Rescued red onions.

I am always a little nervous of baking. A sad history of flat loaves and sunken cakes testifies to the incompatibility between the science of baking and my predilection for fiddling with recipes. I can just about manage a satisfactory shortcrust, but have never attempted anything more complicated, pastry-wise. However my biggest fear is not the science, but the magic. I have never found the secret to putting batter or dough into an oven, and judging the perfect moment to remove it: cooked through, but not overdone.

The experience recounted here has done nothing to increase my confidence.

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The only "proper" recipe book I regularly consult is Ed Smith's On the Side. I love his approach to cooking: taking a number of small dishes and combining them - with or without a main element - to create a whole meal that balances "tastes, textures, flavours, colours and, just as importantly, effort versus results."

Unlike many recipe books, Mr Smith positively encourages experimentation both within a dish and in how it is combined; suggesting substitutions based on the main element, the overall cuisine or what you have available.

I have actually cooked quite a number of the recipes exactly as instructed, and they have all been delicious. One of my favourites is for vermouth-braised red onions (fifth listed): stickily sweet onion petals offset by slight charring at the edges.

To accompany the Scotch Eggs at the cricket picnic, I used the cooked onions to make mini tartes tatin. It had worked pretty well, so I decided to make them again for the Glyndebourne picnic. The recommended herb of thyme would also work well with the ham, as a general theme.

As one of the guests was vegan, I substituted the butter in the recipe for olive oil. I also decided to dice the onions more finely than I had done before, my theory being this would help them form a more cohesive layer under the pastry.

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I cooked the onions over a layer of seasalt for about an hour, stirring every fifteen minutes to give all the onions a chance to soak up the vermouth and caramelise in the heat of the oven. When they were done, I left them to cool so they wouldn't warm the pastry.

When cold, I spooned the onions into a lightly oiled and floured shallow bun tin. I cut circles of puff pastry (not only pre-made, but ready-rolled; I was feeling *that* lazy), placed them on top and tucked them in. I poked holes in each lid to allow the steam to escape. As I couldn't use eggs to glaze the pastry, I decided to try olive oil. I put them in a preheated oven for at 200 degrees for 18 minutes. They came out looking rather beautiful:

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I let them cool a little, then flipped the bun tin to turn them out. It was only now that the sad truth was revealed:

The pastry was cooked through. But the onions had half-stuck to the tin. They had also burnt.

I am not sure exactly what went wrong. I think a minute or two less and they wouldn't have burnt, but perhaps the pastry would not have been completely cooked either. I baked them for the same length of time, and at the same temperature, as for the cricket picnic, and those had come out well.

The differences, and possible causes, were as follows: the onions were cooked in olive oil instead of butter; I had diced them more finely; I had used olive oil instead of butter to grease the the tins; and I had used olive oil instead of egg to glaze the pastry.

Of these, I think using olive oil to cook the onions and glaze the pastry are unlikely to have been the problem. The onions were perfectly cooked in themselves, and I don't see how the pastry glaze would have affected the onions cooking beneath. I suppose it could have been the change in fat used to grease the tin. However I can see the logic of smaller onion pieces cooking - and then burning - more quickly than their larger counterparts at the cricket picnic.

Something to bear in mind for next time.

Unfortunately, for this time, I didn't have enough pastry to do a whole second batch. But I did want onions to go with the ham. With some resignation I did a simple olive oil version of Ed Smith's original recipe; also removing the bases of the onions for ease of eating.

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They were very yummy, and did go well with the ham. Just a shame about the pastry.