Balsamic this, balsamic that, so much hooey!

What is it with balsamic vinegar? It shows up in everything. A little saucer with a splash of black pungent balsamic vinegar under a quarter cup of olive oil is the first thing set on the table and unless you are lucky some sort of balsamic sorbet will be the last thing set before you. What is it? It is a long time and esteemed local specialty of Modena Italy. Until it became the vinegar to end all vinegar's, it was a thick sweet caramelized long aged product that played a role in Italian cooking very much like Worcestershire Sauce played in American cooking. It added a savory bass note to dishes and gravies, a few drops went into a Caesar Salad, a few more into a Bloody Mary.

Now it appears in everything and anything. A while back it was kiwi fruit that showed up in all the expected places and in the damnedest places too. Balsamic vinegar has some great uses, but it is not the elixir of love.

Lets talk about vinegar's. There are lots and lots of them and unlike Balsamic most of them are great in salads and other things too. To begin there is red wine vinegar and its twin, white wine vinegar. These are meant to dress salads. The more rustic and Mediterranean, the more it cries out for a good red wine vinegar. The more refined and delicate salads like Bibb or Boston lettuce call for a more refined white wine vinegar. The classic french dressing calls for red wine and olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper and a teaspoon of dry mustard and sweet paprika. A more elegant Parisian Dressing calls for white wine vinegar and olive oil salt pepper and a healthy spoon of smooth Dijon mustard to give tang and emulsify the dressing. Seafood salads call for a tarragon white wine vinegar. Other salads need the robust dark richness of a Sherry Vinegar from Spain, something that is used more in main dishes than on salads where it tends to overwhelm.

There are other vinegar's, for example apple cider vinegar, an amber acid with a hint of apple sweetness, malt vinegar used mainly in the British Isles where its rich sharpness and hint of malt sugar gives a robust bite. In Asia rice vinegar's are the staple, they combine a sharpness with a mild slight sweetness. They are available in their natural state or seasoned and slightly sweetened. These seasoned rice vinegar's are mild enough to dress a salad alone, no oil need which is very useful if you are watching calories.

The one fine vinegar that has fallen out of favor and I regret is tarragon vinegar. In the USA it is usually made with apple cider vinegar, which gives an earth Midwestern flavor. The best Tarragon vinegar's from France and Italy are white wine vinegar's that have a large sprig of tarragon in the bottle to infuse the musky herbal flavor. The one place they are absolutely and vitally necessary is in seafood salads, especially calamari or octopus salads. This is the perfect herb to bring out the subtle briny essence of these particularly ugly but wonderful tasting creatures.

California & Salad Days

California is and has been the salad bowl of the nation since the railroads perfected the refrigerator car a hundred years ago. The Southern Pacific and Union Pacific built thousands of bright yellow orange insulated "refer" cars as they were called, established ice houses along the routes to keep them cold and developed high speed steam locomotives to pull the trains. Today the Union Pacific keeps the last steam locomotive that is still in continuous service, a large fast Challenger class engine that was specifically designed to haul the Pacific Fruit Express as this service was called.

My wife’s mother Fran grew up in Chicago. Seeing it on a menu, she told us how in pre-World War II Chicago, the “Wedge Salad” was a famous local specialty even in winter time at the best restaurants and steak houses. Because the railroads could deliver Salinas Valley lettuce to Chicago in three days, the restaurants could offer this delicacy. Still a steakhouse favorite, the Wedge Salad is as its name indicates is a large wedge of iceberg lettuce served whole on a plate with a heavy garnish of bacon shards, crumbled blue cheese, chopped fresh tomato and hard boiled egg then dressed with a white wine vinaigrette dressing. The diner’s carving up the dense crisp wedge was part of its appeal, which indicates its steakhouse origin, since diners already had a sharp steak knife along side their plate.

A Union Pacific Challenger locomotive built to haul high speed Pacific Fruit Express trains from California to the Midwest. Still on the active roster, it is the largest steam locomotice still in service in the world. Photo copyright by Allen Robertson used with permission.

In California at this time in the better restaurants, salads were either made at table side like the Caesar or dressed and tossed table side as they still do at Lawry’s Prime Rib. In San Francisco in the simple family run Italian restaurants like the New Pisa salads were served in a bowl that came out of the kitchen and stopped at the counter of the older woman who supervised the the dinning room. She would carefully pour on just the right amount of olive oil and then the waitress would deliver to the customer’s table where a cruet of red wine vinegar waited. Then either the waitress or the head of the table would pour on the vinegar and toss the salad then pass it around.

There is a unique salad that has long been the specialty at Clearman’s in San Marino and its branches. This salad, actually a pair of simple salads that are eaten together are memorable and addictive. They call the pair “Red & White” salads. The White salad is lettuce tossed in a not too rich creamy blue cheese dressing. It is paired with tart snappy red cabbage salad in a red wine vinegar dressing. This is the “Red” half of the partnership. The “White Salad” must be dressed immediately before serving to make sure the lettuce stays crisp. The “Red Salad” on the other hand has to be made a day or at least half a day before to set up. The red cabbage has to loose some of its moisture and soften just a bit while it absorbs the tangy vinegar sharpness that makes the combination of the two salads fascinating and refreshing.

Recipes for the pair salads are available at the LA Time food blog. They are not the actual recipes that Clearman’s keep to themselves, but savvy culinary “reverse engineering” that results in a near perfect duplicate of the original. On LA Times food blog do a search for “Clearman’s Salad.”

Like many trademark restaurant dishes including Joe’s Special, Philippe’s French Dip sandwich and Taylor’s Steakhouse “Molly Salad,” I suspect this pairing was a happy accident that the customers loved and asked for again and again. My theory is that the “red” salad came about when someone in the kitchen prepared a batch of red cabbage to be cooked down into the traditional German Rotkohl but never got around to cooking it. Someone in the kitchen tasted it after it sat over night and realized this was a cabbage salad with zest and crunchiness and served it. At the table the customers themselves most likely mixed the “Red” salad with the “White” one and the fit was a natural.

The whole phenomenon of the “happy accident” will be the topic of a future blog. A surprising number of well known dishes originated by lucky chance not the more common rational intention. One reason why they are memorable is the pure mischance or unusual circumstances of their creation, they broke some rule or tradition in an unexpected way, yet they worked. Another coming post will be a rant at the wide spread debasement of two California classics, the Caesar and Cobb salads. While not accidents these two icon dishes were both the result of someone daring to innovate when unusual circumstances demanded it. As the old US Navy wisdom has it, Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

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