Root Source: Champagne Vinegar
Root Source: Champagne Vinegar
what you should know
Red and white wine vinegars, while often good, tend to taste like a single note. Champagne vinegar, more aromatic and complex, tastes like a chord being played in your mouth.
The word vinegar comes from the French phrase "vin aigre," which means sour wine. Wine and Champagne vinegars are formed by the fermentation of their alcohol into acetic acid.
so bad it's good Does that just mean that vinegar is wine gone bad? Yep, that's pretty much what it means. Except that the process is controlled to make its "gone bad" taste good.
champagne for one Champagne vinegar is an obvious choice for French-leaning vinaigrettes. But it's also flavorful enough to use by itself for drizzling over hot, roasted potatoes, a creamy soup or a composed salad.
fan dom One of the greatest quotes ever -- Ever? Yes, ever! -- is attributed to the Benedictine monk Dom Pérignon, who, upon tasting Champagne for the first time, supposedly yelled: "Come quickly, brothers, I am drinking the stars!"
what you need
Ever wanted to know how bubbly gets it bubbles? Girard Liger-Belair's Uncorked: The Science of Champagne exhausts the subject in a highly readable way.
At the top of Chip's reading list for the spring is Benjamin Wallace's upcoming The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine.
You can spend a lot of money on a single whisk, but we've never come across a task that this no-frills set of three stainless steel whisks by Norpro couldn't handle.
what you do
One of Brys' favorite ways to start (or end) a big, rich meal is with this slightly bitter, palate cleansing frisée salad.
We love to pair Champagne vinegar with walnut oil. In this beet, escarole, walnut and goat cheese salad with orange vinaigrette, we stick with olive oil but mix in the walnut itself.
Lately, we've been on the hunt for simple recipes that somehow taste bigger than the sum of their parts. This Bibb lettuce and avocado salad is a perfect example of that.
A healthier and, we would argue, tastier way to make a classic side dish: potato salad with capers and parsley.
The coarse crust of peppercorns and the tangy sauce play off the rich, tender strip in this riff on the traditional steak au poivre.
Tongs are the most useful tool in the kitchen.
Having a good pair of tongs is like having a heatproof robotic arm in the kitchen. Consider a partial list of things you can do with a pair of tongs: stir something in a sizzling pan; flip something in a sizzling pan; move something around in a sizzling pan; spear something in a sizzling pan; push something in a sizzling pan to check for doneness; hold something above a sizzling pan to taste it; take something out of a sizzling pan. And that's just around a sizzling pan. Standing around a grill or reaching inside an oven, tongs are critical.
You can spend a small fortune on specialty tongs, but you don't have to. OXO's Good Grips stainless steel tongs are inexpensive and probably as special as you’ll ever need.
So here's our public service announcement - buy tongs now.
Lardons is the French term for small matchstick-cut pieces of bacon or larding fat cut from the belly of pork. They are used to add moisture to lean meats while roasting, or in stews, fricassees, fried dishes, and more.
Lardons are often blanched before using to remove excess salt and fat. A main ingredients of Quiche Lorraine, hot fried lardons added to a frisée salad along with a poached egg make a French bistro classic.
