Know Your Onions

While the key to the recipes in this book is speed, there is one ingredient that can’t be rushed: onions. When cooked until soft and golden, onions lose their sharp pungency and take on a mellow sweetness as their natural sugars caramelize in the pan. When building a dish like a curry, this base note of sweetness is one of the key building blocks and simply cannot be rushed.

When instructing people on how to cook onions, I always say that the colour to aim for is “hotdog brown” – as close as possible to the gold, silky tangle that sits astride the best kind of hotdog. The onions in the bottom bowl in the picture opposite are there to act as a visual guide of what you are aiming for. Cooked in oil, it takes around 8 minutes to get onions to this stage. Turn the heat up too high and cook them too fast and your onions will burn and become acrid, so take the time to cook them properly and know that it will be worth the effort.