2015 Gift Guide: Foraged Vinegar

When I was at the Dupont Circle Farmers Market last fall, signing cookbooks on what must have been the coldest, windiest day in October, a man walked diffidently up to me, holding out a couple bottles of vinegar.

"I make these," he said.  "I thought you might like to taste them."

Indeed!  Lindera Farms Vinegars are among the most complex and interesting vinegars I've tried, vinegars that add panache to just about everything you use them in. They're great in salad dressings, but where they really shine is splashed onto vegetables, into soups - or even on desserts, where their intensity acts as fine counterfoil to the sweetness of say, a caramel sauce.

The vinegars, which are used by many chefs, aren't easy to find.  But here's one place you can order them; if you do it now you should have your vinegar in time for Christmas. Cooking friends will thank you.