Sour Grapes
Friday, August 26, 2005 10:53
I love sour. I love grape juice. Imagine my joy when I was wandering through Marina Farms and a bottle caught my eye. Sour grape juice!
I tossed the bottle in my cart and began to dream about sipping the tart nectar when I got home. My fiancee wasn’t quite as excited as I was, but when I poured two small glasses to try, she agreed to taste it.
I took a small sip and… dear god, my whole body contorted and I couldn’t stop shaking my head. My face bunched up and the juice grabbed hold of all of my taste buds.
I immediately realized that I had the wrong idea about this juice. My fiancee smelled the glass and said “it smells like doodie, I’m not drinking that”. We found the brains in the relationship.
It turns out that sour grape juice, which is a product of Iran, is used in some persian recipes, similar to when I would normally use lemon juice, or possibly vinegar. This being the case, I did salvage the two glasses by shaking the remaining juice up with some olive oil, mustard, salt, pepper and a little honey to make a delicious, and slightly fruity, salad dressing.
Sour Grape Juice is also known as Verjuice and its great advantage is adding acid without dominating flavours. The juice is made from unripened grapes and sometimes other sour fruits like green or crab apples.
I have about a cup of salad dressing left, as well as about 3/4 of a bottle of the unmolested juice in my fridge. I’m going to try to get creative with it, as far as my fiancee will tolerate.
By Jonah (see more of his posts). Jonah is the founder of la.foodblogging and also created Digesty, a food blog aggregator and Cheww.com, a spam free foodblog search engine.
SoCalorie says:
August 26th, 2005 at 12:12 pm
Try Loux Sour Cherry drink. It’s carbonated, very sour, made in Greece. I think it has ascorbic acid in it which IMO is a key ingredient in puckery drinks. Ya like Amaretto Sours?
Jonah says:
August 27th, 2005 at 11:49 am
I’m not so much of an Amaretto person, vodka/Tom Collins I can go for, fer sure. I’ll definitely have to try the Loux Sour Cherry, sounds like something I might have to go to Surfas for. Any other sources around town?
niki says:
September 9th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
I love this stuff so much, i do drink it alone (albeit in small doses, like a shot glass or two). Then again, i am from the north of iran, where sour tastes dominate in the cuisine, so i probably have a higher sour tolerance than most folks.
Rey Movahed says:
January 13th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Nas Xatun: from Mazandaran, south central part of the Caspian Sea. For making this tastey sour hors-d’oeuvres bake until tender or make kebab, peel and chop three eggplants, put in a bowl, add one cup cup of sour grape juice (or more), one half cup of water (or less), one half cup of finely chopped fresh dark basil leaves, plus three chopped and ground garlick cloves (or more), and stir and serve. Eat it with bread or rice. Note: There are two kind of basil in northern Iran. The one with smaller and darker leaf is used in making Nas Xatun.