How not to cook

It was time to get back into the kitchen last night and I wanted to do something a little special with my pizza (good pizza in Nashville is not terribly convenient for a West-sider). Claudia was kind enough to bestow upon me a few cipollini onions, which I hoped to prepare in some way with balsamic vinegar before plopping them on the pizza. I've had "balsamic marinated cipolline onions" at Memphis's tapas joint (I love to say that), Dish (no link because their site is an irritating flash-only site), but I didn't have time to marinate them. So I looked up some ways to prepare them and settle on this:

Peel and saute onions [whole, apparently] in 1T olive oil until browned on both sides. Add 1 tsp sugar and 1/4 c. balsamic vinegar to pan and reduce until onions are soft. Cool and slice into rings.

Sounds fairly simple, right? First, let me say that one should definitely not put too much oil in the pan (it will pop, but most people know this; I just got carried away). Second, adding the vinegar will create smoke if the pan is too hot (which is inevitable if you're using cast iron). Third, reducing a sugar, oil, vinegar concoction in your beloved cast iron pan will create an unholy mess. Fourth, even with your sharpest ceramic knife, it is impossible to cut those tiny onions into appropriately-sized rings (for pizza). Next time I'll know: cut the onions first, plan ahead and marinate the onions for several hours, cook in a regular saute pan. Regardless of the immense pain in the rear the onions caused, they were quite tasty, but kind of got lost on the pizza because I also had black olives, fresh tomato and white mushrooms on there (along with my own pizza sauces which is fairly heavy on the herbs). The best way to enjoy cipollini onions is really on their own and roasted in a balsamic marinade. This recipe (with some modification to taste) looks like a good one to try.

Next time...

UPDATE: Here's another recipe with cipollini (not onions) that looks scrumptious.