Wilty Onions

Typically, I'm subjected to making dinner on Friday nights. A semblance of a social life tends to impede that happening, though, so my dinner shift is moved to Saturday night, seemingly spontaneously. Unless Mother Superior decides chili-dogs sound like a good weekend meal and I refuse to take part in the festivities. At which point I'm ambushed after a two hour trek through the woods and told Sunday dinner is on me.

This was all okay. Was there a fair amount of griping involved? Of course, but in the end, food is good. Most of the time; every now and then there are some rough patches. Like the wilty onion.

With a risotto, a fancy name for a wonderfully creamy Italian rice, one uses a white onion, preferably fresh, and not wilty. Unfortunately, by some misaligned cosmic foray, there were no fresh white onions in the drawer. Instead, there was half a red onion that had been left unwrapped on the kitchen island under the glare of forty watt bulbs. Hence the wilty.

Luckily red onions, when whole, are twice the onion necessary for a solid four servings of risotto. Luckily, there are sharp knives in the cabinet. Luckily, someone taught me how to trim up an onion.

The finished product (Photo by J. Cust)

When the wilty underbelly of that sad red onion-half had been sheared off and tossed unceremoniously into the garbage, things worked. The diced onion sweated nicely, the sweet potato smoothed out, the stove didn't blow up and set fire to the neighborhood. In the end, dinner was dinner. With a little kick. Someone may or may not have accidentally sprinkled a few too many chili pepper flakes in. Maybe.