My friend Hilary and I walked into her parents’ kitchen giggling over I-can’t-remember-what, and her mom called us over to a cast iron skillet that she’d just pulled off the stove. Her mom showed us a pan of translucent, amber onions, and told us that they were perfectly caramelized. I remember not quite understanding what she meant when she described them as jammy and sweet and soft, but I certainly remember understanding that she meant they were how she wanted them.

Hilary and I each tried one, and I was surprised by their sweetness. I hadn’t ever thought about an onion before. I’m not sure I was ever even conscious of eating one until that moment, although of course, I’d had plenty of onions in my life.

We skipped off, probably down to the basement, where we liked to play a (quite dangerous game) of jumping off the stairway banister into a pile of bean bags. I didn’t think about the onions again that day and maybe not for years after that, but now, I find myself thinking about and trying to replicate that first pan of perfectly caramelized onions all the time.

This is what I’m after in my cooking –– food that stirs the senses and wakes us up to an ingredient’s potential, whether we even know it in that moment or not. I’m not necessarily trying to recreate Mrs. Saverin’s onions exactly (although I’m sure that would be a delicious endeavor); rather, I’m trying to create moments that become memories for the people who eat my food. I am after all, an eater, more than a chef or baker, and it’s to the eater that I relate and the eater that I want to inspire.