{"id":50,"date":"2013-05-20T21:23:11","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T01:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/?p=50"},"modified":"2013-11-11T23:47:50","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T04:47:50","slug":"ode-to-fig-balsamic-vinegar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/20\/ode-to-fig-balsamic-vinegar\/","title":{"rendered":"Ode to Fig Balsamic Vinegar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So Sunday turned out to be Couples Day. My husband and I have regular Date Nights (typically Wed night for Top Chef and Sun night for Mad Men &#8230; yes, TV is involved, but it&#8217;s regularly scheduled and easy to Pin On A Calendar), but somehow Sunday turned into Couples Day. We had lunch together at home (leftover Epic Fail), test drove a car (probably an Epic Fail itself), and then headed to this newish frou-frou shopping center to wander about before we saw the new Star Trek movie.<\/p>\n<p>So in this shopping district I stumble upon a store devoted to olive oil and vinegar, <a title=\"Ah love Oil and Vinegar\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ahloveoilandvinegar.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ah love Oil &amp; Vinegar<\/a>. There are about a zillion olive oils in these adorable metal tanks TO SAMPLE and another zillion balsamic vinegars also in these little tanks TO SAMPLE. OMG &#8212; almost as good as a chocolatier (there&#8217;s one of those at this shopping center too but it was a warm day so they have to wait for another trip). This stuff is NOT cheap, but I always love the chance to sample before I buy. So I tasted a few (maybe six I was being conservative and saving room for popcorn) and ultimately bought their black truffle olive oil (I&#8217;ve been wanting to buy truffle-infused oil but was very nervous about dropping big $ on something that wasn&#8217;t so good) and their fig balsamic vinegar (I have a THING for figs).<\/p>\n<p>Have you ever slurped vinegar by the spoon? You can do that with a good aged balsamic &#8212; smooth, sweet, almost syrupy. Add some fig essence and you have a sauce fit for strawberries &#8230; ice cream &#8230; pound cake?<\/p>\n<p>Tonight&#8217;s dinner is an ode to this Fig Balsamic Vinegar. I built a simple salad with Red Leaf Lettuce from New Jersey, tart strawberries (they&#8217;re big and pretty but not super sweet), crumbled blue cheese, toasted almond slivers, and garlicky croutons, drizzled with the fig vinegar and a few drops of extra virgin olive oil. Served alongside is my <a title=\"KAF No-Knead Crusty White Bread\" href=\"http:\/\/www.kingarthurflour.com\/recipes\/no-knead-crusty-white-bread-recipe\" target=\"_blank\">homemade crusty artisan bread<\/a> and a glass of pinot noir &#8230; mmmm &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/2013-05-20-20.38.37.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"SAMSUNG\" src=\"http:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/2013-05-20-20.38.37-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>6\/5 update<\/em>: Just had a bowl of RIPE strawberries from the farm market, drizzled with some of this fig vinegar &#8230; OMG awesome \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So Sunday turned out to be Couples Day. My husband and I have regular Date Nights (typically Wed night for Top Chef and Sun night for Mad Men &#8230; yes, TV is involved, but it&#8217;s regularly scheduled and easy to Pin On A Calendar), but somehow Sunday turned into Couples Day. We had lunch together [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/2013-05-20-20.38.47.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ImYM-O","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/67"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}