One Year: An Onion Party
TOP turn one year old, and I burnt the cake; a cake recipe, and some thoughts on creativity
The onion family, or genus Allium, is part of the lily family and gathers over 500 species. The family is renowned for its strong flavour and smell: the onion soaks sulfur from the soil to discourage animals from eating it, or to make cooks cry for chopping it. I read in McGee’s Food & Drink encyclopaedia that ‘the word “onion” comes from the Latin for “one”, “oneness”, “unity”, and was the name given by Roman farmers to a variety of onion (cepa) that grew singly, without forming multiple bulbs as garlic and shallots do.’
The common onion is the most widely cultivated species of the genus Allium. It’s a watchful, solitary bulb that preserves well, and its layers and tear-inducing nature have inspired numerous, questionable wordplays and idioms. My superstitious roots would recommend that you place an onion on your windowsill to keep evil spirits away. The farmer’s proverb goes:
Onion skins very thin, mild winter coming in
Onion skins thick and tough, coming winter cold and rough
Onions enhance flavours or add texture to a dish, cooking methods affect its flavours; an onion soup, a pissaladière, caramelised onions pasta, pickled onions; The Onion Papers turn one year old on 1st September 2023!
A year ago, I caught a spider. I’ve been writing in praise of eating in bed and I’ve found tokens of time. I thought about silence, I stopped cooking. I often speak about language, and this one was for my mother’s tongue. I discovered Pantelleria and I also took you to Vendée, Livorno, or foraging.
I love it here.
Food interests me – its taste and texture keep me alert, and its complexities fuel me with curiosity. It’s a looking glass and when I research food systems, I challenge my ideas and perception of the world around me. Writing is when I feel happiest and most creative, (re)building worlds. My Onion Papers are an exercise to explore cooking as storytelling, to approach food and writing the way tones level a voice with one’s emotions.
The agenda for The Onion Papers is intuitive – agglomerations and digressions, a fluid approach to language and ideas I can entertain safely in the kitchen – and I don’t want this to change. I comprehend ‘intuition’, an instinctive knowledge, as a creative process and as a valid response to life events. So far 2023 has been a whirlwind of physical and mental changes, and writing to you intuitively has been comforting and scary. I’ve tried to stay as truthful as I can be and, to that extent, instinctive knowledge has helped me to reclaim decision-making amongst my desire to please and to fit, despite my fears and insecurities. I’ve learnt that my creativity gravitates around my body: to write and to cook is physical, but a practice through which I get to redefine what physicality means to me.
On creative and writing processes, I’m a huge fan of
, in which Saunders wrote a while ago: ‘At this point in my life and career, the real goal for me is to continue to be intense.’ I love this sentence so much that I pinned it on the wall in front of my desk, along with Marguerite Duras on the concept of non-writing: ‘a simple language without a grammar. A form of writing consisting only of words.’So, thank you for being here and for engaging with my work. As TOP enter their second year, I intend to keep dancing in kitchens and writing with an accent; to be intense, still. This is how much I can tell you at this stage, along with an invitation to be curious with me.
In the meantime, I couldn’t throw The Onion Papers a birthday party without a cake and the story behind its recipe.
This summer has been perked by some great desserts, from Irene and Matt’s grapefruit birthday cake to a boozamisù for some of my closest and oldest friends. To develop recipes for a special occasion, or with a person in mind, draws parallels with the process of drafting a short story or a novel – it’s apprehensive and dashing. This is fieldwork during which the author must go outside of their comfort zone to explore someone else’s reality, but one step too far out and the result could be unreal/inedible. Baking, like people, can be so unforgiving and forgiving at the same time.
Last week, my friends G. and M. came for dinner. I was excited because Giulia has a sweet tooth, and I spent a few hours plotting a cake. It was going to be flourless orange and almond, but my heart wasn’t quite set on the icing yet. So far so good, until Ludo made me a spritz and I got distracted with making pasta. And I burnt the cake.
The top looks burnt, but it doesn’t smell burnt; the bottom is crumbling. We can deal with the aesthetics retrospectively, and the first step is to let the cake cool down.
Some good news: we’ve some whippable creamy oat in the fridge. Ludo makes another spritz; we eye one another. Now, if you add a few (three) tablespoons of Select to your whipped cream, you’ll obtain a pink coat to hide your bruised cake underneath – and the Venetian aperitif brings a great touch of bitterness to the cake.
Recipe for TOP’s flourless orange and almond party cake, with a Select icing:
for the cake
250g ground almond
1 tsp baking powder
5 eggs, yolk and white separated for each
100g caster sugar
2 oranges, zest and 100ml of their juice
60 ml almond milk
A pinch of salt
Preheat the oven to 180C fan.
In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks and sugar until you’ll obtain a clear and homogeneous mixture. Add the orange zest, juice, milk, baking powder, and a pinch of salt. Mix well. Incorporate the ground almond, mixing continuously.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until they reach a soft peak. Fold into the cake batter, working slowly from bottom to top. Proceed with a wooden spoon: you’re working to give your cake some breathing space, a texture.
Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on your oven. Not to self: keep an eye on it.
for the Select* whipped cream
1 portion of whippable creamy oat, or your preferred alternative
3 tbsps of Select
In a bowl and with the help of an electric whisk, mix until you’ll obtain a whipped cream. Store in the fridge so the cream gains in consistence.
When it’s time to dress the cake, cover it with a generous layer of whipped cream.
*If Select isn’t your thing, you can swap it for your favourite. I hesitated with Rose water.
I’m happy this dessert-gone-wrong-turned-superb is TOP birthday cake. With the endeavour of publishing works often comes a pressurising quest for a state of perfection. Don’t get me wrong, I rate quality highly and I’d never want to take your mailbox for granted, but this recipe is a good reminder that the draft stage of a project – ‘brouillon’ is one of my favourite words in French – is necessary to create with an open-mind; to progress, to welcome edits and to perceive the other layers of something that was always there. That is to say, I’m excited for another year of drafting and learning with you.
A good birthday present for these onions is to give them a subscribe or to share them with a friend, or a few.
A tantôt, gratefully,
Margaux
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If you’re new around here, you can read more about me. Another way to support my work is to buy a copy of my debut novel, The Yellow Kitchen. You can find the paperback edition at your favourite bookshop, or on the Onion Papers affiliated shop.
that Duras quote! 🩵