If you're looking for a side dish that's slightly different, this is the perfect recipe. It's similar in style to "Vichy Carrots", which are glazed baby carrots cooked in a bit of sugar and mineral water from the Vichy area of France.
Buy or dig up some baby onions. You could also use shallots, but I think the baby onions will hold their shape better. In a small pan, saute them very slowly in butter for a minute or so.
Next, add some meat stock, salt and pepper, and two teaspoons of sugar. The idea is to braise the onions, so you want your stock to come only half-way up the onions. If you're going to add the fizzy water, now's the time to do it, but I'm not entirely convinced that anyone (unless they have super developed taste buds) is going to be able to tell the difference here between using tap water or Vichy water. After all, there's quite of bit of other stuff going on in there, the sugar, the salty stock, not to mention the onions themselves. Dunno.
Cook gently, so that the stock combines with the sugar and butter, and forms a syrup. Make sure that the onions are well coated; and carry on cooking until the stock/syrup has been reduced. You're looking for nicely caramelised onions. If the heat is too high, they may burn, so watch out for this.
