About Vinegar
The text below is an excerpt from 'The Nome Guide to Fermentation'
Throughout Europe and probably the entire Western world, adding a splash of vinegar is the prevailing method of injecting a bit of freshness into whatever you’re cooking. The next time you have some store-bought orange marmalade, add a little vinegar and a pinch of salt to make it instantly more vibrant. If you’re making your own ice cream—depending on the type you’re making—a little fruity vinegar will give it an unexpected edge. And very few cooked vegetables or fruits aren’t improved with a hit of vinegar.
Before we really found our way with lacto-fermentation, most of the pickling done at noma was with vinegar. Here in Scandinavia, vinegar pickles are everywhere, likely because they’re so simple to make: Combine one part water, one part vinegar, and a little salt and sugar; add your fruits or vegetables; and let them sit. Vinegar-pickling plays less of a role at noma now, but is still used on ingredients like shoots, mushrooms, and seasonal flowers. Potent blooms like elder- flower, rose petals, colt’s foot, chamomile, or dandelion flowers are left to mature in apple vinegar for at least a few weeks in the fridge, before the pickled flowers find their way into all sorts of dishes, from roasted bone marrow to desserts. As a happy side effect, the vinegar takes on the flowers’ hue and fragrance and can be used to bring tartness to both sweet and savory dishes, long after the pickles themselves are gone. The same method can be applied to nice effect with fresh fruits. Many of the fruit vinegars you find at grocery stores are produced by soaking fruit in neutral-flavored vinegars.
Balanced acidity is crucial to a successful cooking, which is why we’ve always found vinegar to be such a powerful ingredient. The word vinegar comes from the Latin vinum acer—literally “sour wine.” But of course, that only scratches the surface of what vinegars can be. There are aged vinegars, such as balsamic, that have texture and sweetness. There are very strong vinegars that cut through anything with their acidity. On the other side of the spectrum, there are vinegars with very little acidity (only 1% or 2%) that you can drink straight from the bottle or use as sauces in their own right. Our Wild Rose Vinegar made from wild roses handpicked in the peak of summer is a perfect example of the latter. The lower acidity lets the original flavor shine through, bringing an additional layer of brightness.
About Wild Rose Vinegar
A rare seasonal treat,wild beach rose petals are foraged by hand and blended in incredibly highconcentrationto create a vinegar that is delicate, balanced, and floral.Wild Rose Vinegar iscomplimentary to many other flavors andworks well in everythingfrom a cocktail,to a main course, to dessert.