Quick Lesson: How to Dice an Onion

Every recipe you see likely has some variation of “1 onion – medium dice,” or “minced shallot,” or “chopped yellow onion.” Aromatics vegetables pretty much universal in the cooking world, with most cultural cuisines having some variation on the same theme: French Mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery), Spanish Sofrito (onion, garlic, tomato), and even the many Asian dishes that use scallion, garlic and ginger as the backbone.

So how do you cut an onion so you a) end up with pieces of relatively equal size, b) break it down quickly, and c) walk away with all ten fingers. Try this:

Start by slicing the not-root end off the onion (I used a shallot to demonstrate because I needed shallots), and peeling the thick skin off with a paring knife (or your fingers…).

If you’re chopping an onion, cut it in half lengthwise (through the root tuft) and lay each half down on the flat side; if you’re using a shallot, lay it on its flattest edge. (This is the #1 rule of cutting things – Flat side down; No flat side? Make one!)

Hold the onion firmly with your left hand (hint: to get a feel for the proper hand position, try to pick a quarter up off the counter).

Now make slices lengthwise almost all the way through to the root end, but leaving just a little onion uncut (to hold it all together so you don’t have to). The width of these slices is the eventual size of your dice – if you want a small dice, cut a lot of slices.

Now comes a tricky part: Turn your knife on it’s side and, keeping your knife parallel to the cutting board, slice through the meat of the onion, still slicing toward to root end (also, notably, toward your hand).

Again – these cuts determine the eventual size of your dice, so try to cut them about the same size as your first slices. (Also – don’t cut your finger tips off. Use a smooth controlled sawing motion with the knife and take your time.)

Now simply cut even slices off the end of the onion, and you’ll turn out perfectly even dices, and look like a semi-pro doing it.

(If you want to be a real pro, watch a few Jacques Pepín clips where he does this to individual cloves of garlic using a crazy-sharp paring knife – while talking to the camera! – faster than I can even think. That’s a pro.)

East End Easter Seafood Stew

Erin and I were lucky enough to spend this Easter weekend out in Sag Harbor
on Long Island with our families – including our 4-week-old nephew, Kieran!

Sag is a special place for Erin’s family – they’ve been coming out for beach week in groups of 100+ for going on 56 years (no joke). And it’s a very special place for us because we got married out there a couple years ago (awwwww). It really is a beautiful place.

But beyond the mansions and white parties of the Hamptons, the East End of Long Island has a rich history of farms and fisheries, growing, catching, raising and cultivating an amazingly diverse bounty of veggies and seafood. From summer months into the fall, we have our pick of green grocers, farm-stands and hand-lettered signs by the roadside calling out “Basil $1,” indicating a particularly abundant backyard garden.

For Easter this year, we all agreed (some more reluctantly than others) on a Latin American theme – My brother-in-law Matt is 1/4 Mexican (his dad George is 1/2), Erin lived in Peru for two summers, and her twin sister Kerry and I lived in Ecuador for some time. There’d be mashed black beans and rice with toasted garlic (George), roast Pork Perníl (Matt), avocado “ceviche” (Mom), and some kind of fish stew (Me and Erin).

We’ve been learning more and more about the cycles of the Long Island seafood harvest in the last year or so – Scallops popping to the surface in March, Cod coming close to shore in May, Steamer clams getting plump in August, Stripers running off Montauk in October (which we served at our wedding – grilled on a cedar plank and topped with chimichurri…winners!).

The Seafood Shop (no, really, that’s what it’s called) had an unreal selection of fresh, local everything for our stew, so we bought a filet of flaky cod, a couple sides of buttery monkfish, a couple dozen tiny bay scallops, an a huge sack of clams and mussels. Amazing stuff!

For our stew, I loosely followed followed a Bittman recipe for bouillabaisse, adding a couple steps on the way. This will easily serve 12 as an appetizer, and could serve 6-8 as a hearty dinner portion. This is what it’ll look like when you’re done – just be patient and you’ll get there in about 45-55 minutes.

This is a recipe where you’ll be happy you got some big prep out of the way early. So get a nice medium dice going on a small (maybe baseball-sized) yellow onion, two stalks of celery, and two carrots. I also used 4 smallish leeks in this recipe, which need to be sliced in half lengthwise and rinsed well in a bowl of cold water – sort of fan the layers out, but keep the stalk intact for thin slicing.

Now that your mirepoix is ready to go, put a healthy pour of olive oil in a large, deep pot. Get that nice and hot over medium heat, and add all the chopped veggies in along with 2-3 tbsp of butter and a big pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper. After about 7-10 minutes of softening (not browning!), add in about a cup of white wine and 1 tbsp of fennel seeds (from the spice aisle – I didn’t have any on hand either).

After the wine has reduced a bit – say 5 more minutes or so – add in a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes, 3 cups of hot water, 2 cloves of smashed and chopped garlic and a teaspoon or more of cayenne or red pepper flakes. Boil for 10-15 minutes, or until it starts to look like a “sauce” and not a “soup.” (I was skeptical, but trust me – all of a sudden it looked like “sauce.”)

Now add in another 1/2 cup of white wine and the zest of one orange (hint: use a vegetable peeler to strip the zest from the orange, then slice thinly – you want only orange, none of the white pith). Let that cook for another 5 minutes or so.

Then, add in whatever fish you have (you’ll want about 2 lbs total) and raise the heat. When it begins to boil, reduce the heat to medium‐low and cook until the fish is getting tender and flaky, say 10 minutes or so. Then add the clams, mussels, scallops, or whatever other bivalves you have and repeat what you did for the fish, cooking for about another 10 minutes.

Stir in another clove of crushed garlic and cook for one more minute before serving it up hot and steamy and amazingly tasty.

Oh – and ¡Feliz Pascua!