Instead of a recipe this month, I thought I might write about how recipes come about. Last week we celebrated our 36th year in business (Taft Street became a bonded winery on April Fools Day, 1982), and I barbecued some chicken and served it with potato salad.
Potato salad needs onions, but I don’t like raw onions, so I soaked a couple of sliced red onions in some white wine vinegar overnight. They retained their crunchiness and were a nice addition to the salad. A jar of beautiful pink vinegar was left over – what to do?
I mixed a ¼ cup of soy sauce to the vinegar and put it in a spray bottle. While barbecuing the chicken (which had been dry rubbed the night before), I kept the meat moist be spraying it periodically with the seasoned vinegar.
The result – a nice tangy potato salad and chicken combo.
Oh, the Taft Street 2017 Russian River Valley Sauvignon Blanc was a perfect match.