pretty little things

Oh. My. Gawd. I was in the veg store ogling and fondling the vinegars, as I sometimes do, when I happened upon saffron vinegar. The vegetable dude is used to my little dances in his store, but I think the squeals of joy might have been a new thing. Then, I saw some adorable little kumkwats. "Hello", they said. "Come to me, my pretties", I answered. The veg dude laughed, I laughed, and then on the way home, I picked up some fresh rice noodles, because I had a devious plan. Now, should you choose to copy my devious plan, I should warn you that I looooove vinegary things. This is not a mild dish. So, you've been warned.

Rice noodles with carrot ribbons (made with a peeler) and chopped up bitter greens, all blanched together. Topped with broccoli and kumkwats simmered in saffron vinegar (not diluted with water or sweetened) and then topped with roasty toasty freshly crushed cumin and walnuts and a sprinkling of saffron threads. If you don't have my wonderful veg shop nearby, you could just use white wine vinegar and then add saffron at the end. Perhaps the tiniest itsy bitsy-est dash of mixed chili (nanami togarashi, which is chilli peppers, orange peel, sesame, seaweed and ginger. But I hardly added any, because I didn't want to overwhelm the saffron) and a tiny bit of salt. Full stop. Full yum. If you felt the need to somehow "balance out" the vinegar, you could add a little bit of pomegranite syrup, or some raisins, or some maple syrup. But I will point and laugh and call you a wuss. Actually, this would be really nice on potatoes (maybe baked potatoes), but I wanted something that would be completely and utterly unable to reduce the vinegar-saffrony goodness here.

dancing to: my own evil laughter.