Vidalia

Following recipes is not all upside. I wish it were. I want them all to work because I am hungry, do not care to waste, and would not have undertaken if I did not intend to finish and succeed. That said, it is back to the Lipton french onion dip for me.
I happen to love that dip, dessicated onions and all. And I like it far more that my recent foray into Deviled Vidalia Dip or at least the dip produced by the recipe in Jean Anderson's, A Love Affair with Southern Cooking.

I just do not believe dip should be cloyingly sweet such as this. Even though one begins with a huge pile of sliced onions, only half of which are Vidalia (obviously to cut the sweetness off at the knees), after the hour long carmelization process (which really pulls the sweetness to the fore of the Vidalia), all you taste is the sweet note of the Vidalia and the sharper balancing onion is no longer apparent. The addition of mustard and sweet vinegars does not help sensation of tooth-rotting sweetness.

In order to make the dip consumable, I made it into canapes and hit them, alternately, with hot sauce or a sprinkle of hot paprika. They made the dip bearable and the photos possible.

I did get a great lesson in patience out of the creation of this dip, however. This was my onion pile when I began.



They are sauteed slowly, persistently. One hour later, this is what I had.



They helped to make these photogenic, candy-like canapes. All was not lost.