LOW Carb: Gourmet secrets from my pantry to yours.....

Making your own Herb Vinegars.  (The “really" expensive kind)

So your salad is boring….  You’ve had one of my walnut, cranberry, gorgonzola, jicama, balsamic vinaigrette salads once too many times…

And you and the family need something “different" well there’s a few ideas I have to help…. 

For a lot of us who never ate salad before surgery…we have found salad to be a comfort.  A few ideas to really bring a new experience to salad is a vinegar base that you can make new flavors that only a rare few rich people normally afford.  Go price some of these at your local gourmet store or the nearest Williams-Sonoma..you can spend a few hundred bucks in a short amount of time on these things…OR you can read from your old buddy and learn to make them for about a dollar per bottle.

Some of these ideas are:

French tarragon, opal basil and chive blossoms. All are great for flavoring vinegars. You can use your own favorite herbs or try something really exciting like lavender, rose, or rosemary. Borage flowers turns the vinegar blue, while nasturtiums can make a nice hot spicy vinegar to add zest to a salad or marinade.

Mint, rose and lavender vinegar are nice with fruit desserts.  While fennel has a touch of anise. Opal basil turns the vinegar to a beautiful royal red. Basil after all is The King of Herbs!

OK, OK  I’ll shut up…. Now for a couple of recipes: 

Mixed Herb Garden

6 sprigs each of: savory, thyme and oregano

1 quart of vinegar

4 bay leaves

1 dry hot chili pepper broken in half

Lemon Herb Vinegar

4 cups of white wine vinegar

4 sprigs of lemon thyme

1/2 cup lemon balm leaves

3 lemon verbena sprigs

Peel the lemon so you have one long lemon twist (for decoration and flavor)

Sterilize a six cup bottle. Rinse and thoroughly dry the fresh herbs and lemon peel. Put the herbs and peel into the bottle and pour the warmed vinegar over the ingredients. Allow the mixture to cool. Seal with a non metallic cap. In 2 weeks strain and divide into smaller bottles. You can add new fresh herbs to the bottles for added flavor and to make them look pretty.

Cinnamon Basil and Whole Cloves
Lemon basil by itself
Cinnamon sticks with Whole Cloves Nutmeg and Allspice
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme –no kidding
Dill flowers with Peppercorns
Basil Garlic and Peppercorn
Hot Peppers alone or with Pearl Onions

Do NOT use distilled vinegar since it’s kinda harsh!   White wine vinegar is the most common vinegar to use but white distilled, rice, sherry, malt and cider may be used. Sage and cider is a lovely combination and goes well with pork.  Another item to note is do NOT use metal caps to seal the vinegar since the metal will ruin the taste and corrode.

A favorite at my villas is opal basil vinegar splashed over sliced cucumbers with black pepper . Pretty and pretty tasty too!

In most cookbooks there are 2 common methods of flavoring vinegar. In the kitchen, boiling the vinegar and then adding the herbs. And the second method of placing the herbs in bottles and sitting in a sunny window or directly out in the herb garden.

 "Mother Nature" is more gentle on the essential oils of the herb being used in my kitchen. The sun heats up the blend in the day and cools it off in the evening. After a week to 10 days the herbal vinegar is ready for those special decorative bottles. In the boiling method when the herbs are introduced most of those essential plant oils escape into the air. Besides there is a magic about the presence of beautiful glass bottles filled with fresh herbs sitting amongst the plants.