the chef puts sugar in his onion jam

my good friend patrick, an avid foodie, took me to dinner last week at a place on melrose called taste. at first we thought of going to the great luques next door, but luques was nearly empty & rather sad looking. taste was hopping & anyway, we wanted to try something new.

we sat outside on the patio which was pretty & inviting. the waitress was friendly & helpful without dominating our brief but important relationship, which we appreciated. i must say at the outset the food was good & the portions huge. my glass of merlot was at least double a normal portion. this is not a complaint; i liked the wine; it didn't sting the inside of my mouth, which i hate, but there was so much of it that i got drunk from one glass.

yes, i could have stopped before i was done but i'm not like that.

as it was about 10 pm i had already had my dinner, but couldn't resist ordering crab cakes from the appetizer menu. patrick was starving & went for it, ordering a 1st. course & a 2nd. course, & looking dangerously like he might even order dessert.

we asked for bread but they were out of bread. what could we devour while waiting for our food?

fortunately there was a group of skinny, pretty, animated young blonde-haired girls wearing shockingly short skirts for patrick to ogle & comment upon, which helped pass the time. next to us a table-full of young handsome men with short hair and stylish clothes kept up a lively conversation & from time to time burst into hysterical laughter. a celebrity anchorman stood outside on the street in the valet parking area shouting into his cell phone about something terribly important. new customers arrived & went inside the restaurant.

time passed & soon two thick juicy crab cakes were set before me; they were fairly good except they were made with canned crab. yet they were tasty & there was a nice pile of fresh green leaves in a tangy sauce on the side. by this time i had consumed about half my wine & was feeling pretty perky; i was not going to crab over the crab. while i nibbled patrick polished off his starter: beet salad; a humongous portion with mounds of both red & golden beets, two big rounds of fried goat cheese, & a big splash of nicely dressed salad with bits of orange segments.

for his main course patrick ordered a kobe burger (yes, they had buns), which came with, among other things, onion jam, which i had to taste since it's one of my own personal specialties. actually, i call it onion butter, but i won't split hairs over the name; it's the same thing. but horror of horrors, i detected the taste of sugar in taste's onion jam, & being of a feisty nature i could not let it go.

i admit, too, i wanted to show off my fine, sensitive palate & impress patrick with it.

when the waitress showed up to ask if everything was okay, i said yes, but -- in my sweetest voice -- i'm interested to know if the chef puts sugar in his onion jam. she seemed to like my question & went straight to the kitchen to find out. when she returned she told me yes, the chef puts sugar in his onion jam.

the chef puts sugar in his onion jam!!!

i raised my eyebrows so high my double chin disappeared. really? i said, sounding like a perfectly arrogant asshole. patrick, who knows me well, laughed. he knew what was coming.

and he was right. it was at that moment that the idea for this blog was born. i decided to dig out my recipe for onion butter which was originally printed in the west hollywood weekly (now defunct), where i wrote a regular column entitled, confessions of a macroneurotic, and post it on the world wide web, where no one will ever read it, but one can always hope.

in those days i aspired to be the mfk fisher on the art of healthy eating. i still do...

and so, i herewith reprint the original article because i still like it & believe the recipe is pretty terrific. i wish the chef at taste would read this & give it a try.

i know, i know, it takes a long time to prepare, about 6 hours, at least, but he could delegate the work to one of his assistants. isn't that why they employ so many workers in a professional kitchen?

p.s. at the end of our delicious meal patrick was satiated & skipped dessert.

the west hollywood weekly article will follow - as soon as i find it. patience please...