A Rare Treat

     I cooked something completely new and different last night.  Never before had I used cipollini onions in a meal preparation.  But walking through a local mega mart I saw some in a bin and decided to give them a try.  I wasn't even sure how to prepare them or how they would taste.  But I was feeling very adventuresome and so I purchased about a dozen of the petite saucer shaped bulbs and came home to do some investigating, or culinary research as it were.

     Turns out that the name means literally "little onion" in Italian and they are associated primarily with that cuisine.  Once a rare treat only served in the finest restaurants they are now becoming more popular and well known around the world.  Cipollini onions range in size from 1-3" in diameter and are flat on each end with a pale yellow translucent flesh and gold colored papery skin.  They are firm and semi-sweet due to a higher sugar content than the common yellow cooking onion.

     They are quite versatile in the kitchen and while they can be eaten fresh their sweetness is more pronounced when cooked either by frying, steaming, baking, sauteing, braising, or as I decided to do, roasting them in the oven.  Traditionally they are served whole as a main ingredient, not as just a spice or flavoring.

     I did discover in my research that even though they are small they can have a thin and tough skin.  Fortunately the recipe I used provided a solution to that problem.  So I soaked them in a small bowl of hot water for 5 minutes as recommended and the skin was easier to remove.  After another brief immersion in a combination of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and honey they went into a pan and then into the oven for 20 minutes and came out softened and sweetly caramelized.  A rare treat indeed!