Red Onion Tarte Tatin: Even when it doesn't work, it is wonderful

Onions are things of beauty.

Red Onion Tarte Tatin 2½ pounds red onions 2 tbsp butter 1 tsp sugar Dried thyme (or fresh thyme sprigs if you can get them) 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar Salt and pepper to taste Parmesan cheese for serving        Cheddar-Thyme Pastry: 3 oz (¾ cup) all-purpose flour 2 oz (½ cup) whole-wheat flour 1 tsp thyme (chopped fresh thyme if you can get it, dried if not) Salt to taste 2 tbsp butter 1 oz (about ¼ cup) shredded Cheddar cheese 2 to 3 tablespoons ice-cold water Heat oven to 350° with a heavy baking sheet on the center shelf. Peel the onions and cut them lengthwise in half. If they're very large (say, if you only needed two or three to get 2½ pounds of them), cut them into smaller wedges. Don't cut them into small pieces-- you want big onion chunks. Heat a large ovenproof skillet over medium heat. Then add the butter and sugar, shaking and swirling the pan to thoroughly coat the bottom. When the butter starts to bubble and sizzle, add the thyme sprigs (or a sprinkling of dried thyme). Arrange the onions on top, getting them as close and crowded as possible while keeping them all in contact with the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Reduce heat to low and let cook without stirring for around 10 minutes. Then cover the pan with foil and place on the baking sheet in the oven. Bake for 50-60 minutes. While the onions are cooking, make the pastry: Mix the flours, thyme, and salt. Rub in the butter, then mix in the cheese. Add enough water to make a ball dough that doesn't leave any crumbly bits behind in the bowl. Or, place everything but the water in a food processor. Pulse until it's thoroughly mixed and mealy. Then, with the processor running on low speed, gradually pour in a slow stream of water until a dough ball forms. Place your pastry (whether hand-mixed or food-processed) in a bag or food container and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. When the timer goes off for the onions, test them with a skewer. They should be tender but not mushy. Remove them from the onion, but leave the baking sheet in there. Place the skillet on a burner and set heat oven to medium. Raise the oven temperature to 400°. Move the baking sheet to a higher shelf. Cook the onions without stirring on the stovetop (over medium heat) until the juices are thick and syrupy. While the onions are cooking, roll the pastry out to a 10-inch circle. When the syrup in the pan is reduced, give each onion piece a gentle nudge (without really moving it) to ensure it hasn't gotten stuck into place. Drape the pastry over the onions, tucking the edges down and under everything. Set the pan in the oven on the baking sheet that you left in there. Bake 25-30 minutes, or until the crust is golden on top. After baking, let rest 20 minutes. Have a flat platter or tray ready, one that's bigger than the skillet. After the time has elapsed, put the platter upside-down over the skillet. Holding the two tightly together (don't forget the hot pads!), give the tart a very good shake. Then flip the whole thing over and lift the pan off. It should leave the crust on the platter with all the onions nicely embedded in place. If any onions stick to the pan, just put them back into their places on the crust. If they all stick, just get them out with a spatula and arrange them as best as you can on the crust. Lay them caramelized-side up. It won't look as nice, but it'll still taste really good. Delia Smith's Winter Collection, 1995

Today, we are making Delia Smith's red onion tarte tatin! If you've never heard of a tarte tatin, it's kind of like a cross between an upside-down cake and an apple pie (or in our case, an onion pie). The special part is that you cook the fruit (or onions) on the stove so it caramelizes on the bottom, which becomes the top when you flip it out of the pan and onto a plate.

Before we could get to the onion excitement, we had to make the crust. I know the recipe says to do this during the one-hour downtime while our onions bake, but I've never attempted a tarte tatin before. Therefore, I wanted everything finished so I could put it out of mind. This also let me clear the countertop of all mixing bowls and dirty measuring cups before getting to the real fun. When I'm trying a totally new-to-me recipe, clear countertops help keep my mind straight.

Delia uses whole-wheat/thyme/cheese crust on top. I thought this sounded amazing, and was already planning to make it in the future without bothering with the rest of the tarte tatin. 

The recipe calls for 1 ounce of cheese, which seemed like a lot less than I would use. But Delia Smith's recipes always work, so I didn't mess with it. And sure enough, our "small" allotment of cheese nearly smothered everything else.

Our instructions say we can use a food processor, but I didn't feel like cleaning all of its parts. Even when you put everything in the dishwasher instead of cleaning every plastic piece by hand, the food processor demands a lot of rack space. You usually end up leaving a big stinky pile of dishes in the sink until next time, and I didn't want to deal with last night's plates tomorrow.

Now that we had the crust out of the way, we could truly enjoy our time with the onions. Delia has us cut the onions in half, which seemed far too big until I saw how small the onions were on her show. I decided to cut mine until they were about the same size as hers.

Source: Youtube

I refrigerated the onions the night before because that often cuts back on their tear-gassing ability. But red onions really love attacking your eyes. I had to bring a special friend out of the living room to help with my eyes.

I've seen a lot onion "hacks" that claim they'll prevent crying. They never work. But if you simply aim a fan at the onions, it will blow their fumes away before your eyes feel a thing. Even if the fan is pointed right at your face, it disperses the onion gas before it can do anything to you. Incidentally, this particular fan has a special feature: you can't stick your whole hand into the blades. (Though you can easily imperil a finger if you want to.)

As I laid my onion wedges into a rosette, I got really excited about how beautiful this would be. Delia crowded the onions into the pan, which makes sense because onions are the whole point of the recipe. So, I filled all the gaps with onion chunks and slivers until I could cram in no more.

Some of the onions started to gently fall apart as they cooked, but I didn't worry about losing my rosette at all. After all, I didn't need to move the onions again until serving time. In our serene state, I thought the center onion wedge turned into something geometrically interesting as it let go of itself.

Delia tells us to put a very heavy baking sheet in the oven before turning it on, so I did. You don't see unnecessary steps in a Delia Smith recipe, so I figured it must be for a good reason. And to prevent any sudden pan-warping (which she strenuously warns us about should we use cheap or flimsy pans), I dug out the roasting pan that came with the oven.

I love when a near-perfect spotlight shines on the things I do right.

If your kitchen has a good vent, you really want to use it for this recipe. I found myself blinking a lot from itchy eyes. Someone else came in for a snack, and I noticed their eyes also got a little pink after a minute or two of chatting.

Tears aside, we now had nothing to do but wait. I didn't think about this when I first measured out the ingredients, but fifty minutes is a long time to wait on a recipe. I can see why Delia said to do the crust now instead of at the beginning. But this was a great time to tidy the countertops, transfer the dirty dishes from the sink to the dishwasher, wipe the errant splats, and make a cup of tea. I also measured out the ingredients for the muffins I had planned to help all the non-onion-lovers feel better about the smell.

After the first baking, we had only to reduce the pan juices to a syrup and then bake the onions again. My stove did this in about half the time given in the recipe, which hopefully didn't mean that I ruined it by setting the burner too high. But how can a recipe go awry and look so beautiful?

After another thirty minutes of baking, our crust looked at least a little golden on top. I decided that I could wait no more. The onions had tantalized me long enough.

Our onion wedges had loosened up and fanned out while baking. I lifted one up to peep underneath, and it was the most beautiful shade of caramelized I've seen outside of a crock pot.

Now, Delia says we must have an absolutely flat platter to turn our tatin onto. And after our local adventure getting a platter from a dead microwave, I have one! I was really excited to use my special cake plate for something besides cake.

When I lifted the skillet off the platter, I could see that we had a tatin failure on our hands. This is what it looked like after shaking the pan a lot, cutting around the edges to loosen things, and everything else I could think of. 

I can only guess that I overdid the part where you reduce the pan fluids to a syrup. I may have accidentally candied the onions and welded them to the iron. 

On the TV show, Delia cheerfully says that if any onions stick to the pan, you can just gently lift them out and lay them into place. Which is all well and good unless all of them stick. Even if I wanted to match each onion wedge to its dent in the crust, they fell apart on contact with the spatula. I ended up laying them browned-side-up and deciding it looked good enough.

De-panning issues aside, this was a little hard to serve. Eventually I figured out that our tarte tatin was easier to cut with scissors like a pizza. (Yes, I cut pizza with scissors.) And fittingly enough, it was easier eat this like a slice of pizza. The onions fell apart on contact with a knife and fork.

Aside from our aesthetic failure at the end, this was far easier than I thought. It took a while to make, but most of that time was spent letting it mind its own business. I didn't have to stay in the kitchen and fuss over it the whole time.

This was so, so good. You would have thought I spent a long time carefully balancing ingredients and seasonings instead of waiting on the oven. The onions were almost as sweet as a fruit pie. It almost tasted like I had put a lot of brown sugar under there. The balsamic vinegar had boiled off all its acid, leaving behind balsamic without the vinegar. 

The whole thing seemed like it contained far more expensive ingredients than it actually does. Even though it turned into a tatin mess, I'm very glad I made it.