Franklin District in South Auckland is a favourite of mine as our very own commercial organic garden that supplies our restaurants, Ahi and Origine, is located here. The region’s red, fertile soils of ancient, weathered volcanic rock are famous for their market gardens which have fed Kiwis since the birth of Auckland.

Food-producing royalty also call this place home: Curious Croppers tomatoes, Allan Fong’s vegetables, Clevedon Buffalo cheeses and yoghurt and Eastherbrook Farm quails. With the summer season upon us, I commence my annual gluttony of Clevedon strawberries. Franklin is a condensed food bowl of excellence.

This trip, however, we are going back to basics. There are no flashy superstar ingredients this time, as we are here to learn about the most humble of vegetables: the brown onion. With its PR challenges including smelly breath and tears and its boring, plain appearance, it’s time to dive in and give the poor thing a well-deserved makeover.

Here to help with this mission is the allium patriarch of New Zealand and third-generation onion grower, Maurice Balle of Balle Brothers fame. It is late November, spring has sprung and we meet at his onion fields on the banks of the Manukau Harbour. I’m excited to learn from Maurice that New Zealand has its own onion variety – The Pukekohe Longkeeper – developed in this region and now grown across New Zealand and around the world. His onions are nearly ready to be harvested, the first flush by hand before the machines come through to finish the job. They are simply lifted and dried on the soil in the sun until the skin browns off for a few weeks. The onions are then collected, with 80% of the crop heading offshore as a food commodity.

The fresh onions are pure white and they look beautiful and taste sweet and delicious, perfect to be eaten raw in a salsa, used as a main ingredient in a vegetarian dish or simply shaved and put in a salad. Crouching down in Maurice’s ripe onions (ha, does that sound gross?) it dawns on me that this is the first time I have eaten an onion freshly pulled from the soil. Why is this? The discovery grates on me, another missed opportunity to eat and celebrate a seasonal vegetable, such as asparagus or new potatoes. The ‘supermarketisation’ of our vegetables is ruining seasonality, variety and flavour, and it is one of the reasons I began our own gardening journey at the restaurants. I also can’t help but think that new-season onions would command a better price and return for the grower. Pukekohe locals are picking up on this, too, with a suggested onion-harvest festival, similar to those in Sicily in Italy and Vidalia, Georgia in the US. Sign me up, baby!

As I’m walking the lush onion rows, they look simple to grow. But there are 70 years of Balle family know-how in these paddocks, and onions are labour intensive and weather dependent yet they still happen to be the cheapest vegetable to buy in our shops. Planted in late autumn and harvested in late spring, onions are a slow-growing vegetable, taking up valuable garden real estate for around six months over the cold seasons. And the real estate is quite literally valuable, too – these precious growing regions are under siege by Auckland’s sprawl. Maurice explains that as councils change the zoning rules from rural to urban to accommodate our growing population, the rates skyrocket, too, making this type of farming eventually financially unsustainable. The loss of our most fertile growing land to housing or commercial buildings feels like a sad story for the region and an issue that must be raised as Auckland city marches south towards Hamilton. Maurice believes his land will be smothered by housing within the next 20 years.

Historians believe the onion is one of humanity’s oldest cultivated vegetables, so revered that it appears as carvings on tombs of ancient Egyptians. Onions are nutrient dense and high in vitamins, low carb and high in antioxidants, great for bone density and super-duper good for you. They are unsung heroes of flavour, the backbone of nearly every food culture and an ingredient chefs cannot possibly live without.

This vegetable has given me lots to think about, many layers as they say. Next time I walk past the Pukekohe Longkeeper onion in the supermarket, I’ll give them a little salute and a quiet whisper, thanking them for their service to cuisine.

As I write this, we are about to embark on filming season 4 of A New Zealand Food Story, starting with the food phenom Jack Cashmore of The Chef’s Table at Blue Duck Station in the Ruapehu district of the North Island. From social media I have learned that Jack is much more than a chef; he built his dream restaurant from scratch in the middle of nowhere on a mountain top. He grows his own produce, raises his own animals, hunts his own meat and gives his guests a truly New Zealand food experience. I am excited to learn more about Jack’s journey and find out why he has been so brave to take full and extreme control of his menu.

So, along with this ode to the onion story it makes me ponder where we take our TV show next, as we look into food culture and food systems of New Zealand, celebrating Kiwi kai with a soul, produced with heart, seasonality, variety and sustainability. Knowing what is in our food has never been more important and The Chef’s Table at Blue Duck Station, I think, will be the perfect place to start.