Just Peachy...

This is what I was up to this morning.

Peach grilling.

To make the grilled peach salad with balsamic bacon vinaigrette reduction that I made not too long ago...only this was for a wedding shower pot-luck I was attending before work.  It turned out lovely.  Peaches become even more juicy, soft, and sweet after grilling.

It got rave reviews again.

Although I am going on record right now as saying that I do not like cooking bacon.  I do love this particular salad but I'm not a huge porcine fan per se...and cooking bacon is a greasy splattery popping hot mess.  My whole kitchen is now seemingly entirely covered in bacon grease...and besides?  When I was cooking these strips, a hot large drop of bacon grease popped out of the pan and into my left eye.

It had to go completely behind my glasses to do so.

Rude.

At least with all that bacon grease hanging around the dust will have somewhere to stick.

It's dusty in Arizona.

And if you've never cooked a balsamic reduction you must go to your kitchen and do so immediately.  It is a fun process by where you usually dump a lovely balsamic mixture into some sort of hot oil and the hot cloud (somewhat like mustard gas I would imagine) and smell of the vinegar then burns off all your nose hairs.  Word to the wise?  Don't stand over the pan when you're doing this or you will have a very hairy reduction to deal with.  And while last time everything went so smoothly and impressively (luring me into the idea that I am indeed a master chef) this time my reduction seemed to separate.  I'm not sure if this was from the amount of time I cooked it or the heat on which I cooked it?  I just used my intuition and took it off the burner and dumped a bit more vinegar into the pan before it cooled and that made it congeal right back up....that's what you're looking for in a reduction a thick congealing mass.

Sounds appetizing doesn't it?

Yeah.

Whatever.

My kitchen is greasy.

So is my eye.