Indulge in onion picnic fun

Wikipedia traces the first usage of the French word pique-nique to the 1692 edition of Tony Willis, Origines de la Langue Française. “The term was used to describe a group of people dining in a restaurant who brought their own wine. For long a picnic retained the connotation of a meal to which everyone contributed something.”
I didn’t know that picnics as a peaceful social activity had also been used for political protest. A famous example of the picnic functioning as a ‘temporary occupation of significant public territory’ was the Pan-European Picnic held on both sides of the Hungarian/Austrian border on the 19 August 1989 as part of the struggle towards German reunification. See-ms like this tradition continues in the Occupy Wall Street movement though as yet it hasn’t been called a picnic!
A favourite family excursion into rural areas was visiting rock paintings. Using Peter Garlake’s The Painted Caves, as a guide – complete with detailed travel directions and map references (long before the days of GPS to pinpoint coodinates) we would explore caves across the country in long walks through the Matobo Hills and day trips to Mutoko or Chinamora. A picnic was an essential part of these hikes.
This weekend the excuse for a picnic was a visit to Juru accompanying my husband on a work trip. The best picnic food is a combination of made and bought and I was hoping that the inaugural Harare International Food Fair would provide good pickings for a meal.
The event was advertised as showcasing food and culinary styles from around the world and we were promised a wide variety of exhibitors including embassies, restaurants and food and drink producers but little was in evidence late Saturday morning.  Visible was a handful of very ordinary stalls and a jumping castle but no sign of the advertised chef’s competition nor much food diversity.  What a pity.
So I had to fall back on my own devices and what was in the fridge and garden. A copious supply of freshly harvested garden onions led me to an onion tart and I chose a simple but delicious recipe from favou-rite food writer Edouard Pomiane.
Make a shortcrust pastry with two cups of flour to 100g butter and enough water to hold it together.  Roll this out quite thin and put into a pie dish. Chop the onions and cook them in butter and olive oil until soft. Mix 125 ml cream with a teaspoon of flour – add to the onion mixture and let it cool a little before adding two eggs.  Pour into pie dish and bake in a hot oven for around 40 minutes.  Delicious served hot with a glass of cold white wine, it is also ideal cold picnic food.  The sweetness of new onions makes this a real treat.
I added sliced cucumber and tomato, a handful of salty black olives and some beer sticks. Sweetness and juice came from cut up fresh watermelon – gloriously in season now. 
We found a shady spot to sit enjoying a view of the magnificent Mutoko mountain. No hikes that day and no rock paintings though I am sure we were close to some in those ancient hills, but a lovely picnic all the same.
– g.jeke@yahoo.com