Bottles of vinegar. Photo: junmon603, Flickr.

• Sometimes seasoning to taste shouldn't be a spray of salt, but rather a splash of vinegar.
• Critics say that California chardonnay is becoming the bland "indecision beige of the wine world."
• Entertaining at home doesn't need to be an expensive affair or scattered potluck. Some hosts are having fun with team cooking.
• Three pros share party-hosting tips like pasta experimentation and budget cuts of meat.
• Michael Pollan is becoming a phenomenon?
• The Tribune's Cookie Contest will land one lucky baker $200 at Williams-Sonoma.
• Chicago food and drink events.
• Recipes: Mini Currant Scones, Orzo and Brown Rice Pilaf, Cherry Tomato-Walnut Pizza.

Is a dish lacking something you can't pinpoint? Try a tiny bit of salt if you must, but don't forget the secret weapon tucked in the fridge or lolling on the counter.

Everyone has his or her own way of poaching an egg. Some twirl the egg into a ghostly tornado in a pot of water , some buy special poachers and some even cheat and bake them. (One of our favorites is cracking an egg into a greased ladle and holding it in boiling water for 3 to 4 minutes.) This video, however, explains an even an easier way -- gently pouring eggs into vinegar-laced water.

Bay Area food editor Jenny Slafkosky here describes the particulars of poaching and how a little vinegar will help the albumin in the egg white coagulate (or firm up) more quickly. This is quite a discovery for those of us who love poaching eggs, all of whom have probably experienced watching them shred mercilessly in a pot of boiling water.

Slafkosky's simple method gets wonderful results, and -- a bonus! -- she also tells us how to make poached eggs for a whole crowd. Give it a click for flawless poached eggs down the road, and let us know how it goes!

When making salad dressings, ever wonder why oil and vinegar mix well in some cases and not in others? Find out how to make the perfect salad dressing with two simple ingredients, and maybe just a few more.

Several weeks ago, I wrote about the many ways to savor sherry wine vinegar. Banyuls vinegar is like sherry wine vinegar's more refined and delicate French cousin. Like Port and sherry wine, Banyuls is a fortified wine which means that alcohol is added to it. Banyuls vinegar develops a walnut flavor, taste of gingerbread and vanilla, and aroma of fresh plums after being aged in wooden barrels for five years. It comes from the Pyrenees, close to Spain. Like sherry wine vinegar, it makes a great vinaigrette.

Where can you find this vinegar?
You can purchase the vinegar online from French Food Exports, Honest Foods, and Gourmet Food Store. A while ago, I bought my favorite bottle of this stuff from Formaggio Essex in NY.

How can you spice up your meal with it?

1. Seared sea scallops with banyuls vinegar and chicory slaw
2. Frisee salad with blue cheese, walnut, and cranberry crostini
3. Black-pepper-crusted wagyu new york steaks with black truffle vinaigrette
4. Lamb chops with feta and banyuls-cherry sauce

Ah, the sweet floral aroma and the spicy tang of a sherry wine vinegar! This summer, when craving fresh green crunchy lettuce, I think of drizzling vinaigrette made with sherry wine vinegar all over it. Sherry wine vinegar, called vinagre de Jerez in Spain, is aged in a similar way to balsamic vinegar. In Spain, you can find sherry wine vinegar from Jerez de la Frontera aged for 75 years. The aged sherry wine vinegar can be used similarly to an aged balsamic -- as a condiment for desserts and even cheese.

Below are 8 ways to savor sherry wine vinegar:

1. Kohlrabi Slaw: Broccoli's milder and sweeter cousin, kohlrabi, is a delicious vegetable. When young, its stem tastes sweet and crunchy like an apple. Enjoy it mixed with sherry wine vinegar in this heavenly slaw!
   
2. Chicken with fresh herbs and sherry wine vinegar
3. Sea bass with sherry vinegar glaze and mushroom saute
4. Beet, avocado and pink grapefruit salad with sherry dressing - This is without a doubt one of my favorite salads and a must try for every one.
5. Gazpacho salsa - This summer, when entertaining, make sure to accompany your tortilla chips with this incredible salsa. Just two tablespoons of sherry wine vinegar spice up this salsa and make it an absolute necessity at any party.
6. Basic sherry wine vinaigrette
7. Olive-oil-poached salmon and braised artichokes with sauvignon blanc
8. Baked halibut with warm sherry onion vinaigrette

Have you used sherry wine vinegar recently? If so, please feel free to add your recipes below.

Did you know that vinegar can keep cauliflower snow white and broccoli as green as grass?

My strongest memory involving vinegar (if one can have more than one memory that involves vinegar) is one of my older brothers dipping his french fries in it. He loved it, though I never saw the appeal.

But vinegar has many other uses too, both as food and in other ways, as explained in Vicki Lansky's book Vinegar: 400 Various, Versatile, and Very Good Uses You've Probably Never Thought Of. For example, did you know you can add a teaspoon of vinegar to a recipe that's too salty? Or that you can use it to clean countertops and fireplace bricks and also get rid of ants?

It also says that you can rub vinegar on the cut end of uncooked ham to prevent mold. I never really knew that was a problem, but I'm glad there's a solution for it.

We all know we're supposed to wash our fruits and vegetables before we cook or eat them, but how do you know how much washing is enough? And should you use soap or is water plenty? The editors over at Cook's Illustrated recently took on this question, washing apples and pears with four different methods. They discovered that using a scrub brush with water was fairly effective, removing 85% of bacteria, but that using a solution of one part vinegar to three parts water was the best. That method removed 98% of the bacteria.

A good way of keeping that vinegar around is to fill a spray bottle with the stuff and leave it by the sink. Simply spritz the item that needs to be cleaned with a little bit of the solution and rinse off with cold water. Ninety-eight percent clean fruits and veggies will result!

Via NPR
(Thanks for the tip, Megan!)

A really high-quality, aged balsamic vinegar is something that no chef should pass up, as it is basically the standard to which all other vinegars aspire. Other vinegars have their uses, of course, but few will be coveting the taste of white vinegar to top off a nearly perfect dish. Aged balsamics can be expensive, though, and as a finishing touch to a dish or to enhance the flavor in a dressing or marinade, flavored vinegars can be great options.

Flavored vinegars are infused with everything from sweet berries to fiery chilies and they seem to be everywhere right now. Trader Joe's, for example, is carrying at least four kinds right now, including the ones pictured above: California Grapefruit, Mango Chili, Strawberry Balsamic and Pomegranate. The flavors tone down the astringency of vinegar, while retaining its brightening properties. Of the ones pictured above, Grapefruit and Pomegranate are delicious in salads, while Strawberry is good on desserts and Mango works well as a marinade.

If you can't find a flavor that matches your own tastes, you can make your own fairly easily, with fresh herbs, fruits and spices.

After busily cleaning out the pantry, I discovered two open, but only partially used, containers that I didn't know I had. One was baking powder and one was baking soda. It's always useful to have extra on hand in case of a baking emergency, but I figured that it would be a good idea to test them to see if they still worked, since chemical leaveners can lose their potency over time for various reasons, including poor storage conditions.

The procedure for testing these two products is simple. Get out two small glasses or bowls and fill one with 3-4 tablespoons of white vinegar and fill the other with 3-4 tablespoons of room temperature water. Add about 1/2 teaspoon baking soda to the bowl containing the vinegar and the same amount of baking powder to the water bowl. Each mixture should fizz up, with the soda/vinegar producing a bigger reaction. If they both work, mark the containers with the date and check them again in 6-12 months (if you haven't used them up by then) to make sure they're still active. And if they don't fizz up, you better stop by the store before the next time you want to whip up a batch of cookies.

We may not think of it, but in order for us to really appreciate sweet and other tastes, we need contrasting tastes, like sour. At least that is according to Lawrence J. Diggs, "the vinegar man" and curator of the International Vinegar Museum (didn't know there was such a thing, now did you?). The Chicago Tribune's Food section yesterday has a long feature on vinegar, including way to infuse vinegars, types, and recipes.

To make your own flavored vinegars (and save yourself the expense of the overpriced ones from the store), add any of the following to 1 quart of distilled white vinegar: - 1 ounce fresh basil, or about half of a supermarket "clamshell" package, 1/2 ounce crushed red pepper flakes, 7 sprigs dill, 8 cloves garlic, 2 ounces fresh tarragon, or 4 ounces shallots. All you have to do is let it steep in a sunny window.

The recipes that the article includes are: Jacques Pepin's Chicken in Vinegar, Caramelized Onions with Sherry Vinegar, and Lamb Sausage with Creamy Polenta and Raspberry Vinegar.

Apple cider vinegar is a by-product of fermented apple (hard) cider, once one of the most popular and widely available alcoholic drinks in the US. Vinegar was used for preserving foods and was common in most households, where its sweet/tart flavor found a variety of other uses in sauces and dressings. Cooks Illustrated noticed that most people tend to reach for the store brand of cider vinegar - which does not get the same amount of shelf space as trendier balsamic vinegar does - and conducted a taste test in this month's issue to see if the brand made a difference.

The vinegars were tasted plain, in barbecue sauce, in pan sauce and in a vinaigrette. Tasters tended to prefer the vinegars with a sweeter, almost honeyed taste. The top two brands were Maille Apple Cider Vinegar and Spectrum Naturals Organic Apple Cider Vinegar (unfiltered), but even very common and inexpensive brands like White House and Heinz were found to be acceptable. So while there is a difference between brands, it probably won't make or break your dish.

And as a general tip, apple ciders with little apple bits still floating in them (unfiltered vinegars) tend to be a bit sweeter, with a bit more of an apple flavor than ones that are completely clear.

Chutney is becoming a more and more popular condiment, but most people don't know exactly what it is - in large part because there are so many different kinds of chutney available.

Chutney, in its basic form, is a condiment that contains fruit, vinegar, sugar and spices. It originated in India and was discovered by the Western world when British soldiers and colonists brought recipes back to England, along with other popular Indian foods, such as curries. It can be thick and chunky or smooth, and has a heat level that can range from very sweet to very spicy. The mixtures can be either cooked or uncooked and virtually all of them rely on the addition of chilies for heat. Mango chutney is probably the most popular variety, in part because mangoes are a popular fruit in India, but also because it was the first chutney that was widely available to Europeans.

Broadly, a chutney is basically a type of relish and there are really and endless number of variations that can be made on the theme, such as Fresh Peach Chutney, Melon Apple Chutney, Green Tomato Chutney and (of course) Mango Chutney.

This particular type of chocolate cake has many, many names: wacky cake, dump-it cake, one-pan cake, one-bowl cake, eggless cakes, easy chocolate cakes, vinegar cake. Though the ingredients vary from cake to cake, the concept is the same because all the recipes are for cakes made entirely in one bowl or even mixed directly in the pan. This means that it takes next to no time to prepare them and the cleanup is even less than it is for a cake mix - not to mention that you get a homemade chocolate cake in about an hour!

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's food section rounded up a group of bakers and put six one-bowl chocolate cake recipes to the test, including cakes from Martha Stewart and Nigella Lawson. The bakers had the same complaints about Nigella's recipe that I have had in the past, namely that her instructions aren't very clear and if you don't already know what you're doing, your cake can come out terribly. Martha's cake, which did use eggs, tasted great and the panel also loved a classic "crazy cake" recipe, which calls for vinegar and no eggs. The full results and winning recipes can be found here, and are a must-read for any baker or chocolate cake lover.

[Image Post Gazette]