Content with condiments: pickled onions

It always surprises me when people react to one of these blogs. There's the question of WHAT blog they react to, and then there's the reaction. Annalena is an avid devotee of facebook, and all of these posts go on that site. The prior one, on spiced veal chops, received more feedback than just about any other post. Who knew that Annalena was tapping into something?

A few entries ago, I wrote about refrigerator pickles. My little brother (who's taller than me...) wrote vividly about how that one reminded him of making similar pickles in the kitchen of the home where he grew up, in Missouri. Many of us know about the famous scene in Marcel Proust's enormous "novel," where a bit of a madeline cookie, steeped in lime blossom tea, stimulates him to write a 3000 page novel, where nothing happens. (I SWEAR that is basically true. Annalena made a commitment to read it last year. She will NOT be rereading it. Now, the Francophiles may attack me if they wish). My point by bringing this up, however, is that food memories are powerful. They are buried, but never forgotten. So if a piece on refrigerator pickles can make "il gattopardo" remember his childhood fondly, then that is reason enough to keep on plugging away, even with things that yours truly may find, well, trivial.

I dont' actually find this one trivial, but it is something that makes so much sense, and is so simple, I am surprised that I hadn't made them before. These pickled onions were written of as a condiment for the spiced lamb chops, which of course, I turned into spiced veal chops. Well, I made them anyway, and when I tasted, my reaction was along the lines of that of Marcella Hazan when she went to "Olive Garden":

No.

That was it. You should look up the article. It's fun.

I meant "no" in the sense that they were not right for the veal chops. We were having a salad (OF COURSE we were having a salad. Any of you who have ever eaten at La Casa dell'Annalena know you will NOT escape without salad). Their piquancy (and I promise I will never use that word again), was perfect on the salad, and served to really clean the pallete after the rich spicy meat.

You could almost be sleeping when you make this recipe, but please stay awake. You'll be using a knife.

First, get 1.5 cups of hot water and mix it with a cup of vinegar. My recipe called for white vinegar, but I always find apple cider vinegar better in pickling. Your choice. Disoolve 3 tablespoons of sugar in this. It will be easy to do. Toss in a couple of sliced hot peppers: my recipe called for serranos. I didn't have them, but I did have jalapenos. So that's what I used. Finally, a smidgen of dried, hot red pepper. Put this all aside, while you take two medium, or one BIG red onion. Peel it, cut it down the middle, lengthwise, and then slice each half into thin, half moons. Put them into the liquid mix, and let it sit to room temperature. Then refrigerate it overnight.

If that took you ten minutes to do, it was a lot of time. Spoon out the onions as you need them. As you run low, you can slice up another onion, and put it in the liquid and if you begin running out of liquid, then make up another batch, using the proportions above. You could keep this going for a while.

If you make hamburgers, well... Or hot dogs. Or need something spicy sweet against a rich chop, or a steak or ...

And Annalena is wondering if that liquid would serve as a basis for a salad dressing. Not tonight. Tonight is Asian night with the Malaysian stew I wrote about, but next week... Hmmmm.

I shall keep you posted, ragazzi.