Joy in a mundane onion

Sometimes super-fresh produce surprises me.

Since moving to Northern California, I've been gradually expanding the breadth of my culinary knowledge, and learning more about what peaks of perfection food can attain when it's brought from earth to table in the shortest and most seasonal time possible. This continues, as it did during a recent Saturday morning trip to the Alemany Farmers' Market, where I rediscovered onions.

From my earliest encounters with onions, I remember their papery skin as a flaky nuisance. Left in the bottom of plastic bags that brought onions home from any childhood grocery run was a little crumbly mess of onion dandruff, dusty shards of crispy detritus that were just part of the onion deal. I never considered this to be a flaw, or even something I would wish away; this was simply a feature of onion-ness.



But look at this bombshell! Tight, taut and brightly colored, with a wispy ribbon of coiled skin wrapped seductively at the end. Red onions elsewhere - even here in this fertile land - are the most likely to be flaky and discolored, much moreso than their well-behaved white and yellow siblings. But here, harvested the evening before in Fresno and rushed to Alemany in the morning, was proof that even humble onions can outperform expectations when they're given proper attention, instead of neglectful decay and time spent in a withered pile in the supermarket.

Little onion, it's a pleasure to meet you.