[Sca-cooks] Onion-riffic

[Stephanie Yokom]

I have always said that that national vegetable should be the
onion...specifically the Vidalia Onion.  I lived in that area where they are
grown for almost 4 years and my best friend from there designs the Vidalia
Onion Company logos for the bottled products!

Love the onion!

Sabra

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Christiane <christianetrue at earthlink.net>wrote:

> In doing more historical research about Sicily (yeah, I know, my obsession
> knows few bounds), I was thinking about the role of onions in the cuisine.
> The quote from ibn al-Hawqal, where he calls Palermitani "dimwitted" because
> of all the onions they ate, led me to a citation of ibn al-Awwal's book
> about agriculture, in which he supposedly describes the specific methods of
> onion farming around Palermo (need to read the translation in another book).
> Apparently their onions were pretty famous. Then there's the recipe in the
> Anonymous Andalusian, called "A Sicilian Dish," which calls for one rat'l of
> meat to three rat'l of onions. If a rat'l is a pound, that's three pounds of
> onions in this recipe to one of meat. This dish might as well be called,
> "onions flavored with meat"!
>
> Poking around, I found a modern-day recipe, pisci ca cipuddata, "fish
> soused with onions." Cipudda is Sicilian for onion. Fried fish layered in
> onions cooked with vinegar and sugar, and mint or bay, kept in crocks and
> served at room temperature. Not coriander, saffron, and celery leaves as
> called for in the 13th century al-Baghdadi recipe, but mint and bay grow
> wild on the island and for the poor, a lot easier to obtain. And the
> al-Baghdadi recipe doesn't call for all those onions. Those crazy
> onion-loving Palermitani! I guess when you're so successful in growing them,
> you have to find ways to use them up. I know of the medieval Muslim view of
> garlic and onions being an aphrodisiac, so no wonder why ibn Hawqal was so
> scandalized by the rampant onion-eating of the Sicilians.
>
> Were there other medieval dishes that put such an emphasis on the onion
> over the other ingredients? The plethora of onions in "A Sicilian Dish"
> makes me wonder; I know there are many recipes that use onions in a sauce,
> but it's not the focus of the ingredients. And I am not sure about the
> origin of "cipolline," onions pickled in vinegar and sugar or honey, popular
> as an appetizer today.
>
> (Incidentally, hurray the Internet; it threw up at me today Charles Perry's
> redaction of Spanish sikbaj from 1992, the lamb version:
> http://articles.latimes.com/1992-07-16/food/fo-3391_1_spanish-cooking?pg=2The article also has his lamb meatballs, chicken liver mousse, and other
> things. Tasty!)
>
> Adelisa di Salerno
>
>
>
>
>
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