Know your onions, as the cliché goes — and it’s valuable advice. Did you know, for instance, not to add salt to onions if you want them crisp and brown, as it draws out their water and prevents them from browning? For soft, white translucent onions, add salt when you begin cooking.

To know your onions is to know that these members of the lily family also vary greatly in strength of flavour and purpose.

Red onions have a discernibly milder flavour than the papery-skinned white or brown globe onion, and so can be used for salads or antipasti and for dishes in which onions are briefly cooked. There are also sweet yellow onions with a slightly flattened bulb and a more delicate flavour, and small, white pickling onions, picked early in the season.

The russet-coloured shallot has a lovely onion-garlic flavour with more sweetness and less sting, so is ideal for vinaigrettes, salads and fast-cooked dishes. Look out also for my new kitchen friend, the banana shallot, an elegantly elongated onion that is easy to peel and slice.

Then there are the long onions, such as delicate leeks (the smaller the better), the true spring or salad onions, mildly flavoured for salads, and the fragrant green-stemmed spring onions primarily used in South-East Asian cooking. Get to know them, and you’ll use them in un-Oriental ways as well — by adding them raw to salads and sandwiches, serving them with eggs and potatoes as you would chives, and wilting them to serve as a hot vegetable.

To know onions, after all, is to love them.

www.jilldupleix.com

Spring onion cakes
Makes 10. Takes 1 hour.

Also known as shallot pancakes, these northern Chinese appetisers are always popular. The crisp golden spirals of pastry enclose fragrant spring onion greens (the best part of the spring onion) so that every bite brings a soft, oniony tang.

225g plain flour
150ml cold water
2tbsp sesame oil
1tsp sea salt
5tbsp finely chopped spring onion greens
3tbsp vegetable oil for frying
Soy sauce for dipping

Sift the flour into a bowl and add the cold water. Quickly work them together, adding a little more water if it’s too dry, and more flour if it’s too wet.

Knead for three minutes, then cover with a damp cloth and leave for 30 minutes. On a lightly floured board, roll the dough into a sausage shape and cut into ten pieces.

Roll each piece into a long rectangle, brush lightly with sesame oil and sprinkle generously with sea salt and spring onion greens.

Roll the pastry lengthways into a long cigar, encasing the spring onions, then pinch the ends. Twist the cigar round into a flat spiral shape. Gently roll the spiral flat with a rolling pin. Continue until all ten are done.

Heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and cook one or two cakes at a time for three minutes, turning once, shaking the pan gently. Remove, drain and keep warm while cooking the rest. Cut in half or quarters and serve hot, with soy sauce for dipping.

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