Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Balsamic Popcorn with Cracked Pepper and Parmesan

In some ways, I am very much a purist. For example, do NOT put lettuce and taco sauce on my pizza, and don't even THINK about putting cottage cheese in my lasagne.
On the other hand, in some ways I am quite radical. Take this popcorn. I can't remember where I first got the inspiration, but its been on my mind for weeks now, and last night, I just couldn't take it any longer.

For this batch, I simmered 1/4 cup good balsamic vinegar until it was reduced by about half. Then I stirred in a half a stick of butter until it was all incorporated. Since I'm lazy and I didn't want to dirty another pot, I cheated and used microwave popcorn instead of popping my own. This makes about enough for two bags of popcorn. I tossed the popped corn with the balsamic butter mixture, and then I couldn't resist adding a bunch of fresh cracked pepper and Parmesan cheese on the top.

What a feast! Rich and buttery, but with the tang of the balsamic. A real treat! It went quite nicely with a glass of prosecco from the bottle my friend Chris just brought me from Chicago (sorry Ginny, it was supposed to be for us to share, but yeah, I drank it!) What do you think?

3 comments:

Pam said...

Unique combination! Looks good!

Krista said...

This is perfect! I'm always playing with ways to dress up my microwave popcorn. I have actually drizzled mine with balsamic vinegar and sprinkled with parmesan on more than one occasion. However, it didn't occur to me to reduce the vinegar and mix in butter. I bet that makes it more adhesive and I'd wind up with less pieces of vinegar-saturated, soggy popcorn. Genius. Thank you.

Anne said...

how did you come up with that? sounds goood!