Confit onion and garlic tart with anchovies and olives

A beautiful feast for a picnic or to eat inside wearing a cardigan if the weather is grim. And why onions deserve much more love.

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It keeps happening. There are particular ingredients, certain dishes, too, that I only cook once in a while, and Every Single Time I do I curse my foolishness for not making them more often. They’re like weird culinary blindspots. Moules marinières. Minestrone. Lamb chops. I prepare them, eat them, adore them, then promptly wipe them from my field of vision, and won’t think to make them again until something hoves into view to jolt my memory.

Onions are on that list, too. I don’t mean the alliums I reach for almost every night without thinking, finely chop and gently fry in oil with a pinch of salt - perhaps carrots and celery are in there, too, and garlic - to make the base of a stew or soup or sauce. No, the onions in my blind spot are the ones that are stars of a dish.

Perhaps it’s because onions are so abundant, cheap and readily available that we barely give them a second thought. We take them for granted, deploying them like salt or pepper or dried herbs. This is a pity because, actually, onions’ ubiquity means they’re perfectly placed to sit front and centre on the table, regularly. But how often do we say to ourselves, I’m going to cook a lovely dish of onions tonight?

My trigger for making today’s gorgeous onion-forward dish was a photo Jeremy Lee posted on Instagram this week of a pissaladière-style tart. A speciality of the Nice region of France, this is bliss in pastry form: puckered black olives and salty anchovy ribbons adorning a sticky sweet muddle of onions. In a pastry case. A slice demands a glass of something chilled to take the edge off each salty mouthful. And if the sun gods are smiling on you, pissaladière makes sublime picnic food.

Traditionally, according to Larousse, the tart is slicked with a glaze of pissalat before going into the oven, hence the name. It’s divine condiment comprising anchovy purée, cloves, thyme, bay leaf, pepper and olive oil. If you’ve recently been to the Med and popped a bottle in your luggage to bring home - good for you. But anchovies work absoloutely beautifully on pissaladière, particularly in my version, where I cook the onions very low and very slow in a buttery, herby, garlicky bath.

Controversially (to my mind, at least) Jane Grigson adds stewed tomato sauce to her onions before spreading them over the pastry base when making pissaladière. This sounds perfectly lovely, but reminiscent of pizza, which is not at all what I want from this dish. (As a minor concession to Grigson and - to be honest, for the sake of aethetics for my photo- I dotted my tart with a few halved cherry tomatoes. Without them, it looked like a brown unappetising blob, but do leave them off if they offend).

The stars of the show in this week’s recipe are shallots, those diminutive onions that grow in clusters. Their name derives from Ascalon, a port in territory that’s now Israel, where exceptional varieties have thrived for centuries, according to Grigson. Of course, they’re also famously cultivated in France, and inextricably linked to the cuisine and wines of Bordeaux (Beef Bourguignon) and also used in various sauces like bordelaise.

Making this dish does involve a good deal of peeling shallots, which is a little finnicky, because they’re small and sometimes the skin doesn’t feel like budging. But teasing away the papery outer layer to expose the gleaming inner surface (where, perhaps you will find diddy twin or triplet shallots inside) is very pleasing. And my method does not require you to slice the shallots or stand at the hob frying them. So you’re winning.

To the onion doubters, my husband initially raised an eyebrow at the prospect of me serving this tart for dinner. Onions simply did not appeal to him and he does not share my love affair with anchivies. But once the smell of onions slowly stewing wafted up the stairs to his study, he changed his mind. The compound that makes onions harsh and pungent when raw, transforms into something completely different when cooked. The new compound tastes deeply savoury, like meat broth, and explains why onions provide that vital flavour foundation that makes so many dishes delicious. 

Needless to say, we both hoovered up the tart. And I now have a Post It note on my desk that simply reads: onions.