balsamic Archives

My Love Affair with White Balsamic

This summer, I’ve been having an affair. No, not in the bedroom, in the kitchen. I’m passionately in love with a vinegar; not just any vinegar, but white balsamic vinegar.

It all started when I was ordering groceries to pick up from McCalls Meat & Fish (yes, I know I mention them a lot). Their online store has an oils and vinegars section, so I checked out their offerings and saw that they had white balsamic. I’d never used white balsamic before, but I was intrigued, so I bought it. And that’s when everything changed. I started feeling feelings I’d never felt about a vinegar before.

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Sweet Summer Corn with Bacon and Balsamic Onions

Becoming a good cook is a little bit like becoming a good musician: at a certain point, you can glance at a recipe–the way a pianist might glance at a piece of sheet music–and know what it’s going to taste like, just like the pianist knows what it’s going to sound like. That’s a real skill to have, especially when planning a dinner and searching through cookbooks for something to dazzle. On the morning our story begins, I was flipping through a Food52 Cookbook that I was sent long ago, and this recipe–which is also live on the Food52 site–sang out to me like a Mozart concerto. Turns out, not only did it taste as good as it did in my head; it tasted even better.

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Quinoa with Leftover Chicken, Roasted Broccoli & Balsamic Vinaigrette

You may not believe me when I tell you this, but I made a quinoa dish two weeks ago that had us smacking our lips in delight. It started, as most great dishes do, with leftovers. Just a leftover roast chicken wrapped in aluminum foil. I had Craig do the ceremonial shredding, because he’s an expert at getting every morsel of meat off the carcass. Lolita stands by and yowls her demands for scraps. Occasionally Craig will toss her one.

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