Red Onion Cob

 Saturday morning, and I'll be honest, after a run of night shifts I'd genuinely lost track of what day it was until Sara reminded me, twice, the second time with a look that suggested I should perhaps stop asking. Working evenings through to the early hours does strange things to a man's grip on the calendar. Still, the onions didn't care what day it was. They'd been sat curing away happily on the old fridge shelf in the greenhouse since Iris and I lifted them, tops gone papery, skins gone that deep, glossy red that always makes me a bit smug when I walk past, and it was high time we got them properly put away rather than just admired.

There's a nice bit of symmetry to it, when you think about it. You spend months coaxing a crop out of the ground, fussing over it, worrying about it, then a few short weeks later you're stood in the kitchen eating the thing on a slice of bread like it's the most normal transaction in the world. Plot to plate, as the young ones say. I don't say it, obviously. I'm sixty. But I understand the sentiment.

Bunches, Bags, and a Beam Full of Onions

Once an onion's properly cured, meaning the neck's gone dry and papery and it rustles rather than squeaks when you handle it, it's ready for its winter quarters. We do this two ways, and both are about as frugal as gardening gets, which I know pleases a fair few of you as much as it pleases me.

The bulk of the crop goes into old net bags, the sort your veg comes in from the shop, or the mesh bags oranges turn up in at Christmas. We never bin a single one. Wash them out, let them dry, and they're standing by ready for exactly this job. Fill a bag loosely, don't cram it, onions like a bit of breathing room same as the rest of us, tie the top off, and hang the lot from a beam in the shed. Iris has become quite the expert at this bit, and there's something properly satisfying about a row of them swinging gently every time the shed door opens, like the world's least sophisticated wind chime.

The second method is the one that earns its keep on the beauty front as much as the practical one. Take your best necked onions, the ones with nice long tops still attached, and plait them together into a proper bunch, working three tops at a time the way you'd plait hair, if you'd ever successfully plaited anyone's hair, which in my case remains a closed chapter. Add a new onion in every twist or two as you go down the rope, finish with a loop, and you've got yourself a proper old-fashioned onion string fit for hanging by the back door or, if you're feeling flash, right there in the kitchen. It costs nothing but ten minutes and a bit of patience, keeps beautifully, and looks the sort of rustic that people pay good money for in farmhouse catalogues. We just grew ours.

Whichever method you use, keep them somewhere cool, dark, and airy, not the airing cupboard, whatever anyone tells you, and have a rummage through every few weeks. The moment you spot one going soft or throwing up a green shoot, that's the one you use first. Onions are patient, but they're not that patient.

Sara's Nemesis: The Old Polycarbonate Greenhouse

While all that onion admin was going on , Sara and I had a rather less delicate job waiting for us back at home: taking down our old polycarbonate greenhouse, which had gone from "faithful old friend" to "structural hazard" somewhere over the last winter without either of us quite noticing.

If you've never wrestled with ageing polycarbonate, let me save you the trouble of finding out the hard way. It goes yellow with age, goes brittle with age, and develops an absolute personal vendetta against whoever's holding it at the time, usually me. Every panel we freed came away with a crack of protest loud enough to have next door's dog barking, and at least twice a gust caught a sheet like a sail and very nearly had Sara and I performing an unplanned duet across the lawn. I don't bend as easily as I used to, and polycarbonate doesn't bend at all once it's past its best, so between the pair of us it was a fairly comic sight, I imagine, from anyone watching over the fence.

Sara, to her enormous credit, ran the whole operation like a woman who's done this sort of thing before, which she has, more times than either of us cares to add up. "Hold there. No, there. SIMON. There." I held there. We got it down in the end, panel by stubborn panel, frame folded up and stacked ready for the Hippo bag and stood there afterwards surveying a rather sad, bare patch of concrete where a greenhouse used to be. It's funny how much you don't notice something until it's gone. That greenhouse has started off more seedlings than I could count over the years, probably millions.

Colour That Didn't Get the Memo

Back up the plot, whatever's going on with the drought and the sulking sweetcorn, the flowers haven't had the memo that they're supposed to be struggling too. The dahlias are putting on a proper show at the minute, big blowsy heads of them nodding away by the shed, and there's a stand of calandula that seeded themselves in without so much as a by-your-leave and have made themselves entirely at home near the onion bed. Iris had the camera out again, catching the light coming low and gold through the petals in that way she seems to manage without even trying, while I stood there getting the angle wrong as usual. If you fancy a lovely, low-effort splash of colour yourself, calandula are about as forgiving as it gets, scatter the seed and mostly leave them to it.

From Plot to Plate: The Cheese and Onion Cob

Right then, the bit some of you have been waiting for. After all that curing, plaiting, and greenhouse wrestling, here's how this family actually eats a red onion, and it is not remotely fancy.

A proper cheese and onion cob. That's it. That's the recipe, and I will die on this hill.

Take one of my Saturday cobs, still faintly warm if you've timed it right, split it, and butter it properly, right to the edges, none of this half-hearted dabbing. Layer on a good sharp mature cheese, thick, don't be shy, and top it with red onion sliced thin as you can manage, straight off the string by the back door. That's the whole job. No dressing, no fuss, just good bread, good cheese, and an onion so fresh it's practically still got soil on its conscience. Eaten sitting on an upturned bucket after a morning's graft, with the robin having a nosy from the fence, it is genuinely one of life's finer moments, and I don't say that lightly.

If you want to make the crop stretch further into winter, a simple red onion chutney is the other favourite in this house, sweet, sharp, and unbeatable with a slice of strong cheddar on a cold afternoon. Sara's rather better at the exact proportions than I am, and she's covered proper preserving recipes like it on her own blog if you fancy a look, well worth a rummage through.

A Question For You

So there it is, start to finish, plot to plate, with a bit of greenhouse demolition thrown in for good measure because that's just how our weeks tend to go.

I'd love to know, ladies especially, since I know quite a few of you read this with a brew on and muddy boots by the door same as me: what's your family's simplest, most unfancy way of using up a glut of homegrown onions? Is there a dish in your house that everyone secretly loves but nobody would call impressive enough to put in a magazine? I've a feeling the best ones never are.

Happy growing, everyone. See you on the plot.