Rooftop Gourmet

For how often they’re used, onions don’t get nearly enough recognition as they deserve. They’re the workhorses of the kitchen, creating basic framework for complex sauces, stews, or braises. What would the culinary world be without onions? As common as they are, onions are probably the most complex and versatile vegetable out there.

First off, think about all different varieties there are that come in all different shapes, sizes, and colors; Vidalia, Bermuda, Maui, shallots, cipolline, Inca sweet, Heirloom Red Wethersfield, Red Zeppelin, Texas Sweet, pearl, Walla Walla, Red Baron, and French Gray Shallots are just a handful. Similarly to how Cabernet Sauvignon grown in France tastes different than Cabernet Sauvignon grown in Washington State, onions are completely different depending on where they’re grown. It all has to do with soil. Ever wonder why chopping onions make you cry?

When they’re growing, the onions take up sulfur from the soil through their roots. Then, sulphuric compounds are formed and stored inside the cells. When these cells are disrupted (via slicing or chopping), new, highly volatile sulfurous molecules are created and exposed to air which causes you to break out in tears. So a sweeter onion doesn’t necessarily contain more sugar, it was just grown in a region that had less sulfur in the soil, making it seem less pungent and harsh.

The purpose of the onion’s strong, sulfury odor and flavor was to keep animals from eating the plants. It clearly didn’t stop humans from devouring them and using technique to change the way that the taste.

There are so many different ways to eat, prepare, and serve onions and some varieties are better than others for certain culinary techniques. You can eat them raw, grill them, caramelize them, pickle them, roast them, sweat them, or fry them; all culminating in a totally different finished product in terms of flavor, appearance, and texture. Think about biting into a raw onion and how drastically different it tastes compared to a spoonful of caramelized onions.

Cooking an onion transforms the vegetable’s chemical composition. Starches are breaking down into sugars, and the sugars themselves are breaking down, with disaccharides splitting into simpler, sweeter monosaccharides. Meanwhile, the onion’s moisture evaporates too, concentrating its newfound sweetness.

Cell walls break down and the onion loses its shape, transforming into a soft, jam-like consistency. The color of the onions change because the carbohydrates and proteins interact with the sugar, creating a dark brown appearance and a rich, meaty flavor.

Now that you realize that onions contain such a complex mix of sugars and aromatic compounds, it is easy to see why they provide the foundation of flavor to so many of the world’s cuisines. It’s transformative nature of these elements in onions that makes them among the most versatile, and inspiring ingredients in the kitchen.

Now that we got the brief science lesson out of the way, I can tell you about how I prepared onions in a way that I never had before.

Just when I thought that I had maxed out every possible way to cook an onion, I stumbled upon a recipe calling for onion puree’. I thought to myself, how the hell does that work, and began investigating.

I picked up a half-dozen large yellow onions, a couple of boneless rib eyes, and a few fresh herbs at the store and I was on my way back to the kitchen to turn roughly four simple ingredients into an elegant and complex meal.

I started off by thinly slicing all six of the massive orbs, and simultaneously bawling like a baby. My wife walked in and thought that either someone had passed away or I caught the tail end of Extreme Home Makeover. But then the sulfur tear gas knocked her in the face and she had to stick her head in the freezer. These were some pungent onions!

I slid the onions from the cutting board into a large sauté’ pan with a pat of butter and let the heat do its work on making them sweet. For this particular preparation, I didn’t want the onions to get any color so I constantly stirred them and kept an eye on the flame. Once they became soft, I added some chicken stock and water, and began steaming the onions for an additional 10 minutes.

Once they tasted sweet enough for my liking, but still retained some of that raw onion bite, I transferred them all to a blender and buzzed them into a creamy puree with just a touch of buttermilk. I kept the puree warm on the stove and seasoned it with salt and pepper while I got my grill blazing hot. I took a few mental pictures of my shiny grill before it gets covered in snow. There’s nothing worse than having to shovel a frosty path, and bundle up just to cook a steak in the dead of winter.

I popped the cork on a bottle of 2005 Chateau Dauzac Margaux and poured its entirety into a decanter because despite being six years old, a wine like this still needs time to open up and breathe. I immediately got whiffs of the wine’s perfume as you would a woman’s while passing them in a hallway and I was intrigued and excited. I finished up my steaks and plated a few slices with a dollop of the silky puree.

I finished the pink flesh with a few drops of 20 year old, aged Balsamic vinegar and a sprinkle of sea salt while the onion puree got some picked thyme, parsley and chive. Extremely simple, yet a complete dish with multiple layers of flavor. The buttery meat and the drops of sticky vinegar were loaded with umami and when combined with the onion puree it was a bite of comfort and desire. The onion flavor was all too familiar yet the texture and form it came in was very new and intriguing to me. As for the wine, a perfect match for this dish.

Some sweet fruit and toasted oak on the nose. The high quality of the vintage produced some serious backbone and firm, tannic core. Loads of dark black fruit, macerated plums, and hints of licorice and vanilla ice cream. A bone dry finish was wonderful with the juicy rendered fat in each bite of the heavily marbled rib eye. My onion adventure was complete and in the meantime, learned a ton about this special vegetable and all of its crazy powers. I will never look at an onion the same way again.

Want to know why your steak tastes better at a steakhouse than when you pull it off your backyard grill? Butter. That’s all there is too it. Well… not all there is to it but for the most part, it’s all about the butter. The quality cuts of meat, liberal salting, and a dim-lit dining room also add to the steakhouse ambiance.

If plain, boring, sensiouly silky, rich butter just doesn’t cut it for you… add something to the butter to make a compound or flavored butter as I did last night. The possibilities are endless. You could add herbs, truffles, chopped porcini mushrooms, crystallized ginger, pesto, honey or even fruit. In the words of Dr. Evil… throw me a friggin’ bone here… literally. Bones have been used in cooking for centuries to flavor soups and stocks, but what’s inside a beef bone is like the Holy Grail.

Marrow is like a beef compound butter in itself. Its slimy, fatty texture and concentrated beef flavor is typically spread on toast with a sprinkle of sea salt, but also famous in the classic northern Italian dish, Osso Bucco. Humans have been eating marrow for years. Back before humans learned to hunt, they were scavengers. Cracking open bones and sucking out the marrow was a great source of protein. Diners in the 18th century even designed a long and skinny marrow spoon that is now typically seen in antique shows.

Unless you’re a vegetarian, what could be better than a gorgeous piece of beef, enhanced with a beef flavored butter? When I stopped at my butcher the other day, not only did I ask for a prime, dry aged NY Strip, but a big ol’ bag of beef bones as well.

 Most supermarkets or butchers sell bones, but sometimes they can be frozen or hidden in the back because as you can imagine, they’re not the most popular item in the meat department. The poor old lady at the check-out counter thought that I had 17 Golden Retrievers at home.

I preheated my oven to 425 degrees and threw in a tray of vertically stacked bones to roast the marrow. It only takes about twenty minutes and your kitchen will start to smell like Julia Child has been making her Beef Bourguignon all day on your stovetop. Unfortunately, I do not own marrow spoons, but it’s just as simple to turn a regular spoon backwards and fish out the marrow with the handle.

 This part isn’t for those with a weak stomach, because the insides look exactly what you’d expect the inside of a beef bone to look like. Shiny, brain-like, gelatinous blobs of hot marrow spilled out into a bowl, one by one until I had about a half cup.

I promise you that if you close your eyes and take a spoonful, the most elegant, silky, buttery bite will slowly just dissolve on your tongue. There’s something incredibly sexy about eating bone marrow, as hard as that is for some of you to grasp. The sensation is quite similar to taking a bite of rich mushroom risotto, dowsed in truffle oil. I added a stick of softened, unsalted butter, and a handful of freshly chopped rosemary to the bowl and creamed my homemade compound butter until it was all incorporated.

I set the butter aside in the refrigerator to set because it became a little bit too soft during the mixing period and ultimately I needed it to be thick enough to pipe into a hollowed out bone. In the meantime, I prepared some classic, steakhouse side dishes. The asparagus I bought had some serious girth, so I decided to peel them before I tossed them into a pot of boiling water. Most of the time, I never peel them because when they’re grilled, the outer, fibrous skin usually chars and breaks down nicely. I was going for a more delicate, elegant cooking approach last night and simply blanched them and softly sauteed them before serving.

 I also sauteed some giant trumpet mushrooms that looked like they came from level 4 of Super Mario Bros. These massive shrooms, were meaty, and earthy… a great combo withthe marrow butter. I brought my dry aged steak to room temperature and seasoned it with coarse salt and freshly cracked black pepper while I preheated my grill. Dry aged beef has two significant benefits. Natural enzymes in the meat break down the connective tissue in the muscle to make for a more tender steak, and moisture in the muscle evaporates, leaving a more concentrated beef flavor.

As you can tell, I was doing everything in my power to showcase and enhance the beef. Once my grill was too hot to hold my hand over it, I slapped the two NY Strips down on the back of the grate. Inside, I piped the roasted marrow-rosemary butter back into the bone for presentation. I garnished it with a firm, sprig of rosemary which also acted as a tool to scoop the butter out.

After the steaks were ready to come off to rest, I slathered a dollop of the compound butter on top and watched the thick butter slowly melt into the flesh. As I plated, I opened a bottle of Chateau Clairefont Margaux from the highly acclaimed 2005 vintage. Bordeaux and rich beef dishes are a cute couple. They interact so nicely with each other and enhance the flavor of one another bite after sip and sip after bite. This particular wine from the Margaux region of Bordeaux is composed of primarily Cabernet Sauvignon, with a little Merlot and Petit Verdot blended in. The nose is perfumed with dried flowers and smoke and impeccably balanced with the bright, ripe fruit of cassis.

Even though the wine is quite young for a Bordeaux, it is refined, structured and succulent. As my steak knife slid through the pink flesh like butter, the aroma of pure and simple beef was met with flavors of earthy marrow and woodsy rosemary. As the wine sat and swirled around in my glass throughout the meal, it opened up quickly and released a second serving of fruit and oak. This was one of those moments where a perfect marriage of food and wine transform a normal meal into a heavenly experience. Let’s just say, when all was said and done, we had no bones to pick with the chef.