Mexican spring onions blackened whole on the comal and dressed with lime, salt, and chilli
Origin: Mexico
From the journey of Spring Onion.
Every plate of carne asada in Mexico arrives with these, and no taquería worth the name grills a steak without a handful of them on the metal alongside. Cebollitas de cambray are spring onions pulled with a small round bulb still on, somewhere between a British spring onion and a very young bulb onion. They are not a garnish and not a salad: they are cooked whole as a vegetable course, laid straight on the comal or over the coals, and left until the outsides blacken and the layers within give way completely. What fire does to a young onion is worth stating plainly, because it is the reason two unconnected cuisines built festivals around it. Raw onion is sharp because of volatile sulphur compounds; heat destroys those and simultaneously converts the plant's stored fructans into simple sugars. A blackened cebollita is sweet in a way that has nothing to do with the addition of sugar, and the charred outer layer contributes bitterness that keeps the sweetness in check. The dressing is minimal and non-negotiable: lime, salt, and usually chilli. Along the northern border and in Sonora a splash of soy sauce or Maggi seasoning is standard, a habit picked up from Chinese-Mexican cooking in the border states, and it is now traditional in its own right. The parallel with the Catalan calçotada is exact and entirely independent. Same plant, same treatment, same eating with the fingers, two continents, no contact.
Cebollitas de cambray, sold at Latin American grocers, have a small round bulb and are what the dish is designed around. Fat spring onions work; slender ones burn through before the bulb softens. The soy or Maggi is genuinely traditional in northern Mexico and worth trying even though it looks incongruous. Its origin is the Chinese-Mexican cooking of Mexicali and the border states. Tajín, the chilli-lime-salt seasoning, is the easy shortcut and gives all three dressing elements at once. Serve alongside carne asada, grilled nopales, and roasted whole chillies. The onions, chillies, and meat coming off the same fire onto the same plate is the standard Mexican grill. Leftovers chopped into a quesadilla the next day are excellent.
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