In this edition of Observer Food Weekly, Rosie Healey on a modest kitchen hero, Cynthia Shanmugalingam on ice-cream bliss, and our eating and drinking tips for the week ahead View in browser Know your onions Rosie Healey on a modest kitchen hero, Cynthia Shanmugalingam on ice-cream bliss, and our eating and drinking tips for the week ahead Sponsored by Friday 1 August 2025 Dear friend, Isn't it lovely when you've been using an ingredient for years without giving it much thought, treating it as the lowly support act for a parade of starrier products, and then someone tells you: "No, this right here – this is the star of the show"?   That's what happened when we asked Rosie Healey, chef-owner of the wonderful Gloriosa restaurant in Glasgow, to nominate her secret ingredient. She came back to us with one suggestion – onions – and then provided a variety of reasons why this decidedly unfancy allium should be appreciated for the matinee idol it truly is.   Unfanciness is a theme threading through our newsletter this week. In Bristol, Andy Lynes finds a neighbourhood restaurant on a busy junction that serves simple yet sublime dishes in remarkably generous portions. In this week's "What does happiness taste like?" interview, Rambutan's Cynthia Shanmugalingam skips the legendarily indulgent canard à la presse at Otto's for a tinned fish curry followed by ice-cream eaten on a street corner in the sun. (She also says something borderline unprintable about Sunday roasts.)   Our writers recommend a couple of products that might have purists raising their eyebrows, but are no less delicious for it, and Joe Trivelli offers the most perfect – and lowest-fuss – dessert recipe for this time of year.   Keep it unfancy, and thanks for reading. A message from Inspired by Nutella's limited edition jars showcasing sunrise spots around the UK and Ireland, discover the six best places to eat your breakfast in the great outdoors this summer. From a pebble beach in Cornwall and a lovely loch in the Scottish Highlands, to the perfect place to perch in the Lake District, seize the day this summer with a spot of dawn dining. Plus, find six breakfast recipe suggestions from Nutella. Click here to read more → Read Nigel Slater: grilled squid, chorizo and spinach Click here to read more → Rosie Healey's secret ingredient: onions You might think that an onion is just an onion, that it's just a base for lots of things, but there's an array of dishes where it can be the main ingredient. At Gloriosa, we slice 10kg of white onions and cook them down for a couple of hours on the lowest heat with butter, salt and sage until they become totally melted, and then we toss them through pappardelle with parmesan and a bit more sage and it is THE most delicious pasta dish.   In the summer, I'll gently sweat white onions with really good olive oil and a bit of garlic and chilli, adding some white wine and black pepper at the end, then let it cool and dress green beans in it to make an amazing salad. It's equal quantities onions and green beans, with some anchovies on top, but the onions are magnificent. They're the star of the show.   I love pickling red onions. First, mix in equal quantities of salt and sugar with the sliced onions, to remove some of the sharpness, and then pour over some sweet vinegar and just leave them to sit. They're crunchy, they go a really beautiful pink colour, and you can pile them on salads.   Another thing I enjoy doing is roasting onions and then serving them very simply with rocket and parmesan. They really are one of my favourite ingredients: humble and cheap but versatile and so delicious.   Rosie Healey is the chef-owner of Gloriosa in Glasgow Say we sent you Caper & Cure, Bristol Andy Lynes Caper & Cure is the neighbourhood restaurant of your dreams, unless you live in St Pauls, Bristol, and then it's the neighbourhood restaurant of your reality and you are living the dream. It's difficult to describe a corner site overlooking a busy road junction as "idyllic" but it is very much my culinary happy place in the city. The snug space used to be a chemist's shop (they've retained the original mosaic floor in the entranceway, which reads "Cash Chemists Hodder and Co Ltd"); now Caper & Cure dispenses an experience that's the antidote to pretty much anything that ails you. On a recent visit, Somerset pork tomahawk with sobrasada sauce and the creamiest pomme purée I've eaten since a visit to a Joel Robuchon restaurant was the star of the show, but everything was a slam dunk. "Warm crab and crayfish butter" turned out to be a ton of crab claw meat and diced crayfish in a beurre blanc sauce, served in a crab shell. Simple yet sublime. Portions are generous; a snack of crispy belly pork with a textbook gribiche sauce meant I didn't have room for rhum baba with Cheddar strawberries (fruit from Cheddar, no cheese involved). Service deserves equal billing with the food. The sweetly attentive team even decanted my carafe of chardonnay into a bottle so that it would fit into a cooler (I like my whites more chilled than most restaurants are used to serving them because I am a heathen). If you're after robust pan-European food, served with heart, Caper & Cure (and its next-door sister, Carmen Street Wine) is just what the doctor ordered. Caper & Cure, 108A Stokes Croft, Bristol BS1 3RU What does happiness taste like? …with Cynthia Shanmugalingam. Interview by Killian Fox. Tell us something that only a chef would know. Cooking is a lifelong learning project and you remain a humble student forever. What is the one dish you've not eaten that you should have by now? I've never had the canard à la presse at Otto's. I feel like everyone I know goes on about it, but to be honest it doesn't massively appeal. Also, I've never had frog's legs and I probably never will. What is the dish that you cooked the most throughout your life? A tinned fish curry. Because tins are great, aren't they? And fish curry makes me think at home. I usually make it with tinned sardines and keep it very simple. What do you like to cook at 3am? I like to fry tinned chickpeas with cumin, coriander and chilli and whatever vegetables I have lying around. All together with olive oil. Is there a food or cooking rule you break regularly? I tend to jumble up different cuisines quite a lot. I might make a Middle Eastern meal with kebabs and flatbread and then make a really spicy Sri Lankan pickle to go with it. Are you a fan of Sunday roasts? Not a massive fan. I'm probably going to get cancelled for this, but I feel that they're less than the sum of their parts. All the individual elements are quite delicious, but put them together and it's too much. It's your birthday. What cake are you requesting? Chocolate cake with coconut icing, please. What does happiness taste like? Ice-cream. I'm an absolute ice-cream fiend. In the summer, I often have one a day. Mango ice-cream is undoubtedly the best, and if you can get your hands on some Soft & Swirly stuff, that's even better. I really like to walk around with an ice-cream on a hot day. Cynthia Shanmugalingam is chef-founder of Rambutan, London SE1, and author of Rambutan: Recipes from Sri Lanka We love… Kinder Bueno Classic Ice Cream Cones Andy Lynes Forget all other paper-wrapped ice-cream cones (you know the ones I mean), the Kinder Bueno Classic (£4.95 for four) rules supreme. Michelin-starred chefs might soon be riffing on the combination of a crisp cone filled with hazelnut and cocoa ice-cream embedded with a rod of crunchy hazelnut praline and topped with a thick disc of chocolate. They shouldn't bother – there is no way they are going to top this supermarket sensation. Little's Coffee Hayley Myers As the unpredictable weather continues to confound us, our coffees have bounced from hot to iced and back again – sometimes in one afternoon. At least one member of the Observer Food team is unbothered about artisan beans, and has found the Little's range of instant coffees to be first-rate. Their premium classics – we like Bold Italian for its burliness and Lively Ethiopian for its fruity sweetness – are a robust alternative to a morning cafetière, and the flavoured range is particularly good over ice once the sun decides to make an appearance. Current favourite to make is an Iced Toffee Coffee: add ice to a glass; in a separate cup, make an "espresso" with half a teaspoon of the Toffee Nut flavoured coffee (50g; £4.25); add 150ml of milk to the ice (oat for us); pour the espresso mixture on top, adding it slowly so it trickles through the milk and ice. Decaf and capsules are also available and work just as well. In case you missed it... No-fuss summer desserts Is there a greater marriage of simplicity and pleasure than you get when slicing ripe peaches (at their very best right now) into chilled red wine after a long summer lunch? Joe Trivelli has some suggestions to get it just right. Click here to read more → Second helpings Wicked Leeks: The young activists taking on the junk food giants → New Yorker: The case for lunch → Vogue: Solace in soup after the LA fires → Telegraph: How to eat, train and recover like a Lioness → Thanks for reading. Please tell your friends to sign up and tell us what you think. The Observer Food team   My Account To manage your newsletters, track tickets and more, go to the 'My account' page on the Observer website: Manage my newsletters Follow Follow The Observer on social media on your preferred platform:   The Observer     The Observer Food Monthly The Observer Magazine The Observer New Review   Listen Listen for free in the Tortoise app or wherever you get your podcasts: Want to change how you receive these emails? Update email preferences Copyright © 2025 Tortoise Media. All rights reserved. Did this email get caught in your spam filter? Add editor@newsroom.tortoisemedia.com to your address book to never miss an email again. 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