This is a classic recipe from Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking. It’s a dish to make, she says, ‘when you have a glass of wine, red, white, rosé, sweet, dry or aromatic (ie some sort of vermouth) to spare’.

Serves 4-6

Preparation: 10 minutes
Cooking: 1½ hours

Ingredients
6-8 onions, all the same size
1 tbsp olive oil
small glass of wine
water
salt and pepper

Method
Peel the onions and put them with the olive oil in a thick pan in which they just fit comfortably. Start them off over a moderate flame and, when the oil is beginning to sizzle, pour in a small glass of wine. Let it boil fiercely for a few seconds. Add water to come half-way up the onions. Transfer to a low oven and cook uncovered for about 1½ hours. Put back on top of the stove over a fast flame for 2 or 3 minutes, until the wine sauce is thick and syrupy. Season. Serve as a separate vegetable, or round a roast.

Including – some will be pleased to hear – the last of the season’s jerusalem artichokes …

Small boxes will have:
potatoes (Benbole Farm)
* parsnips (Mark Norman)
onions (Restharrow Farm, Trebetherick)
curly kale (Restharrow Farm)
cauliflower (Restharrow Farm)
* jerusalem artichokes (Camel CSA)

Standard boxes will have the same including extra potatoes and onions plus
carrots (Restharrow Farm)
swede (Restharrow Farm)
* leeks (Jeremy Brown, St Kew Harvest)

* = grown to organic principles