Vinegar

Room 244
She drove four and a half hours from Rome to Modena just to see him again. The road was empty and dusty during the last two hours of the way, and along the sides old olive trees alternated with stalls tended by old fragile women who sold strawberries and apricots underneath the roaring sun. She still could taste the dust when she stepped out of the car and pushed up her sunglasses.

His house wasn’t just a house, but more like a big old manor with roofs made of red. weather-beaten shingles crouching above old rotten walls with closed shutters. We always close the shutters during the day. He would tell her later, it was just to keep the heat outside. He didn’t know that she brought a certain kind of heat when he opened the door and let her in. After all they had done that night in the little hotel near the Fontana de Trevi, he behaved strangely pure and chaste now.

“Do you want to see the vinegar?” he asked her.

“The what?”

“The vinegar my family makes,” he answered with a look from his dark, gloomy eyes.

“Sure.”

She followed him, and when they left the house the heat bit into her like an animal. Soon they went into the storehouse where he led her along between hundreds of barrels. A mild but still sour scent swirled through the air and bedazzled her mind while he kept talking about the small family business and the vinegar, about Trebbiano grapes and how they had grown them for generations on their own ground.

Gia felt tired. This wasn’t what she had in her mind when he had called her and asked if she would come to his house to see him again. She remembered the night they had met...the looks he had given her..and how they ended up in the wild garden of an abandoned house in the suburbs of Rome...the song of the cicadas in the high grass as he opened her blouse and pulled up her skirt over her waist...the heat of his cock against the inside of her thighs and how sweet and spicy his saliva tasted as his mouth met her lips and his tongue melted into her. She came hard and fast in a way she had never experienced before. She just had to take him back to her hotel room and now he...

“Do you wanna try some?” he asked.

“Pardon, I was thinking about something else,” Gia excused herself when his voice brought her back into reality.

“I asked if you wanna try the vinegar,” he said once more, giving her a patient look.

“Oh, no..thank you..but I don’t like sour tastes,” she said, lifting her hands to show that she really wasn’t inclined to try it.

“But it’s not sour..it’s..hm..you have to taste it yourself,” he said and opened an aperture in one of the barrels. Skillfully he lowered a small ladle into it and offered her a dark, fragrant fluid which looked almost like crude oil.

“C´mon ..try it." He held the ladle close to her lips. Reluctantly she opened them...sweet and sticky, it ran into her mouth and filled it with the taste of grapes, sweet oak and something she couldn’t identify. But she could identify the look he gave her. She knew she would stay.

Outside the cicadas start to sing.


i know a lot of people who dont like vinegar, for example maike my godson mareks mother told me just the other night that she actually hates the taste of vinegar...how do you prepare your salads i asked her sheepishly..with lemon she answered in a tone as if i had to know this fact after we are friends since she was fifteen...
anyway..i like it..i remember that i often dipped pieces of fresh cucumber into vinegar and ate it this way when i was a child..i loved the acid and sourness as well as the refreshing texture of the cucumber...

allready the romans, egyptians and the persians made vinegar as well as the mesopotamians wrote about "sour beer" which seemed to be vinegar as well...
if you look vinegar up in a lexicon it will tell you that "vinegar is made from the oxidation by acetic acid bacteria of ethanol in wine, cider, beer, fermented fruit juice, or nearly any other liquid containing alcohol"..which sounds extreme complicated and so not fun nor sexy...thats why my recipes for vinegar in the kitchen are all very easy
..all you need are herbs, spices and some decorative bottles..and always make sure that the fluid covers the ingredients..

garlic vinegar

1 small branch of thyme
1 small branch of basil
6 garlic cloves (or more if you like it)
1 small spoon of white pepper corns
1/2 litre white wine
100 grams of vingear essence

just wash the herbs, dry them propperly, peel the garlic and blend it all together with the wine and vinegar and put in the bottle..done!..keep it somewhere dark and cool.

lemon-balm vinegar

2 branches of lemon balm
1/2 litre white wine as well as 100 grams of vinegar essence OR the same amount of balsamico bianco

just clean the lemon balm and mix it with the fluids..so easy but very tasty for salads with wild herbs like rocket salads

pepper-vinegar

3 eating spoons of green pepper corns out of the glas
3/4 litre of wine vinegar

i know i know..its so simple that i m almost scarlet for offering you such a simple recipe but..er*..did i already say that its sharp/hot taste is really intense and delicious??

rosemary-vinegar

2 branches of rosemary
1/2 litre of red wine
100 grams of vinegar essence
perfect for all kinds of salads since itgives a strong mediterranean taste..

that´s it..now you know my favorite recipes for chutneys, oils and vinegars..i really hope you enjoyed this fest of many spices we met already before blend together...i also hope you try one or two of the recipes yourself and tell me how you liked them...

happy spicy sunday blog tour 2009..i hope for another great tour soon..:-)