An onion for peaky eaters?

Maybe you need to solve this problem we had once with our son, that your offspring doesn’t like onions at all. Let me suggest a solution to your kitchen nightmare – go to Calabria and let them taste Cipolla di Tropea. I hate to say it, but then you’ll have to go there regularly, because it doesn’t taste that way anywhere else. I will try to explain why.

Let’s start with the story of our autumn van trip to Calabria in 2023. And so the day arrived – the car was packed, the plants were watered, the holidays had just begun. We set our destination for Tuscany on Google Maps and started heading south. Unfortunately, as very often happens when we pass through Tuscany in autumn, it was raining, so we kept going. „Without a doubt, our beloved Calabria will always welcome us with sun and good weather” – my husband said as he drove.

When I’m in Italy I constantly think about food. This isn’t a big surprise. I looked at the Instagram videos for cooking on the go inspiration. One of them was on making pasta – Sicilian style. There weren’t many ingredients – a perfect dish for van cooking. The recipe included linguine, olive oil, cherry tomatoes, basil and an onion. But not an ordinary onion – the one and only cipolla di Tropea. I asked the cook in the comments – if I could replace it with any other type of red onion and I expected the answer: „yes, why not”. But Giuseppe wrote: „you can, but it wouldn’t taste that good, only this particular onion has that unique taste”. And believe it or not, in that simple moment I told my husband that we had to go to Tropea, because I needed these onions for cooking. I also wanted to find out what makes them so special.

The town of Tropea itself was charming, as were Parghelia and Capo Vaticano, which we visited at the same time. So I bought my first onions there to try. We also saw a big onion in the window display of the Cipolla di Tropea Museum. Yes. There is such a museum there! While cooking at Capo Vaticano I tried this onion for the first time and indeed, it tastes great!

After spending some 2-3 days in Vibo Valentia we headed through Aspromonte to Melito di Porto Salvo to start our journey north on the Highway 106 (that was another purpose of our trip). We are a bit a crazy when it comes to travelling, but that is a story for another day – and a few glasses of Italian wine. While I already knew that Tropea onions really taste fantastic, somewhere in the middle of the Aspromonte mountains, I bought a few kilograms of Cipolla from a farmer selling his products just along the road. First I bought one kilogram, but when I returned to the car and said I had paid one euro for it, my travel compagnon said, 'Go and buy some more!’

It wasn’t easy to find a clean on the seashore of Melito di Porto Salvo to cook dinner for our cheerful company but finally, I managed to do it somehere with a view at Etna. It was very simple – just some pasta with vegetables – but the onion reallyadded an umami flavor. And most importantly, our son, who previously didn’t like onions, ate it with relish this time. Luckily, I had enough onions for the entire journey and I even brought some to our home!

Once in Roseto Capo Spulico, where our holiday home is located, I was talking with our friend Antonio, and asked him why the cipolla di Tropea is so special. In one breath he said that no other onion tastes like this one, because it is grown in volcanic soil rich in minerals, receives plenty of the warm Calabrian sunshine and is infused with the salty breeze of the Mediterranean Sea. „You should become the ambassador for this product,” I said. But actually, I became one myself and started spreading the word about the uniqueness of Tropea onion.

I once had the idea to buy onion seedlings and grow them in my father-in-law’s garden. Then a voice in my head said, ’Volcanic soil, Calabrian sun, waters of the Mediterranean Sea, do I have it all where I live?’ Grown in different conditions, it would most likely taste like any other onion. Sweet and delicate, Cipolla di Tropea is definitely one of the Calabria’s flagship food products.

U.