.  Fold over the border to form a rim.  Spread on stewed onions.
6. Sprinkle on Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.
7. Lay red onions in a decorative pattern on top.  Sprinkle with more fresh thyme.
8. Bake 25 minutes in 375 degree oven.  Raise temperature to 425 for ten minutes, or until cheese bubbles and browns.  Let cool and slice. 

Comments

[More is More Mom]

The onion tartlet looks amazing. You might enjoy my bite size recipe:

http://moreismoremom.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/more-fantastic-appetizers-the-onion-tartlet/

Keep the wine coming!