I have a lovely and patient husband, who, although he is wise beyond his years, sometimes gets some funny ideas. One of these is that I only like “fancy” food. No matter how many times I try to explain to him that just because I don’t consider the dollar menu at McDonald’s to be an adequate option for date night does not mean my tastes are either snobby or highbrow, he does not believe me. In his mind, I’m only willing to eat a certain type of haute cuisine, and the shorthand to describe that cuisine is caramelized onions.
As a result, he teases me mercilessly about caramelized onions. Whenever I criticize a dish, be it Chinese food or burritos, he’ll say, “Oh, not enough caramelized onions for you?” If I ask for suggestions as to what ice cream flavor I should make, he will say (after I’ve shot down vanilla), “How about caramelized onion?” What my lovely and patient husband fails to realize is that caramelized onions aren’t some chichi ingredient you find in restaurants, but a building block of good, homey cooking, from onion soup to hamburgers to this onion pie, originally called supper onion pie, or if you want to be all fancy, tarte tatin aux oignons.
