Onion goo

You know how sometimes you go somewhere new, and unexpectedly you end up eating something that blows your mind?  And then you spend months, even years, coming back to that memory, in odd moments, in the shower or on the bus?  And then you think, "God, I have to go on a desperate search for this thing RIGHT. NOW." but you can't find it anywhere?  And then you start wondering if it'd even be as good as you remembered, because time and memory have a tendency to drop rose-tinted veils over your senses?  And so this mythical dish lives on in your mind, floating in and out of your consciousness, causing moments of wistfulness for years on end?

Yeah.

This is the story of Zoe and the "onion goo."  Spoiler alert: it has a happy ending.

Back when I first moved home from Amherst, the deYoung Museum in San Francisco was hosting the traveling King Tut exhibit.  A friend and I bought tickets for a Friday evening toward the end of summer, and discovered that on Friday evenings toward the end of summer, the museum also has live jazz performances and a special tasting menu in the cafe.

Budget-conscious grads that we were, we decided to share three of the haute-cuisine-sounding "small plates," two of which were very tasty and I don't remember them at all.  The third arrived at our table, artfully (ha) arranged on a fancy white platter: a few slices of toasted French bread, a hunk of Brie, and a dollop of something the menu called "onion goo."  We put the Brie on the bread, the "goo" on the Brie, and bit.

I don't want to say that the heavens opened up and angels sang, but that's very nearly what happened.  It was a stunning mouthful: the "goo," obviously a jam of some sort, had a sweet-tangy pungency that melded seamlessly with the salty, fatty cheese and the crisp bread.  We left the museum still talking about it; over the next few months, I developed a quiet obsession.

Of course, when I mentioned onion jam, nobody really got what I was talking about.  People seemed rightfully skeptical of what seemed a shameless lily-gilding ploy.  Brie and crusty bread is heavenly on its own; why mess with it?  But I couldn't let go.  It nagged at me, this "onion goo," taunting me with its ambiguous name and mysterious components.  I started looking up recipes for onion jam, which all seemed to call for unseemly ingredients like grenadine and insisted you had to cook it for hours and refrigerate it in sterilized jars.  That just couldn't be right, I thought.  It seemed like a lost cause, or at least a hopelessly complicated one.

Cut to: New Year's Eve, 2010.  Audrey Kim, my roommate and fellow Amherst '09er, and I were planning a party for a few of our friends.  Of course, any self-respecting Amherst party needs a cheese platter.  Which meant baguettes and Brie.  I started reminiscing about "onion goo," which led to one final Google search, which led me to this recipe.  The photo looked eerily like what I remembered from the deYoung cafe; the recipe promised a small batch, with no bizarre ingredients, a brief cooking time, and no need for jarring.  I bought onions, tinkered with the recipe a bit to suit my preferences, and whipped up a batch.

It was just as good as I'd remembered.  In fact, it was so good I didn't get a chance to take more than one photo.  We had enough food at the party to cover two tables--including three different types of cheese!--and yet the jam, cheese, and bread disappeared in record time.  My quest was fulfilled, and I went to bed a happy, tipsy, onion-filled camper.

(TL;DR version: This stuff is incredible.  Try it.)

Onion Jam (makes about 1 cup)
2 sweet yellow onions
Olive oil for sauteing
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar (approximately)
1/3 cup red wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar (approximately)
Salt and pepper to taste (some rosemary or thyme might be good, but I didn't have any)

Cut onions in half, peel, and slice them as thin as you possibly can.  Heat olive oil over medium heat in a saucepan, then add onions.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions cook down into mush and start to turn golden, about 15-20 minutes.  Add brown sugar, vinegars, salt and pepper, and stir until everything is combined.  Reduce heat to low and simmer until the mixture gets thick and jammy, about 10 minutes.  Let it come to room temperature before serving.