Spring Onion

Versatile, delicious, highly nutritious and – perhaps best of all – a welcome harbinger of good times ahead, there's something very special about each year's post-snow emergence of the spring onion...

Milder, sweeter and more elegant than their fully grown relatives – but essentially of the same flavour – you can eat spring onions in their entirety, from their long, hollow green tops to their little white bulbs. Like most alliums – leeks, chives, garlic and shallots are all close family members – they’re full of goodness (vitamins A, B6, C and E, plus calcium, iron, sodium, potassium and dietary fibre) and, in their long history, have been credited with everything from curing colds and improving eyesight to warding off a more generalised ‘evil’. (Got a vampire problem and no garlic? It might be worth giving spring onions a go.) The only downside, of course, is that many of these qualities weaken considerably on cooking.

Spring onions are endlessly versatile too, adding depth and interest to myriad dishes, and serving as a building block to many more. Finely sliced, they add flavour without the caramelised sweetness or sugary body of a slow-cooked large onion. The light, wispy note they bring to spring vegetable tart, say – promising tantalising hints of the summer to come – is quite something.

Remember us saying they’re versatile? Well, familiar types like the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and Chinese began cooking with spring onions as far back as 2000BC, and over the centuries came up with assorted alternative uses for them too. Thus, spring onions can be used to season a wok (removing unwanted metallic smells), to repel insects (and soothe their bites), to stimulate hair growth, to clean knives, as an emergency odour absorber when you’re out of the ancient world equivalent of V.I.Poo, and even – in the Persian Jewish tradition – to symbolise the Egyptian whips endured by the Israelites in brief but memorable moments of Passover-time theatre.

THOUGH YOU CAN actually pick them all year around, spring onions are usually planted as seeds in late autumn and harvested about now, as the cold weather retreats. Growing them is easy – seriously, just bury some leftovers in a little soil and see what happens – and, best of all, they can be ready in eight to 14 weeks, depending on type and time of year. This makes ’em an ideal starter veg for the impatient, and a great little ‘filler’ crop for more ambitious vegetable plots and allotments, being something you can slot in between rows of slower growing greens. If you prefer your spring onions small and pale, ‘White Lisbon’ or the rounder, pickling-friendly ‘Pompeii’ are two good varieties to start with; if it’s a red you’re after, ‘Apache’ is a good, crisp, versatile choice.

But should your green fingers extend no further than picking decent examples from the shelf, that’s easy too. Just go for unblemished, healthy-looking onions showing no signs of sprouting, with firm bulbs (sometimes quite pronounced, but occasionally almost invisible, leaving the whole thing looking like a smooth little leek) and bright, dark green leaves. Most varieties taste pretty much the same, whatever their colour, and – as they’re all about young, fresh flavour – you want to buy little but often. Spring onions don’t keep for very long – five days in the fridge is about all you can hope for.

To prep, just wash, trim off the ragged bits at the top and the roots at the bottom, then slice the bulb into rounds; the green tops you can cut either across or lengthways. (These aren’t useful in every recipe, in truth – and some find them tough and indigestible – so, if in doubt, save them for stock or the stir fry.)

TO COOK, SMALL spring onions need nothing more than rubbing in olive oil, seasoning, then popping onto the grill; you can then serve ’em up with more oil, and perhaps some balsamic and a squeeze of lemon. They’re also great raw, adding heat and crispness to a salad or cheese, being a great addition to potato salad and feeling right at home sprinkled over steamed fish. (You can even eat them on their own – it might sound weird, but they’re lush in a soft little bun.) As with other early-season veggies – such as asparagus, spinach, peas or broad beans – the beauty of spring onions is that you don’t have to do much to them at all. And when you do, they cook incredibly quickly.

In fact, it doesn’t really matter how you cook them: they’re great grilled, roasted whole or used like pearl onions in casseroles, soups and stews. They also go amazingly well with pasta and olive oil, especially if you add a few other ingredients, like peas, cured pork, and maybe parmesan. Or stir them into raita or traditional Irish champ (basically, mashed potato with chopped spring onions); pickle them with balsamic vinegar and red wine; or, as mentioned, use them as a stir-fry staple, alongside ginger and chillies.

In fact, it’s once you start exploring Asian and Mexican food that the spring onion really comes into its own, starring in assorted salsas, used as an accompaniment to tofu and noodles, or simply nibbled raw as an appetiser. Chopped into soy sauce, perhaps with chilli and rice vinegar, they make a great dipping sauce, and – being very similar in flavour to the larger fresh green onions used in Chinese cooking – they’re useful both at the start of many dishes and at the end, scattered over the finished thing.

Not for nothing did Ken Hom once call spring onions, “Asia’s most universally used vegetable and seasoning ingredient,” as they’re backbone and garnish both.

FINALLY, A QUESTION. What’s the difference between spring onions and their various, nigh-identical lookalikes: bay onions, salad onions, green onions, calcots and scallions? Not much, is the answer, as they’re all little more than regular onions picked early – and, indeed, many varieties will grow into normal-sized onions if you give them the chance.

Scallions, calcots and green onions are the mildest type, picked earlier than the others, whereas spring onions have generally been left a tad longer, and will have grown more pronounced little bulbs at the base; they also tend to have a slightly stronger flavour. (True scallions are actually a separate cultivar, bred to be especially mild and tender and produce no bulb, but in practice they’re near indistinguishable from spring onions picked early enough.) And in cooking, they’re all pretty much interchangeable, as the heat mellows them and evens out the differences. It’s only if you’re using your spring onions or scallions raw that you want to be more careful about which sort you choose.

CALCOTS WITH ROMESCO SAUCE

FREDDY BIRD IS FIRING UP THE BARBECUE FOR THIS MONTH’S HERO...

GRILLED ONIONS WITH nut sauce doesn’t sound like the most exciting of recipes – but the look of pleasure on everybody’s faces when they first try this dish is a pure delight. Plus, it’s great fun to eat!

I’ve played around with many versions of this sauce and more recently have omitted the bread, sprinkling toasted breadcrumbs at the end instead for a rich and satisfying crunch. The sauce is best made in a big pestle and mortar, but you can use a food processor as well. Just don’t blend the hell out of it; I think it’s best with a coarse texture.

Also, I find the flavour improves with time – I often make it and come back to it half an hour later after the flavours have all mixed.

When it comes to cooking the calcots on the barbecue, the quality of the charcoal or wood is so important. I use an assortment of woods and prefer olive, apple or cherry, as well as oak. You can really taste the sweetness of the smoke.

SERVES 4

100g piquillo peppers (or red peppers)

100g almonds

100g hazelnuts

90-100ml extra virgin olive oil

5 garlic cloves, peeled and squashed

50-75g good-quality passata

1 tsp smoked paprika

2 tbsp Cabernet Sauvignon vinegar

pinch saffron, steeped in 1 tbsp hot water

handful breadcrumbs, well toasted

12-16 calcots (depending on size)

1 Get a fire going on the barbecue and heat the oven to 150C/300F/gas mark 2.

2 Char the peppers over the flame until their skins are blackened. When cool enough to handle, peel off the skin, remove the seeds and pith and blitz the flesh to a purée.

3 Spread the almonds and hazelnuts onto a baking tray and toast in the oven for a few minutes until they’re evenly golden.

4 Heat the oil in a pan and fry the garlic gently in it until golden. Remove from the oil and set aside, reserving the oil.

5 In batches, pound the nuts to a mediumcoarse crumb – some can be finer, as this will help to bind the sauce. Then pound the garlic to a smooth paste, and combine with the garlicky oil, pepper purée, passata, paprika, vinegar, saffron and saffron water, and the nuts. The consistency should be loose and dippable. When it’s done, pour into a bowl and keep at room temperature.

6 Trim the calcots (leaving the roots attached) and soak in salty water (this cleans them and also gets a little salt inside the onion) before throwing over a fire on a rack.

7 Blacken the outside of the onion and then, when nearly cooked, toss them all together in newspaper and leave them to steam and finish cooking.

8 Sprinkle the breadcrumbs over the sauce.

9 Serve the calcots alongside the bowl of romesco. To eat (armed with plenty of napkins), peel away the black outer layer of the calcots (I like to leave a little on) and dip into the romesco sauce. Tip your head back and lower it in. Messy, simple and – importantly – delicious!