Cooking: Onion/Pastry Project

I have a list of Long Lost Foods that I mourn. Examples that have been floating in and out of my hungry consciousness lately include:

• The eggy-bread buns that they used to sell at a bakery at the Fancy Mall, the ones that they slashed across the top and doused with greasy onions cooked to a near-caramelized state and mixed with ittybitty bits of something hamlike.
• The gloriously fatty shallow onion tart with a fine, flaky crust and ittybitty bits of something baconlike that they used to sell at a nearby pseudo-French restaurant. It was also served with a few random sprouts, some cornichons, and some really good olives.
• The gigantic deep onion tart, with a little bit of bacon, that they used to sell at a French restaurant in Vancouver. Well, no, they still sell it, but Vancouver is, well, Vancouver. I can't just run down there for lunch. Also, last time I tried it it didn't seem quite greasy enough, and they warned me about the bacon. Now, I appreciate that a restaurant might warn a patron about an apparently-vegetarian dish that emphatically isn't, but I worry that they might be developing qualms about saturated fat. And that would just be wrong.

You're seeing the theme here, right? Fat, caramelized onions, pastry, and bits of pig. The bits of pig are optional - the more I read about the high intelligence of pigs, the closer I get to finding ways to get along without bacon. But nobody ever made friends with an onion, so I've decided that it's time to lay off the helpless longing thing and take control of my greasy onion pastry supply. The eggy buns demonstrate a level of breadmaking talent that I'm unlikely to achieve, so I'm hunting for tart recipes.

Recipes with a halfhearted attitude toward onion caramelization are scored down in my book - anyone that tells me to cook the onions for a paltry twenty minutes, or tells me to add sugar, or refers to "pale golden" onions, isn't getting my point. Caramelized onions should be cooked slowly until neither you or the onion can take any more waiting - forty minutes, an hour, maybe a little more. They should be brown and shriveled - no "golden" or "translucent" or "starting to soften" about it.

And Walla Walla and Vidalia onions are right out, though I won't throw out the recipe, I'll just ignore the onion recommendation. In my book, "sweet" onions don't just have less heat, they have less flavor - a shortage of the volatile stuff and the sugar. I want rock-hard, sugar-filled onions that make me cry when I slice them. If I ever get my hands on those Copra onions that I keep dreaming about, I'll use them for this.

And I'm skipping the tarts with a quiche/custard base - I haven't mastered those skills yet. And the ones with a top crust. And the ones with things like clams, figs, or apples. On the other hand, olives, cheese, anchovies, and crispy bits of pig are just fine. Even if I perhaps decide to skip the pig.

I'm looking at the following candidates:

• Cauliflower and Caramelized Onion Tart from Smitten Kitchen. I hadn't planned on cauliflower, but this looks good.
• I wanted at least one recipe using puffed pastry, so that I can cheat by buying my pastry. I chose Onion Tart from Not Derby Pie. The author claims to cook the onions for only twenty minutes, but look at those onions! Those are not wimpy blond onions.
• The French Lady Onion Tart recipe from Pink of Perfection cooks the onions for one and a quarter hours. That's a proper attitude toward caramelizing an onion. I'm a bit dubious about the addition of mustard, but I'm adding it to the list anyway.
• For a cheesier version, the Caramelized Onion and Gruyere Tart from DigginFood looks pretty good.
• Caramelized-Onion Tartlets from Epicurious aren't quite what I had in mind - you bake the shells, then dump in creme fraiche, then the onions. But they look good.

That looks like plenty to start with.

Image: By Flik R. Wikimedia Commons.