Onions make me cry

So I wanted to make these beautiful caramelised shallots that I had been oggling for months over at Smitten Kitchen. I thought this would be an easy task. I was telling a co-worker about this amazing recipe for roasted shallots and how excited I was to try it, and she asked me why on earth I'd want to roast shallots. She was thinking of...

... which is what I call a spring onion, and what other people call green onions or scallions. So I explained that I actually meant these shallots:


And it turns out what I call shallots are also called eschallots or French shallots... and there are also Dutch shallot varieties as well. But my co-worker thought that French shallots/eshallots were just baby onions, which are what I call pickling onions and are different again:

You can see why there was confusion...

So I had placed an order for shallots with my green grocer, before I'd had the conversation with my cooworker and I received:


Which is what I call a salad onion! Had I had the conversation with my cooworker beforehand, I would have asked for French shallots or eschallots. These onions are extraordinarily potent, and I decided since I had them and had nothing else to do with them, I would roast them up anyway.

The recipe says to roast them for ~30 mins, but I left mine covered at 180C for about 3 hours. They were absolute, melt in your mouth, beautiful roast onion heaven. Honestly though, I think it's cheating. If you roast anything in butter and red wine vinegar and honey (which I used instead of sugar) for 3 hours it's going to taste amazing. This Sunday we are having an early family Christmas with Gib's family, so I think I will have to recreate them. With eschallots. Or whatever you want to call them.