Don't Sweat the Aubergine

to give up the water they contain; and, once that has evaporated, a coating of oil will reappear on their surfaces.
Onions
    Why do cookery writers claim that you can soften onions in 5 minutes, and brown them in 15? They’re like the people who move out to the country and insist that they can get to their London offices in less time than it took them from Shepherd’s Bush. It’s the need to make something sound better than it is, I suppose.
    You cook onions in oil or butter to make them milder and to bring out their sweetness. If you’re using them in a stew, when they will cook for a good while longer, you may need to soften them for only 10 minutes or so. But if you’re making a risotto, you’ll find that any raw qualities in the onions will be apparent in the finished dish unless you soften them thoroughly, until golden; it will probably take about 20 minutes. Covering the pan hastens the process, but you need to lift the lid regularly to make sure that the onions are not catching and burning. Even small traces of burned onion will cause a dish to taste bitter.
    Sautéing onions in butter can cause problems, because the onions absorb the fat, and catch on the base of the pan; both the onions and the butter can burn. You can thin the butter with a little oil; or (Anna del Conte’s tip), keep the mixture moist with a little water.
    Browning onions, to add further Maillard flavours to a stew ( see here ) or to create a tasty accompaniment for grills, can take 40 minutes. If you try to speed up the process, onion pieces that your stirring fails to disturb for a while get burned. Cook slices of onion on a moderate heat, stirring regularly; make sure there’s always a layer of oil in the pan, because onion in a dry pan will catch and burn. Encouraging caramelization with the addition of a little sugar might help, but it has never made much difference when I’ve tried it. Browning onion slices in the oven is easier, and works well (gas mark 6/200°C); spread out the slices (or they won’t colour), and make sure that there’s a layer of oil between them and the roasting pan.
    I slice a section of onion from the stem and root ends, peel them and discard any tough layers, cut them in half from tops to roots, and slice those halves. If I’m baking them, perhaps with other vegetables such as aubergines and courgettes, I don’t trim the root, and I make sure that the chunks are all connected to it – it holds them together.
    Onions for a Venetian-style liver and onions should be cooked very slowly, in a covered pan. Restaurants sometimes pretentiously describe this preparation as an onion confit. (A confit implies preservation, and is properly used of jams, or of duck that is cooked, salted and stored in its own fat.) Slice onions thinly, and put them, lightly salted, in a heavy pan with a layer of oil or butter. Cover the pan, and cook over the lowest possible heat, perhaps above a heat dis- perser. Have a look after 15 minutes or so, and stir if the onions are starting to collapse. Stir again every so often. The onions may take an hour or longer to become soft and sweet. If there’s a lot of liquid in the pan at the end of cooking, turn up the heat to evaporate it, with the lid of the pan removed. To offset the sweetness, you could add a little vinegar at the end of cooking; add parsley and pepper too, if you like. This recipe works particularly well with red onions. (Cook the liver separately. Slice it thinly, removing the stringy bits, and sauté it quickly in butter or oil over a medium heat – just a few minutes.)
    Red onions, sweeter than the normal kind, can nevertheless be harsh if served raw in a salad. Soak them first, for an hour or so, in cold water, to wash away some of their sulphur; at the end of that time, squeeze them gently, drain them, and dry them with paper towels. Or give them a more radical treatmentby throwing them into boiling water for 30 seconds, then draining. I usually disarm spring onions by one of these methods too.
Peas
    Asparagus takes less time to cook than most cookery writers allow; fresh peas take more, I have found. Maybe I’ve been buying inferior peas. Far from being ready in 10 minutes, they often retain the texture of bullets at 15. So I’m a little wary of recipes that tell you to braise peas gently in a little wine or water.
    Still, braising is the best method, if your peas are small and fresh enough. Heat 1cm water, olive oil or butter and salt in a pan, with some