Caramelized White Onion and Fresh Heirloom Garlic

[UncleVinny]

I love caramelized onion (white, red, or yellow) with shaved garlic cloves from fresh bulbs outta Gilroy CA.

I use a high quality olive oil, and I researched CA olive oils. CA Olive Ranch is about the best domestic oil to be found. Whatever oil you decide on be cautious ---and they all pretty much claim 100% Olive Oil on the label, BUT, if you check out the ingredients lots of oils touted as "100% Olive" are misleading...sure, the olive oil in the bottle is 100% Olive Oil, but many sold as such have other oils mixed in with the honest to God, 100% Olive Oil.

Really. And they get away with it.

I get Heirloom Garlic from Christopher Ranch in N. CA., I buy it on line a couple pounds of bulbs at a time.

Caramelized onion/garlic slow cooked in my olive oil with NO salt probably could make a cat turd palatable! Some folks use red wine or balsamic vinegar in the mix too, which works out pretty well flavor-wise, but I like to keep it simple.

Those onions are good on pretty much anything, even a baked potato, and just straight up onions only is O.K. too!

U.V.

 

[JonSR77]

I love caramelized onion (white, red, or yellow) with shaved garlic cloves from fresh bulbs outta Gilroy CA.

I use a high quality olive oil, and I researched CA olive oils. CA Olive Ranch is about the best domestic oil to be found. Whatever oil you decide on be cautious ---and they all pretty much claim 100% Olive Oil on the label, BUT, if you check out the ingredients lots of oils touted as "100% Olive" are misleading...sure, the olive oil in the bottle is 100% Olive Oil, but many sold as such have other oils mixed in with the honest to God, 100% Olive Oil.

Really. And they get away with it.

I get Heirloom Garlic from Christopher Ranch in N. CA., I buy it on line a couple pounds of bulbs at a time.

Caramelized onion/garlic slow cooked in my olive oil with NO salt probably could make a cat turd palatable! Some folks use red wine or balsamic vinegar in the mix too, which works out pretty well flavor-wise, but I like to keep it simple.

Those onions are good on pretty much anything, even a baked potato, and just straight up onions only is O.K. too!

U.V.

Sounds really, really good.

You are like my friend Kathi...she tells me all the amazing cooking she is doing...while I am here eating a sandwich of stale bread and Spam...

 

[RadishRose]

I love caramelized onion (white, red, or yellow) with shaved garlic cloves from fresh bulbs outta Gilroy CA.

I use a high quality olive oil, and I researched CA olive oils. CA Olive Ranch is about the best domestic oil to be found. Whatever oil you decide on be cautious ---and they all pretty much claim 100% Olive Oil on the label, BUT, if you check out the ingredients lots of oils touted as "100% Olive" are misleading...sure, the olive oil in the bottle is 100% Olive Oil, but many sold as such have other oils mixed in with the honest to God, 100% Olive Oil.

Really. And they get away with it.

I get Heirloom Garlic from Christopher Ranch in N. CA., I buy it on line a couple pounds of bulbs at a time.

Caramelized onion/garlic slow cooked in my olive oil with NO salt probably could make a cat turd palatable! Some folks use red wine or balsamic vinegar in the mix too, which works out pretty well flavor-wise, but I like to keep it simple.

Those onions are good on pretty much anything, even a baked potato, and just straight up onions only is O.K. too!

U.V.

Oh, yum. Ya know, I have made this to add to sour cream for a dip for crudites a few times. Can't stop eating it. I only use fresh garlic but from the produce dept. I can't use up enough to warrant bulk online.

Have you ever made black garlic? I have not.

https://www.thespruceeats.com/black-garlic-4165384

 

[UncleVinny]

RR...tell ya what, if you are getting garlic bulbs with NO ROOTS any place you buy them, then you are getting Chinese grown garlic bulbs.

The Chinese have some pretty disgusting fertilizing techniques/habits; you may be aware? Leave it at that.

No roots, no buy! Garlic from off shore must have the roots removed, because the dirt attached to the roots may be contaminated with funky stuff.
U.S. grown dirt is jes' fine.

True story!

U.V.

 

[Jules]

It doesn’t take much fresh garlic to make a dish extra special so I don’t begrudge paying too much for it at a farmers market. One of these days I’m going to go to a garlic festival.

 

[JonSR77]

RR...tell ya what, if you are getting garlic bulbs with NO ROOTS any place you buy them, then you are getting Chinese grown garlic bulbs.

The Chinese have some pretty disgusting fertilizing techniques/habits; you may be aware? Leave it at that.

No roots, no buy! Garlic from off shore must have the roots removed, because the dirt attached to the roots may be contaminated with funky stuff.
U.S. grown dirt is jes' fine.

True story!

U.V.

Thanks for the heads up! I don't doubt you for a second. Love China, Chinese culture, ancient Chinese culture...but yeah, plenty of funky doings coming from over there....don't doubt you for a second. That melamine scandal, and the dry wall scandal...and on and on and on...

 

[Lee]

Sweet Vidalia onions are the best I find. Anything from China in the way of food never will find a place in my kitchen.

 

[UncleVinny]

Well Lee, different cultures usually have "different" ideas on lots of stuff, to include foods. And how fruit and vegetable foods are grown and harvested. Livestock is another story and I am not inclined at this early hour to discuss different cultures and livestock.

Yet...ONE anecdote I can share on pork is a must hear for all though:

I think I mentioned my buddy in Arizona who like myself was born in Philadelphia, yeah? His father was a Philly Cop, and back in his father's day (the 1940's and 1950's) cops in Philadelphia mostly walked "beats". As I related in another Post, my buddy was a "Mick" as was his dad, and the way my buddy told it, Philadelphia P.D. was comprised of a high percentage of Irish (Mick) officers.

His Cop Pop walked a beat in South Philly, right where he lived and my buddy had some of the best and funniest Philly Cop stories one could imagine, and he would regale all present with those tales in bars he and I would frequent up and down The Colorado River from Parker to Lake Havasu. There were a bunch of bars along along that stretch of river from Parker to the dam, and then on to Lake Havasu, doncha know.

One early afternoon we were at The P.I. (Petrified Inn) there at or by Cienega Springs. The proper name of the area where The P.I. sat was something like Lakeside or Lakeview? Which now reminds me that there was a little market on the quite narrow point of Hwy 95, on the AZ side of the Colorado River across from The P.I. I forget what that market was called though. It was kinda like a 7-11 type set up.

Many years later I was going through boxes of paperwork from AZ., And I found old bank records from a bank I had a checking acct. with in Parker, AZ.
Parker was downriver a few miles from Cienega Springs. In the piles of canceled checks from that period I found STACKS of
checks I had written to that little 7-11 sorta-like market for...pretty much ALL for $1.15.

That was the cost w/tax for a bottle of Annie Green Springs Plum Hollow Wine. Some days I would write 7 or 8 checks for that wine, that really wasn't wine. The sheer volume of that non-wine/wine I was drinking wasn't the issue. See, I would be running up and down The River in my V.W. Van with a bottle of that as company, and that was about the only place I could find it upriver from Parker that would let me write a $1.15 check that very often I found, had "bounced".

I wasn't working and my V.A. Check was my only income, so towards the end of a check period, times were hard! And those bounced checks took a pretty good chunk of my V.A. Check when it arrived and was deposited.

Anyways, so my pal and I are sitting in The P.I. swilling beer with a couple locals, and as usual in little honky tonk bars there was a BIG jar of pickled pig's feet on the shelf next to the cash register on the back mirrored wall.

One of the locals sitting with us calls the bartender over and asked for pickled pig's foot...which was brought to him on a little plate.

The local started gnawing on it and my buddy said...well I can't tell ya'll exactly what he said, so I won't. But he got off his stool, grabbed his beer and moved down the bar a'ways to another stool. From that seat he told us:

"When I was a kid we ate a lot of pig's feet, because all in all, we were very poor."

He went on:

"Towards the end of my dad's pay period each month is when the pig's feet would appear for dinner. I hate pig's feet, no matter how they are prepared. I guess they were the cheapest part of a pig?"

Then he said, and he always used these two words when something profound was to be shared:

"Fact is..."

"Every part of a pig is ate by poor folks, an' the ONLY thing poor folks haven't figgered out how to eat in the history of eating pigs
is...The Oink."

Trust me, after a few beers and you have mouthful of beer not quite swallowed, ya hear something like that, and it is going to clean out yer nose as it shoots out.

I have more C-River Bar Tales...another came to mind as I was writing the one above. Hang on, and if ya want it, FACT IS, I will share it...ask, and ye shall receive.

U.V.