By Ellen Wallace

Independence Day celebrations for Americans are upon us but I’ve now lived outside the US almost as long as I lived there, so the party is not quite as festive or important as it once was.

The day has taken on another significance for me: it’s the time when our Alpine garden onions are finally ready to eat, and they are exquisite! I rank them right up there with garden-fresh salads and potatoes as some of the World’s Best Simple Foods.

We had our first ones last night, one red, one white, and we prepared them very simply:

Recipe for lightly stewed garden onions with herbs

Slice them paper thin.

Warm 2 T olive oil in a deep frypan, add the onions. Add a pinch of Camargue fleur de sel (best sea salt, to my mind), several sprigs of fresh lemon thyme and two small sprigs of fresh rosemary.

Cover the pan and leave on low to medium low heat for 20 minutes, stirring gently once or twice. The moisture in the onions creates the steam.

We had these served on the side with barbecued steaks, mashed potatoes, fresh garden salad and a beautiful bottle of red wine from St Pierre de Clage in canton Valais, Baton Rouge 2004 (Vidomne winery) which is a surprising blend of two grape varieties better known in Italy, Barbera and Sangiovese.