Bloke's Cookbook - Pasta in a smothered onion sauce

The allium family is a magical gift. It gives us garlic and onions, which together produce some of the greatest dishes known to man. Our curries would be blander, our sausage-in-a-bun poorer, without them. Is it possible to have too much onion? This recipe will let you find out.

The main - in fact almost the only - ingredient of this recipe is onion. When onion is cooked very slowly for an hour or so it loses its sharpness and becomes very sweet. The rest of the recipe involves giving the sauce some extra depth, but it's dead easy although it is time consuming - a total cooking time of around 90 minutes although only 30 minutes of actual work.

This recipe's one downfall, in my opinion, is its high antisocial rating. It's hard to consume a pound of onions and garlic without smelling of Frenchman. If you're planning to eat this, I advise you not to get close to anyone who hasn't also partaken for several hours afterwards.

The recipe quoted here will serve 2.

You will need:

Pasta (works pretty well with tagliatelle but you need something the sauce can wrap itself around);
6 medium onions, sliced finely (not chopped);
6 cloves garlic, sliced finely;
Olive oil;
Fresh parsley (enough to fill 2 table spoons after chopping);
Salt and Pepper;
Around 1/4 bottle dry white wine;
A large saucepan with a lid;
A second, smaller saucepan.


First, add a good amount of olive oil to the large saucepan and put the heat on medium. Once the oil's hot, but before it starts to bubble, put the onions in the saucpean. Stir them round and make sure they're thoroughly covered in the oil. When they start to sizzle, turn the heat down to low and put the lid on. Leave to cook on this low heat with the lid on for around an hour, checking every 20 minutes or so that nothing's burning, and giving everything a stir.

After an hour, you'll return to find that your half-hundredweight of onions looks rather smaller and sadder than it did. Fear not. Turn the heat up to medium/high and add the garlic, and then boil off all the liquid. You're aiming to get the onions to turn a golden colour (not brown) and this will take around 10-15 minutes. There will be some onion burned on to the sides and bottom of the pan. Don't worry too much about scraping it off since we'll deal with that shortly.

During this time you should start to heat the hot water. If you're having garlic bread with it (just in case there isn't enough garlic and onion) this is roughly the time to put it in the oven.

Once you've achieved this, add your chopped parsley and stir it in. Now season with salt and pepper. Don't stint here since the onions will be very sweet and you need to tone that down a bit. Cook your pasta now if you're using dried, or wait a few more minutes if you're using fresh.

Now add the white wine to the onions. You can use the wine to scrape off the golden oniony bits that are stuck to the saucepan (it's called deglazing). Cook on a high heat, stirring all the time, until all of the white wine has boiled off.

Finally, drain the pasta and toss with the onions.


I must admit that I'm stuck as to what to serve this one with. The white of the pasta and the gold of the onion seem to demand some more colour - perhaps a salad with radicchio in? If you have any bright ideas, let me know. I usually eat it with plenty of garlic bread and some grated parmesan.


Drink with: I'm out of ideas for this one. Please yourself.

Ease of cooking and preparation: 4/5 - Time consuming but very easy.

Mess Factor: 5/5 - Two pans and a colander.

Leftover value: 3/5 - Not great. Eat it all in the first sitting.