Balsamic Vinegars

This book offers a clear description of all the balsamic vinegars and/or similar products produced in the world, their differences in composition, quality and use. This encompasses all the steps for the production of Traditional Balsamic Vinegar: grape composition, crushing, concentration of the must, alcoholic and acetic fermentation, ageing, sensorial properties and quality of the final product. This book covers extensively all the balsamic vinegars, especially the industrial ones that have a really large market and diffusion.

In industrial vinegar production, there are three main types of methods involved; the slow, handcrafted, traditional method ("Orleans" or "French" method), and the rapid submerged and generator methods. The current trend is to fuse traditional techniques with state-of-the-art technologies, and a variety of approaches have been developed to increase fermentation efficiency and reduce cost and fermentation time. This book reports on all the recent innovations in vinegar production, and compares them to the traditional submerged fermentation systems. The new trends on raw materials, substrate pretreatment strategies, alcoholic fermentation, and acetitification systems are also reviewed.

From food writer and historian Angela Clutton comes The Vinegar Cupboard, demonstrating the many great ways vinegars can be used to balance and enhance flavours, and enable modern cooks to make the most of this ancient ingredient. There aren't too many ingredients which manage to bring flavour and adaptability to recipes and are actively good for you, but vinegar manages it, and this must-have new book looks at how they have woven their way through culinary and medical history for thousands of years, and highlight the ways we can all benefit from vinegar in our diet. There is a growing interest in vinegars and a recognition of the role acidity plays in cooking, and within these page, Angela Clutton shows how much can be achieved using just red or white wine vinegar in your cooking, as well as exploring the vast array of vinegars available. The range of vinegars on the market are expanding rapidly, and you can easily find fruit, herb, sherry, cider, malt, rice, balsamic and many types of red and white wine vinegars (from rioja through to champagne) on your supermarket shelves. The Vinegar Cupboard encourages cooks to have an arsenal of as many varieties of vinegars as they can fit in their kitchen; while we don't expect everyone to have a vinegar cupboard, we'd like to think this book will encourage a vinegar shelf at least! Info-graphics and flavour wheels enhance the recipes, ensuring this is a usable and accessible book for all home cooks.

The ultimate 'show and tell' reference to ingredients from around the globe, The Cook's Book of Ingredients showcases fresh food and explains how to get the best out of it. Get expert information that tells you which varieties of ingredients are best, and how to buy, store, and eat them. Flavor Pairings give you a helping hand by listing complementary ingredients, and more than 250 Simple Classic key-ingredient recipes, such as Peach Melba and Pesto, complete the journey from field to plate. The Cook's Book of Ingredients stimulates readers to try new foods and more about their favorites. This is an invaluable reference for food lovers and cooks intent on making the most of all the ingredients available today.

Boost your immune system with antioxidants, lower your risk for the flu, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and more—with ordinary everyday ingredients you can find at home—and make healthy green choices in today’s fast-changing world! Revised and updated, this comprehensive book draws on the latest scientific studies and interviews with top health researchers and functional medicine practitioners to reveal how apple cider and red wine vinegars—as well as balsamic, fruit, rice, and herb-infused vinegars—can help you stay healthy. Boost your immune system with antioxidants, and lower your risk for cancer, diabetes, heart disease, bone loss, and more. You’ll also find proven home health cures, innovative cosmetic and cooking secrets, lively anecdotes, and environmentally friendly household hints—from cleaning up after kids and pets to killing bacteria, viruses, and antibiotic-resistant superbugs. You can even make those countertops sparkle. Vinegar even holds the key to helping combat symptoms of allergies, arthritis, toothaches, sunburn, swimmer’s ear, sore throats, and other pesky ailments. Looking to slim down, shape up, and enhance longevity? Learn the keys to health in this latest revised and updated edition of a homeopathic classic. “A practical, health-oriented book that everyone who wants to stay healthy and live longer should read.” —Patricia Bragg, ND, PhD, author of Apple Cider Vinegar “The essential book on vinegar—the number one superfood of all time!” —Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD, author of The Fat Flush Plan

This book, written by leading international authorities in the field, covers all the basic and applied aspects of acetic acid bacteria. It describes the importance of acetic acid bacteria in food industry by giving information on the microbiological properties of fermented foods as well as production procedures. Special attention is given to vinegar and cocoa, which are the most familiar and extensively used industrial applications of acetic acid bacteria. This book is an essential reference to all scientists, technologists, engineers, students and all those working in the field of food science and technology.

Vinegars can be considered as acidic products of special importance for the enri- ment of our diet, and resulting from the desired or controlled oxidation of ethanol containing (liquid) substrates. The traditional use and integration of vinegars in numerous cultures can be traced back to ancient times. In fact, the cultural heritage of virtually every civilization includes one or more vinegars made by the souring action (of micro-organisms) following alcoholic fermentation. It has been do- mented that the Egyptians, Sumerians and Babylonians had experience and tech- cal knowledge in making vinegar from barley and any kind of fruit. Vinegar was very popular both in ancient Greece and Rome, where it was used in food prepa- tions and as remedy against a great number of diseases. In Asia, the first records about vinegar date back to the Zhou Dynasty (1027-221 BC) and probably China’s ancient rice wines may have originally been derived from fruit, for which (malted) rice was substituted later. The historical and geographical success of vinegars is mainly due to the low technology required for their production, and to the fact that several kinds of raw materials rich in sugars may easily be processed to give vinegar. In addition, vi- gars are well-known and accepted as safe and stable commodities that can be c- sumed as beverages, health drinks or added to food as preservatives or as flavo- ing agents.

Fermentation, as a chemical and biological process, is everywhere. Countless societies throughout history have used it to form a vast array of foods and drinks, many of which were integral and essential to those cultures; it could be argued that the production of beer and bread formed the basis of many agriculture-based civilizations. Today, nearly every person on the planet consumes fermented products, from beer and wine, to bread and dairy products, to certain types of meat and fish. Fermentation is a nearly ubiquitous process in today's food science, and an aspect of chemistry truly worth understanding more fully. In The Oxford Handbook of Food Fermentations, Charles W. Bamforth and Robert E. Ward have collected and edited contributions from many of the world's experts on food fermentation, each focused on a different fermentation product. The volume contains authoritative accounts on fermented beverages, distilled beverages, and a diverse set of foods, as well as chapters on relevant biotechnology. Each chapter embraces the nature of the product, its production, and its final composition. The text also touches on the raw materials and processes involved in producing packaged foodstuff, and the likely future trends in each area. In the conclusion, Bamforth and Ward present a comparison between the various products and the diverse technologies employed to produce them. Fermentation is a multifaceted process that affects a wide variety of products we consume, and The Oxford Handbook of Food Fermentations is the definitive resource that captures the science behind fermentation, as well as its diverse applications.