What's that brown stuff on your plate?

Is that some sort of chutney? No. Did you burn something? No. Is that even food? Yes.
Well, it's not the prettiest dish I've ever made, but it tasted great. Yesterday, I decided that I wanted to make a German potato salad, or something like that. I didn't want anything cold with mayonnaise, I wanted something warm with that vinegar taste all through it.

I was fumbling through recipes until I realized that the only vinegar I had in the house was balsamic vinegar. I just happened to find a warm potato salad recipe using balsamic, so that's what I made. If you've never used balsamic vinegar, it's very dark, almost black, and the color takes over just about everything in the dish. It was good though. The recipe has sauteed shallots, celery and lots of bacon crumbles. I would totally make this again, but I might think about using a different type of vinegar next time (maybe apple cider vinegar). If you feel like you can take the looks of this dish, then you should try it. It really did taste great!!


Balsamic Potato Salad:
8 slices bacon
3 tablespoons flour
1 shallot, chopped
1/3 cup vinegar
1/3 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
4 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon powdered dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon crumbled whole rosemary leaves
2 quarts cooked diced potatoes (I used 8 small yukon gold potatoes)

Directions:
1. Dice potatoes and boil in salted water until done.
2. Fry bacon until crisp.
3. Remove from pan, drain and crumble.
4. Add flour and onion to the bacon fat left in the pan.
5. Stir in vinegar, water, sugar, salt and spices.
6. Cook only until mixture is of medium thickness (only about 5 minutes or so).
7. Add to potatoes and crumbled bacon.
8. Mix carefully to prevent mashing the potatoes.