Local strawberries are in!  Yay!!  But what to do when your loving husband brings you a flat of berries (8 quarts) rather than the 4 quarts you needed?  And the “shelf life” of these berries is maybe 8 hours.  Make freezer jam of course.

And what do you do when the weather has not been hot enough to bring out that full strawberry flavor you remember as a child?  Add a little balsamic vinegar of course.

With plenty of berries to experiment with, I made 3 batches according to the directions for strawberry freezer jam using Ball’s Instant Pectin.  The first batch was the “control”, just to see if adding the vinegar to the other batches had any effect on the jelling.  The vinegar batches were no soupier than the no-vinegar batch.  (Freezer jam by its nature tends to be soupier than cooked jams.)

I added 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar to one batch and 2 teaspoons to the other.  The 1-teaspoon batch tasted better than the control batch–more depth of flavor, and you couldn’t taste the vinegar until the very end.  The vinegar just enhanced the flavor.  In the 2-teaspoon batch, the flavor was still great, but the vinegar was a little more prominent.  It’s amazing what a difference such a small amount made.

We are currently serving the 1-teaspoon batch with rhubarb bread at breakfast.  I think the 2-teaspoon batch would be a great sauce over ice cream and pound cake.  What a treat to have either version stashed in the freezer.

Recipes that I saw online called for reducing the basamic before adding, but I really didn’t want that intense a flavor for breakfast.  What do you think?  Have you played around with freezer jams?  Any good combinations we should try?

For those of us of a certain age, modern menus (including ours), can look a little strange.  And the plating can be fascinating, even dramatic, but maybe a little confusing.  Here’s a brief guide for (and by) the clueless.

Menu writing has evolved as dining has evolved.  “Back in the day,” as we oldsters say, a menu would list a classic dish which you knew (or were expected to know) how it was prepared and what the primary ingredients were.

Well, Chef Adam is bringing us up to date.  Now, on our Saturday night menu, you might see:

Scallop, Corn Purée, Chorizo, Chili Oil,
Confit Tomato, Leeks, Machê, Plantain Chips

So, you might wonder, “What is this, a list of ingredients?”  Well no, the items listed for each dish reflect the primary flavor components.  Adam strategically places these components on the plate so that each bite you take will be a somewhat different combination of flavors and textures than the bite before or the bite after.

Unless, of course, you are the type who stirs up all those intersting components of your soup, getting the same effect you got when you mixed all your finger paints together in kindergarten.  Adam says, since you don’t tell him how to cook it, he’s not going to tell you how to eat it.  Neil says, pay attention to each exquisite bite and savor the moment!

You can see recent menus posted on our website to get an idea of what is in store for your dining pleasure on Friday and Saturday evenings.  We also have a collection of past menus here at the inn that are fun to leaf through.

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