SC - Another Novice Recipe Challenge

[Philip & Susan Troy]

> I too have seen a lot of medieval recipes that say "onions parboiled and
> minced".  I notice that Katerine has chosen to reverse the order of the
> verbs in her redaction, perhaps because parboiled whole onions are REALLY
> HARD TO CHOP!  The outermost layer gets really slippery and a bit slimy.
> Yet the recipes CONSISTENTLY say "ysode and ymynced" or the equivalent,
> always in that order as far as I've noticed.  Any ideas?
> 
> 					mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
>                                                  Stephen Bloch


Actually, mincing parboiled onions aren't really all that hard.  But the technique is 
different than in mincing raw onion.  First, cut the top and bottom off of the bulb and 
then parboil.  Remove from the liquid and stand the onion up on its flat base. Chop the 
onion into quarters all standing on their bases, lay down the quarters and slice in half
through the center.  This should result in fairly manageable portions to start chopping 
with either a couple of cleavers or a curved knife until the desired size is reached.
Parboiling would leech out much of the acids of the onion but still retain some of the 
"crunch" as well as some of the acids from the center.

Hey, it's worth a try.

Yers,

Gunthar
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