Since you haven't asked, let me tell you anyway. Let me tell you all about what I've been thinking. I've been thinking about shallots, that's what. You might think that's a lot to take in, but it's not: it's shallot. A crucial difference, that.
Besides, that's the thing about shallots, that's the important point: they're not a lot, they're a little. They're a little tasty, a little sweet, and, most importantly, a little onion. Which they're not. (In other words, they are not what they are. (That's why they're called 'shallots', not 'onions': do you follow me?))
Okay. So, shallots have a rich and storied history, none of which I will go into today. Instead, let us quote from Wikipedia:
The shallot is a cultivar group of the onion. Until 2010, the (French red) shallot was classified as a separate species, Allium ascalonicum.
Great!
The taxon was synonymized with Allium cepa (the common onion) in 2010, as the difference was too small to justify a separate species.
So it seems that shallots are not only too small to be an onion, but they are too small to be not.
(Pedants might object that it is not the shallot that is small in the last case, it is the difference. But what is the difference between a difference, anyway? It's very small, that's what it is.)
Here is a poem I wrote about shallots:
There's a lot to shallots,
There's a lot but there's not -
There's a lot to a little, you see:
No, you mustn't belittle
The littlest little -
To be little is something to be.
Readers will notice with what care and restraint I have avoided ending the poem with 'fiddle diddle diddle diddle dee'. It is important to finely tune one's poetic craft that way. Just as there is a lot to the little that is shallots, so there is a lot to the little that is poetry, in that you start with a lot, and you take out a little, and you take out a little more, and a little more, and a little more, and you end up taking out a lot with with a little left over, in order to say a lot with a little. Or sometimes, you try to say a little with a little, or sometimes, to those with a purer artistic temperament, you end up using a little and saying even less. Presumably the purest poem of all is one in which all meaning and words are taken out, with nothing left over, but that has already been written by someone or other so to write it out again would be plagiarism. I certainly had a lot to say about shallots in this poem, and avoided saying it altogether, so this is what you got.
But I suppose there are some things a lot about shallots. You can grow a lot of them. You can like them a lot. And you can grow shallots in a lot, and an allotted lot withal, so you could, if you chose, grow a lot of shallots in a lot of allotted lots. That's not a lot, but it's something. That's not a lot, even if it literally is. It's a little lot, which is just about as much as anyone could ask for.
In addition, here is a shallot that I found the other day.
I cooked it and turned it into a tiny onion tart, and here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
1 teaspoon of olive oil
1 shallot
A splash of white wine
Puff pastry
Method:
Cut the puff pastry to the side of a small pan. Turn the oven on to 180 degrees celsius. Cut the shallot into pieces and fry it over medium heat for a few minutes until it browns nicely on all sides.
Add the white wine to the pan and let it reduce a bit.
Pop the puff pastry over the top of the shallot, and fold it in under the edges. Put the whole pan in the oven and leave it in there until the puff pastry rises and turns golden brown, about 20 minutes.
Invert the shallot tart over a board or plate and serve.
But enough talking about poetry and recipes and what not, we were talking about shallots. This is the end of my talk about shallots.
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