These first weeks of summer still belong to spring, botanically speaking, since we’re still weeks of warm weather away from corn and tomatoes. Farm stands have lettuce in every variety you can imagine alongside several you’ve never heard of. And this is also the time of year when you can eat four or five different members of the lily family in a single meal; among them are the immature onions often labeled scallions, “green onions,” or “spring onions.” They may say “spring” but their season is now.
Most of the time spring onions are just normal onions grown close together and picked young, like the green garlic that was in the market a month ago. When we first see them in the markets they’re the same diameter from tip to tail, but as the weeks go by they start to bulb; right now they’re a little smaller than a ping-pong ball. A couple of farmers at the Union Square Greenmarket are showing their inner aesthete by offering a choice of available colors (red, white, and yellow). I somehow feel compelled to buy at least one bunch of each color.
Make that two bunches.
Spring onions have a bite to them but it’s a gentle nip compared to a mature onion. That means you can eat the whole thing raw—on a sandwich with cheese or liverwurst, or maybe dipped into a fresh aioli. Some weeks I’ll save the greens and quick-pickle the tiny bulbs, giving me a side dish that’s sharp in two ways—once from the onions and once from the vinegar—and cuts through the richness of a grilled steak or burger (though they make a great snack with beer, too). Then again, as long as I’m firing up a grill (or a grill pan in a New York apartment), there’s nothing better than tossing whole cleaned spring onions in a little olive oil with a generous sprinkling of salt and grilling them while your meat is resting. I serve them whole when I want drama or chop them into a coarse relish when I want to concentrate the flavor. Salty, sharp, and sugary from a little caramelization, it’s the taste of the turning point between the brightness of spring and the sweetness of fast-approaching summer.