Vinegar

Vinegar is a magic liquid. There are books devoted to all the things you can do with. These things include unblocking drains, cleaning PCs, whitening teeth, curing candida, ungluing price tags, polishing silver, cleaning your piano keys.

Vinegar preserves, it neutralises, it kills bacteria and it’s a tasty condiment. It’s a health remedy and a wonderful aid to cooking.

Now that I come to think of it, we have many more bottles of vinegar sitting in the larder than we do all the oils put together, because once you get used to the taste of a well made vinegar, and the different uses of all the specialist vinegars, the commercial stuff will just no longer do.

Thanks to being reminded by Niamh Shields of Eat Like A Girl, we’ve recently been making vinegar at home. Years ago, our first efforts in making vinegar involved a barrel, a spigot, funnels, aeration holes and a whole lot of good wine. That method got ditched over time, and more recently I’ve been following Niamh’s advice of letting the wine mature into vinegar in the bottle.

The latest batch involved an almost empty bottle of Champs Red Wine Vinegar, and a half drunk bottle of something good. I poured the wine into the vinegar bottle and left it for a few months with a loose fitting lid. It worked, it produced a crisp, well balanced vinegar, that, whilst it wouldn’t have enough acidity to use for preserving, is great for deglazing, or for making salads and dishes like Chicken in Red Wine Vinegar.

Another method of making vinegar is to place the wine in a large jar. Tie some cheesecloth over, add a little good quality wine vinegar and leave to ferment.

People talk about the “Mother” of vinegar, but it’s actually what Richard Olney calls the “frail, white powdery veil [which] will develop on the surface, eventually transforming the entire body of wine” that turns wine into vinegar. This is the fleur blanche - the enemy of wine-makers which develops when the wine is in contact with air.

The air, reacting with the wine, causes it to over-ferment, giving you acetic acid. Vinegar comes from the words vin aigre (sour wine). The Mother arrives when this surface fleur blanche becomes too heavy, and falls to the bottom of the liquid. At that stage, she has done her work.

 Of course vinegar comes from more than just wine, malt vinegar is started from barley, white vinegar from grain, rice vinegar from, well rice, and cider vinegar from apples. All have their place in the culinary repertoire. The vinegars I use most are red wine, sherry vinegar, cider vinegar and rice vinegar. Developed from these, you find specialist top shelf vinegars like Banyuls vinegar, or Balsamic vinegar. These are cooking classics, and ironically are often easier to find than an ordinary - high quality - red wine vinegar.

To make the vinegar star in a dish, just use a good quality vinegar. Some of my favourite vinegar recipes include a Marcella Hazan tomato salad, where she marinates a clove of garlic in vinegar for an hour, then makes a normal tomato salad with the sieved garlic vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper and fresh basil.

I also love the way Martin Shanahan uses the flamenco kick of sherry vinegar with smoked mackerel. Warm the mackerel in the oven. Chop cucumber, tomato and spring onion and toss in a tablespoon of sherry vinegar. Top with the warm mackerel and let the fish oils blend with the vinegar to make a special dressing for the salad.

The ultimate vinegar recipe must be Poulet au Vinaigre de Vin, chicken in red wine vinegar. We use Simon Hopkinson’s recipe from Roast Chicken and Other Stories.

 Ingredients

    4 lb chicken, cut into 8 pieces
    Salt and pepper
    ½ cup butter
    2 tbsp olive oil
    6 very ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
    1 cup best-quality red wine vinegar
    1 cup chicken stock
    2 heaped tbsp chopped parsley


Season the pieces of chicken with salt and pepper.

Heat 4 tbsp of the butter and the olive oil in a flameproof casserole until just turning nut-brown. Add the chicken and fry gently, turning occasionally, until golden brown all over.

Add the chopped tomatoes, and carry on frying and stewing until the tomato has lost its moisture and is dark red and sticky.

Pour in the vinegar and reduce by simmering until almost disappeared. Add the stock, and simmer again until reduced by half. Remove the chicken to a serving dish and keep warm. Whisk the remaining butter into the sauce to give it a glossy finish.

Add 1 tbsp chopped parsley, pour over the chicken, and sprinkle with the remaining parsley. Serve with plain boiled potatoes.