we stuff the onion – Liberation

Gastronomy

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–Nothing beats cooking to warm up the mood: a few tears and a lot of indulgence with this mainstay vegetable of frichtis.–

What would cooking be without onions? Fade, sad as a rainy Sunday. If you ever search a lazarette without this golden vegetable, there’s a ball in the soup. Either you came across an ignoramus who didn’t understand anything about bectance. Either you are in the presence of an unfortunate who cannot bear to shed a few tears while peeling the onion. Because there is no 100% effective method to avoid crying when you peel it, as Natacha Arnoult and Delphine Constantini remind us in their wonderful book Barbus forever: onions, leeks and other bearded vegetables, 50 unique recipes for ordinary vegetables (1) : “Peeling the onions under water limits the evaporation of substances that irritate the eyes. When cutting, occasionally run the blade of the knife under water. Onions are also known to cause flatulence and bad breath. Adding a little grated ginger to onions and shallots, both raw and cooked, helps to lessen the side effects.”

North India and Egypt

The onion comes from afar, growing wild, somewhere in the mountains of Central Asia separating Iran from Turkmenistan as Michel Pitrat and Claude Foury recall in their exciting Stories of vegetables, from the origins to the dawn of the 21st century (2). There, even today, it is taken from the wild to be transplanted into family gardens. “Domesticated or semi-domesticated, it is without d…

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