A desire for Wintery food has unfortunately coincided with the arrival of Spring in Fife. In How to be a Domestic Goddess, Nigella Lawson claims that her Supper Onion Pie is ideal sustenance when the evenings are drawing in, it gets dark early, and you need some comfort food to bolster you. Perhaps not the perfect choice for the start of British Summer Time, then? Well, whatever Nigella says, Supper Onion Pie, constructed from caramelised red onions and a cheese scone dough, was ideal for this Sunday lunchtime, Served with a crisp salad and a simple dressing of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
I’m not going to post the recipe, since it would be lifted straight from a book. You can find it at the link above, anyway. This recipe is disarmingly simple, though. Caramelise four red onions in a little oil and butter for about half an hour. Make a cheese scone dough. Tip the onions into a pie dish, press the dough out into a disc about the same size as the pie dish, place on top and press to seal. Then bake for a total of 25 minutes, reducing the heat a little after the first fifteen.
Nigella instructs you to cook the onions gently, until they are lightly tinged with colour. This approach could never produce a result as deliciously dark and glistening as the photo accompanying the recipe. I’ve made the recipe a couple of times before and always been disappointed with the delicate colour of the onions that results. This time I went for the French Onion Soup route and was a bit more fierce when cooking the onions and didn’t even go for the non-stick pan. You have no idea how hard it is for me to hear something crackling on the hob and to resist the urge to stir, stir, stir.
Cooking the onions more fiercely means you could probably use an extra one or two.
