In praise of pink things

Let's get something clear. I do not like spring onions. I hate the way that hours after eating spring onion I can still taste spring onion. I will expend a decent amount of energy extracting spring onion from any salad including this evil alium.

In which case it was foolish to plant them in the garden, but the vegetable strips at my local garden shop were on three for one and I wanted the golden courgettes having failed to get seed in time. I must've wanted those stupid round carrots, too. Don't waste your time on round carrots my friends; they are merely foolishly short carrots with no point.

Anyway, spring onions. I don't like them, but I bought some. I may have been seduced by them being bright pink, a colour that I used not to realise was my favourite. I planted a few in a window box, and a few amongst the strawberries and lettuce (I love polyculture: thank you Alys Fowler and your endearingly tussled hair).

A couple of weeks ago we pulled one. Oh my. These spring onions are delicious. They taste sort of like a super-charged chive, but the taste does not linger. They grew brilliantly in a window box: better than the ones in the ground (my neighbour reports that his spring onions grow better in a pot too), and they are pink!


A note for other (shop bought) spring-onion haters: if you griddle them they go soft and sweet and do not repeat. I would go so far as to say that cooked that way they are actually nice.