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Gastric
Thursday May 4, 2006
I helpedsupervised the Missus in the making of a minestrone soup this evening and found myself squirting in a bit of tomato ketchup at the end to give it some zing.
What I was actually doing was taking a short cut to the effect a gastric will give you.
A gastric is simply a spoonful of sugar (I use brown) and a healthy slug of vinegar (I use white wine) mixed together and quickly boiled up to give a sweet and sour tasting substance which you can add to most tomato-based soups, sauces or dressings to give them that little something special. Add with care a little bit at a time though, you can kill a recipe just as easily by adding too much gastric.
But as I said, if you can’t be bothered with all that boiling and tasting a good squirt of tomato ketchup does much the same thing.
