Pickled Pearls of Wisdom
Christmas-cooking traditions of my own began soon after my marriage. I’d been a fairly devoted cook prior to the wedding, but there’s something about setting up housekeeping that seals certain culinary deals along with the wedlock. I inherited some traditions from my mother, but others were mine alone. Among these are the making of a yule log for the Christmas dessert and the inclusion of creamed onions to the holiday meal.
I love creamed onions. The tiny, pearl kind that are tenderly sweet and just yielding in their texture. I experimented for years while I was single with various recipes but didn’t find a completely satisfying one until 1988, when Gourmet magazine included a recipe for a sublimely simple version that eschewed the flour based roux of most cream recipes and relied only on reduced heavy whipping cream. It is divine. I’ve stopped looking for another recipe (although I still tweak; I added peas to it this Thanksgiving to unanimous acclaim).
Christmas of 1990, my new husband and I (along with my mother and my aunt) flew across the Atlantic and spent Christmas and New Year’s with my sister and her family, who were living outside of London. It was a heavenly trip filled with lots of theatre, wine, Dickensian scenes, pubs, etc. Although my holiday cooking traditions were not 2 years old, I held to them firmly and offered, okay, insisted, on making the bûche de Noël for dessert and creamed onions for the dinner. Making the cake was no problem: It calls for the standard eggs, flour, chocolate, sugar, etc. The onions I found trickier. I simply couldn’t find them anywhere. I looked first in produce stalls throughout London, then in the posh food hall of Harrod’s, then generic supermarkets like Sainsbury’s. Nothing. I was beginning to panic.
The UK has very different ideas about shopping than we have in the U.S. That is, stores actually close there in the evening and on holidays and on Sundays. Christmas Eve arrived, and I had no pearl onions and I had to come up with something pronto. I scoured the aisles of the local Sainsbury again, this time forgoing the produce department and looking for perhaps a shelf stable tin or bottle. Eureka! A big, gleaming glass jar of baby onions was spied! They were already peeled too, so what I sacrificed in freshness I figured I would get back tenfold in convenience. Oh, yeah: They said “Pickled” on the label, but I figured I could … unpickle them.
First, I tasted them. They were perfectly suited for an icy gin Gibson. So I blanched them. Same taste, but warmer. I boiled them. Same taste, a little less firm, much warmer. I boiled them again with a little sugar. Same taste, even less texture and more heat, with an additional abominably sweet aftertaste. I had invested way too much time in the procurement and preparation of these onions to give up. Maybe just proceeding with recipe as planned would help? Maybe the addition of heavy cream and parsley would somehow transform them? Maybe not. I served up a gorgeous dish of the most hideous, sour-tasting creamed onions ever imagined. Not even my new and beloved groom could feign tolerating them, much less liking them. What one can do: be flexible and learn to do without. What one can’t do: unpickle what has already been pickled.
This article appears in December 24 • 2004.