Recipe: Grilled Green Onions by Martha Hall Foose

Martha Hall Foose was born and raised in the Mississippi Delta. She attended the École Lenôtre pastry school in France before returning to Mississippi, where she opened Bottletree Bakery in Oxford, then the Mockingbird Bakery in Greenwood. Martha was also executive chef of the Viking Cooking School. Martha’s first cookbook, Screen Doors and Sweet Tea, won a James Beard Award. She lives in Tchula, Mississippi, on a farm with her husband and their son.

Here, Martha introduces readers to Korean barbecue with a Southern US twist. For our European readers, green onions are the same as Spring onions.

Grilled green onions by martha hall foose

My cousin Daniel Foose fell in love with a girl he met in music school. Sueyoung Yoo and Daniel married out at our family farm, Pluto, on what might have been the hottest day that year, Saturday, June 30. Friends and family began to arrive the Wednesday before. As the bride and groom are both accomplished jazz musicians, she a pianist and he a bassist, most of the bridal party came with instruments in tow, and late-night jams filled the evenings.

Sueyoung made kimchi, massaging each leaf of cabbage with rich chile paste and placing it in her groom’s great-grandmother’s soup tureen. Her soon-to-be in-laws, Uncle Jon and Aunt Caroline, had driven from Austin with a plug-in home-size chest freezer in the back of their Suburban rigged to a battery and filled with all sorts of slow-cooked Creole and Tex-Mex food for the reception. The reception came together in an eccentric perfection combining cooking from New Orleans, Korea, Mississippi, and Texas; and the band played well into the night.

It is a joy to have Sueyoung in the family. Now out at Pluto we have kimchi buried in the yard and Korean barbecue is served on Christmas night.

Grilled Green Onions

Ingredients

  • 4 bunches green onions or purple scallions
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1 small garlic clove, minced
  • ¼ cup soy sauce
  • ¼ cup sake
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • ½ cup finely chopped Asian pear or Golden Delicious apple

Cooking Directions

  1. Heat the grill to low.
  2. In a food processor, pulse together the white part of one of the green onions with the sugar, garlic, soy sauce, sake, honey, and pear.
  3. Place the remaining green onions on the grill 4 to 6 inches above low coals or over low flame and brush them with the soy sauce mixture. Cook for 5 minutes, turning as needed, or until the onions are tender.
  4. Remove from the heat and brush with more sauce right before serving.
"a southerly course" by martha hall foose

Southerly Course: Recipes & Stories from Close to Home will be released on April 12th 2011.

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