The humble wrap gets a bad rap. So often the soggy, pallid and unappetising ‘healthy option’ at the convenience store food-to-go counter, wraps are a way of making the unsuspecting public feel like they’re eating less bread while still providing a viable vehicle for their otherwise totally virtuous hoi sin duck, chicken and bacon club or egg mayonnaise. Arranged cunningly in its packaging to look like a veritable cornucopia, positively brimming with delicious filling, the pre-packaged wrap so often tapers out into a tragic nothingness, like the Waiting for Godot of sandwiches, leaving you with a few mouthfuls of mealy, chewy dough and nothing else, dreading your 3pm hunger pangs and wishing you’d plumped – operative word there – for that hearty three-tier BLT on granary instead.
Read morePissaladière
You know how sometimes, if you want to describe a boring individual with very little personality, you can refer to them as 'vanilla'? Meaning they're a bit bland, a safe bet, perfectly pleasant but nothing to go wild over. Average.
Suddenly it seems to me that this is a rather inappropriate label. Surely, if we want to describe the mundane, the everyday, the tame, the insipid, we should refer to them as 'onion'.
Let's face it, no one goes wild over onions. Onions are the safe bet. The best friend that you'll always rely on and love in a strictly platonic fashion but who will never set your loins aflame. The boy that all the girls call 'sweet', which - if you're a man I'm sure you know this already - is the kiss of death as far as romantic opportunity is concerned. The trusty shoulder to cry on, dependent and reliable but always hiding back from the limelight.
Vanilla, by comparison, seems positively exotic and exciting, suggesting secret whispers in the dark, clandestine meetings, breathless laughter, a wave of musky perfume carried on a gentle evening breeze. Vanilla speaks of secrets and seduction, of the faraway and desirable. The poor onion doesn't stand a chance.
We do, however, depend on onions. I'd wager that around eighty percent of savoury recipes call for the inclusion of at least one of these golden bulbs. They provide a depth, a richness, an earthy foundation of flavour that is hard to come by using any other ingredient. I know this, from the many times I've ransacked the fridge, always assuming there must be a stash of onions in there, only to find that we're out of them and I have to trek to the corner shop because there is nothing else I can substitute. They are a stalwart of cooking, one you always assume will be around to help you out.
However, there are a few recipes that showcase the humble onion, giving it the starring role it so desperately craves as it sits at the back in a stew, soup or risotto, watching the meat or other vegetables getting all the attention and crying silently into its papery skin.
Onion soup is one, of course. A melting, burnished fusion of earthy goodness topped with that most delectably simple of creations: cheese on toast. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that, for most people (including myself), it is the cheese on toast that makes them want to eat onion soup.
To unleash the full potential of the onion, you have to caramelise it. You have to finely slice it and then fry it slowly in sizzling butter or oil, over a low heat, until what were tough, crunchy crescents of translucent flesh soften into a melting, unctuous tangle of slippery, sweet, savoury goodness. Even better if you add a pinch of brown sugar to bring out the sweetness, and a splash of balsamic to heighten the savoury sensation. There is very little that caramelised onions will not partner happily with, but, for me, they are at their most outstanding when paired with goat's cheese and rocket on some form of bread base.
This, then, is the best way I can think of to showcase the humble tastiness of a pile of caramelised onions. It's southern France's answer to a pizza: pissaladière.
I first came across this on a holiday in Nice, where it is sold everywhere by the slice out of giant, battered-looking trays. It's a laughably simple combination of bread dough, caramelised onions, black olives and anchovies. These decidedly un-flashy ingredients fuse together to form something far greater than the sum of its parts. The soft tangle of onions coupled with the dough, moist where they've soaked into it and crispy around the edges, is intensely comforting. Add the satisfying saltiness of olives and anchovies to counteract the sweetness of the onions, and you have something outstanding.
Humble, yes, but outstanding nonetheless. This is a great recipe for reminding ourselves just how much we owe the onion.
Do you have any favourite onion recipes that make the most of this kitchen staple?
Pissaladière (serves 4-6):
- 20g fresh yeast
- 3/4 tsp sugar
- 180ml warm water
- 200g strong white bread flour
- 130g strong wholemeal flour
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1.5 tbsp olive oil
- 3 tbsp garlic-infused olive oil (or normal olive oil)
- A bunch of thyme, leaves picked
- 8 medium onions (about 1.5kg)
- 1 can anchovies in oil
- A couple of handfuls of black olives, pitted
- Salt and pepper
First, make the dough. Stir the yeast into the warm water and sugar and leave until frothy. Put the salt and flours in a large mixing bowl and make a well in the middle. Add the olive oil and the yeast mixture and mix together to form a dough (add a little more water if it seems too dry). Knead for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic (or use the dough hook function on an electric mixer for 10 minutes), then place in a bowl and cover with a teatowel. Leave to rise in a warm place until doubled in size - this should take 1-1.5 hours.
Meanwhile, make the onion topping. Peel and slice the onions very finely (a mandolin cutter is ideal for this, if you have one). Heat 1 tbsp of the garlic oil in a large pan over a medium heat and fry the onions until translucent, along with 1 tbsp of the thyme leaves. Turn the heat down low and cook them for about 30 minutes until very soft, sticky and golden. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.
When the dough is ready, pre-heat the oven to 220C. Roll the dough out to a large rectangle about 1.5cm thick. Spread the onions over the top, scatter over another 1 tbsp thyme leaves, then slice each anchovy fillet lengthways into 3 or 4 slices. Arrange these over the onions in a criss-cross pattern, placing an olive in each diamond. Leave for 15 minutes in a warm place, then put in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes until crispy and golden brown around the edges.
Serve with a green salad.
Home-made pizza
I've ranted about this elsewhere on this blog, but I'll say it again: I hate chain pizza restaurants. The main reason I hate them is for their disgusting stinginess when it comes to pizza toppings. When you're paying over a tenner for what is essentially a slice of bread with some cheese and tomato on top, the least the restaurant could do is be generous with ingredients that cost them a few pennies. But no, every time I am disappointed, presented with a measly slab of dough garnished with a couple of token vegetables or pieces of chicken. The leek, roasted veg and blue cheese pizza I had in a chain restaurant a while back springs to mind: three slices of frazzled, dried-up leek that resembled potpourri, a few slices of red pepper that tasted raw, and a couple of dollops of blue cheese in the middle of the pizza. The rest was a vast expanse of unadulterated tomato, a desert of sauce where no item of veg had ever gone before. As I picked at the bland item of food in question, I calculated the probable mark-up of this pizza; it must have been around 1000%. Depressing.
You'd never find such things in Italy. I remember visiting a hole-in-the-wall pizza place in Venice one summer. Now, this is Venice, bear in mind. In Venice you can be charged for pretty much anything: bodily functions, space on the pavement, the right to wield a camera, oxygen... And yet, the pizza cost about a fiver and fed two of us. It also came absolutely laden with aubergine, mozzarella, tomato sauce and herbs; I'm pretty sure I staggered under the weight of it and had to sit down on some steps outside a church to consume it. Quite handy, really, because eating that pizza really was a semi-religious experience, a hymn of worship to the god of generous toppings and a crisp base.
Essentially, if you want good pizza in England, you'll have to either seek out somewhere with a proper wood burning oven and Italian staff who understand how to top a circle of tomatoey dough, or make it yourself. I often choose the former, but it's been a long time since I last made my own pizza, so I decided last weekend to have another go at it.
It's a big reward for very little kitchen work. I find that moment where a ball of dough has magically risen to something that resembles a giant alien mushroom incredibly satisfying; even more fun is knocking all the air out of it, rolling it out, and getting a feeling of heady anticipation as you realise that molten cheese, tangy tomatoes and that unmistakeable hint of oregano are moments away. This really is incredibly easy, and I'd urge you, if you've never made pizza before, to try it. You'll never want to buy a supermarket pizza again.
So seriously do the Italians take their pizza, that in Naples, where it was supposedly invented, they have the 'Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana', the True Neapolitan Pizza Association. It's like a fancy gentleman's club, but for tomato-topped carbohydrates. Founded in 1984, it has established specific rules that a pizzeria must adhere to before it can bear this golden standard. The pizza must be baked in a wood-fired oven at 485C for no more than 60-90 seconds; the base must be kneaded by hand and not rolled with a rolling pin (you may have seen Italian chefs spinning the base around in the air with their hands to stretch it); the pizza must not be bigger than 35cm in diameter or more than 1/3 of a centimetre thick at the centre. I remember seeing pizzerias in Naples bearing the plaque above their doors announcing that they made pizzas conforming to these exacting standards - I was usually straight in the door after spying it, and I was not disappointed.
Now, I'm fairly sure my home-made pizza failed to meet every single one of these criteria. Actually, no - I did knead it by hand, and it didn't exceed 35cm in diameter. That's about it, but considering I lack a wood-fired oven, and the Italian skill for spinning a pizza base on my hand, my attempt was pretty incredible, even if I do say so myself. I could have tried to spin the base on my hand, of course - I may have uncovered my only secret talent, if only I'd tried - but I didn't fancy pizza with a topping of kitchen floor, so I refrained.
What's more, home-made pizza could not be easier. It's about as close to those disgusting cardboard-like ready made pizza bases you get in the supermarket as fillet steak is to a can of Spam. It's also not much more effort. Mix yeast, water, flour, olive oil and salt, knead for a few minutes, put somewhere warm to rise (in a bowl, obviously - don't chuck it in the bath or on top of the radiator or anything) for an hour, roll out, and you're ready to scatter with all sorts of goodness.
I went for a combination of tomato, parma ham, mozzarella, mushrooms, parmesan and basil. It's good. Very good. The ham hardens and becomes crispy in places, and lends a nice saltiness to the earthy mushrooms and the fresh basil. The cheese melts beautifully and starts to bubble and brown on top in the heat of the oven. But you don't need me to tell you in detail what a good pizza tastes like, hopefully. Let me just assure you that this is as good as most pizzas I've ever eaten in restaurants (except, of course, for those Neapolitan treasure-troves).
Home-made pizza (makes two pizzas, around 25cm in diameter):
350g strong white bread flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp instant yeast
1 tsp caster sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
Sift the flour, salt, yeast and sugar into a bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the olive oil and 240ml hand-hot water. Mix to a dough, then turn onto a floured surface and knead for about five minutes until springy and elastic.
Put in a bowl, cover with clingfilm or a tea towel and place in a warm place for an hour (I used the airing cupboard). It should double in size.
Pre-heat the oven as hot as it will go - I heated it to 250C - and knock all the air out of the dough once it has risen. Sprinkle a worktop with polenta/cornmeal (this gives it that lovely Italian grainy texture on the crust) and roll the dough into two balls. Flatten each one and roll out thinly with a rolling pin. Place them on a piece of baking parchment, and you're ready to top them with whatever you fancy.
When topped, simply place the baking parchment directly on the oven shelf, and cook for around ten minutes. Delicious, almost-authentic Italian goodness is now yours to devour.
