This article by Anaïs Causse appeared in the Berlin magazine Garçon, issue no. 56 (December 2020).
Anaïs Causse, 42, was born in Berlin. After graduating from the Goethe-Oberschule in Steglitz, she studied Arabic studies and Islamic studies, but increasingly realized that it wasn't for her. She left the Free University of Berlin and a possible academic career behind, joined Feinkost-Lindner, and completed training as a specialist in system gastronomy.
In 2003, she joined her father's delicatessen. In 2014, her younger sister Noémie followed suit and took over the online shop, and "Maître Philippe" became "Maître Philippe & Filles" – a specialty store that maintains excellent relationships, particularly with France, and is considered one of the leading addresses in the industry in Berlin, both culinarily and atmospherically.
Anaïs Causse regularly writes for Garçon about her exquisite delicacies and their producers.
This article about the legendary onions from Roscoff almost never saw the light of day. Of all years, this already tricky one was plagued by a fungus commonly known as Botrytis cinerea, which causes grey rot.
By the way: every cloud has a silver lining. The winegrowers in Bordeaux are delighted by Botrytis, because only then can Sauternes, the world's most expensive white wine, be made by botrytization.
The vegetable farmers in Brittany, however, would gladly do without it, because Botrytis leads to considerable crop losses. An infected onion becomes soft and rotten during storage – and therefore inedible. The infection is difficult to detect during harvest, which is why not all diseased onions can be sorted out. And so it does happen that a rotten specimen can hide in the beautiful braided onion bunches this year. Fortunately, however, this has been limited so far.
What makes the Roscoff onion so special that I devote an entire article to it? Of course, it tastes good. Incredibly good, even. It is not hot, but rather mild, almost sweet. It is crisp and juicy, impresses with its distinctive pink color – after all, you eat with your eyes – and is very healthy thanks to its high content of vitamins A, B, and C. By the way, the sailors also knew this back then when they set sail from Roscoff, a small port town in Finistère, the westernmost tip of Brittany. Onions were always on board as provisions. And last but not least, they store excellently, for up to nine months under good conditions.
The long shelf life of the bulbs is due both to their nature and to the fact that they are harvested by hand in August and – after being freed from their tops – dried in the sun in the fields for two weeks. Afterwards, they are cleaned and braided into bunches to prevent sprouting.
Our onions come from Ferme de Kergus, a ten-hectare family farm founded in the 1850s, which is being cultivated by the siblings Tiphaine and Eric Quemener – she is 31 and attended a commercial school, he 34 and a certified farmer – in the fourth generation.
Her great-grandfather already grew the famous Roscoff onions alongside cabbage, potatoes, and asparagus. He belonged, like her grandfather and also her father Marcel, to the "Johnnies". That was the British collective term for all Breton farmers who once sailed across the English Channel in small boats to sell braided onion bunches in England. "Johnnies therefore," says Tiphaine Quemener, "because the English could not pronounce the Breton first names Yann and Yannick."
That is, of course, long history. Today, gourmets all over the world fight over the Roscoff onions, which have carried the AOC seal since 2009 and the AOP seal since 2013 (AOC stands for Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée, which is a controlled designation of origin that only applies in France – AOP, on the other hand, stands for Appellation d'Origine Protégée, meaning protected designation of origin, and is the European counterpart to the national AOC seal).
When I ask for a special tip for preparing the Roscoff onions, Tiphaine Quemener enthusiastically says: "In winter, they are perfect for making a wonderful confit." To do this, she sweats the finely chopped onions in olive oil, adds some honey, and seasons everything with salt and pepper. The confit can be eaten with anything, with cheese, red meat, and fish. But it goes best with galettes, the savory buckwheat crêpes. "I am Breton," she says, "of course it tastes best that way."
Source: Anaïs Causse, "Oignons de Roscoff, s'il vous plaît", Garçon, issue no. 56, December 2020.
MAÎTRE PHILIPPE ET FILLES
Emser Straße 42, 10719 Berlin-Wilmersdorf
Tel. 030 – 88 68 36 10
