The incredible Cinque Cipolla, the Five Onion Burger.

I don't know quite how to talk about this one.  It may sound like ostentatious crowing- in a 'been there, done that' kind of way. Or maybe a cry for help. Perhaps I need to sit in a support group and dribble out bitter tears of hope. I couldn't help it, I'll say. It was meant to happen.

Onion, burger. Onion. Burger. Onion, burger, onion, burger. They are in love, these two. They can't help themselves. But I have always been left disappointed. Never enough drama, never enough bite. Never enough to really kick the senses. The Steakhouse Angus promised so much, and delivered so little. I nearly wept. Where can I find a sense of the real onion taste.

It did take some time. It takes some time to crisp up onions. It takes some time to bake a bun worthy of a meat.  It was meant to be the Quattro Cipolla, in memory of my student days forking down platefuls of Quattro Formaggi pasta in the basement of Pollo, for £3 a pop. Except I couldn't quite stop. I saw Daniel Clifford, the two star chef and three star Cambridge droner, making burnt onion powder and I was hooked, and it became the Cinque Cipolla burger.

For the record, here's a breakdown:

Onion 1: Raw, millimetre-sliced.  Soaked in sugar water for a while, to balance the pungency.

Onion 2: Slowly stewed, sweet and soft. Sliced both ways for textural complexity.

Onion 3: Crispy onion. Crisped for hours in a low oven until - well, crispy.

Onion 4: The obligatory onion ring. Freshly deep-fried in a beer batter.

Onion 5: Clifford's burnt onion powder. Sprinkled as a condiment. Ask him if you want to know how.

Onions are very different. Whichever way you cook them creates something new - you can never become bored. So the Cinque Cipolla isn't an exercise in oniony tedium, it is an explosion of intermingling tastes and textures.


All of this, laid on a slab of meat. 'What did you use to bind the meat', I was asked. 'My fist', I replied. There is no need to bind a burger, simply add a hint of seasoning (pepper and grated onion, of course). A pinch of salt, added early, will assist the bind so you can ease off on the fisting for a looser, more airy meat. It helps avoid you being left with a rubbery puck.

Add the obligatory components - the bun must be sesame-seeded, steamed for softness and grilled for crunch. Lettuce - iceberg, tomato, and cheese (Swiss, of course). Too much.  Yes, it is too much. I had to soften the blow with a hot spiced onion relish. That doesn't count in the numerics, of course - it's just a relish.

In a jam!

Jam really is not my thing. Of all the preserves it offers the least process - you whack it in a jar, you eat it, you're done. It lacks the gravitas of a 'lade and the whimsy of a jelly. It's just fruit, innit. However, when I saw a double-deal on slightly done-in strawberries at the greengrocers, I had no choice. Preserves are, after all, about making the best of short-lived stock, and those bruised berries were flying off the stall.

Jam making is all about pectin.  It's the magic ingredient, the chemical that bonds with the sugar to make jam set. The dirty secret of jamming is that many fruits are pectin-deficient - the cheats will set-to with jam sugar (added pectin) or pectin (added). This will not do.

I've known a long time that strawberries are one of those pectin-deficient fruit, and yet strawberry is a classic jam. A brief scour through some uncertified recipes suggested it may - just may - set with a dash of lemon juice. I was sceptical, but less energised about a trip to a shop than I was about the jam.

Allow the berries to languish in sugar for some time. This has the miraculous effect of drawing out liquid from the berries to create a bright, sweet fruit liquor. Add the juice of a lemon and boil until set. Or not. I was left with some magnificent looking jars of fruit syrup, which languished on the counter until I could decide what to do.

I could have gone out and bought some pectin. That would have done. But I didn't. That would have been cheating.

Pectin can instead be extracted - apples are a good source, as is the pith of a lemon. No simple logic could explain how to mix an apple source with extant strawberry stew, so I considered the lemon. I would need six of them to rescue my jam. That would be taking the pith, surely - what a poor use of lemons.

Preservation saved the day. I had already dwelt long on the notion of the curd - and lemon curd uses everything but the pith. It's the one part too nasty.

The curd is the most indulgent of preserves. Whereas most are preserved by sugar, or vinegar, the curd consists primarily of butter and egg. It's a meal in a can, almost as balanced as a Dunn's River Nurishment.  It's also a joy to make. Somewhat weird, somewhat therapeutic, with a faint backnote of unease. One stir too far and your curd is curdled.

Meanwhile I stewed the lemon, squeezed out the pectin and treated the 'jam' syrup to a hefty dose before reboiling to a set. It did work. The jam, it may be said, could have a slight backnote of bitterness, but that isn't a problem, unless you are prone to a pectin headache.

Two jars of delight.