Onion comb happened by accident. Actually, there were several accidents involved in making onion comb. Onion water has become a new staple in our kitchen. We take onions, some salt, some water, and a touch of agave and pressure cook them for five minutes. We then separate the onions from the water. The onions we cook down into a marmalade. The water is used like stock. It brought a nice sweet vegetal note to our pea soup, and it would be great for poaching chicken. I also thought about making it into a jelly and wondered if I could whip it and make it crispy like the yogurt crisps.
I set about the process of making onion crisps, except I was short one ingredient from my base recipe. Oh well, I’m sure one ingredient does not make that much of a difference. Turns out it does. I made the base and began whipping it. I was working on this side project while Aki was getting many of the dishes together for the day’s meals. I continued to whip, Aki continued to cook, and lo and behold, my hand mixer went flying across the kitchen.
I knew Aki wanted to get the projects on hand taken care of, yet I really wanted to see if I could make puffed onions. Turns out, she was not that interested in puffed onions at the time, and while the mixer convulsed on high power on the floor, I glared at her and said, “You did that on purpose,” and she said, “No I didn’t, you are just projecting.” In any case, I realized that my onion project was taking a bit more time than it should and that no matter how much I whipped, I was not going to get the result I was looking for from my onion base. So, in an act of defeat, I took the semi-whipped onion mixture and placed it in metal frames in the dehydrator and hoped for the best. Besides, I had some actual cooking to do.
I opened the dehydrator this morning to a pleasurable surprise. No, my crisps did not magically appear. However, I had a new result. The onion mixture did dry and retain some of its lightness. The result is very comb-like, quite similar to whipped nougat, though savory. And now begins the fun part. What else can we make into a comb: strawberry, coffee, truffle, cherry, almond, foie gras, oyster? Now is where we get to take our mistakes and grow from them.
As a side note, if a hand blender starts convulsing on the floor, turn it off quickly, as it creates a horrible mess.
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