Salad for Lunch

Had a salad for lunch today.  Took off some time from the keyboard to put something on the stove.

¿On the stove? you ask? For a salad? Well… yes.  For the reduced balsamic vinegar.

Take a 250 ml bottle of balsamic vinegar [1/2 pint]; dump it into a frying pan; add a good pinch if salt; turn on the fan over the stove (‘cause it sort of stinks) and boil it down until it’s 1/4 of the volume.  There’s a magic moment when it goes from liquid to syrupy and the taste goes from acidic to sweet.  The salt’s important to make that sweet taste intensive.  Use a frying pan to have the maximum surface area to reduce quickly.

Once you have this reduced, set it aside to cool.

The salad bit is spinach, sprinkle on Maldon salt (better in salads that regular salt), drizzle on a tiny bit of extra virgin olive oil (to wash the salt down through the leaves), then the slices of goat cheese [chevre], drizzle a little more oil one (to make sure that the balsamic syrup drips prettily), then drizzle on the balsamic syrup and sprinkle on a touch more Maldon salt (more for decoration than anything).

That’s it.  You’ll have a load of balsamic syrup left over but it’s good  for all sorts of things; ice cream, for example.

Somehow I got a pretty good picture of this.  The secret I think is to use the macro mode  steady the camera really well (a phone actually in this case).