The Chef's Table: Save the good balsamic for a drizzle.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Jim Coleman and Candace Hagan

Q: I bought 18-year-old aged balsamic vinegar recently, but am unsure how to use it beyond salads. Do you have any simple recipes to share? _ Janice K.

A:I don't know what you spent on that balsamic vinegar, but if you did spend upward of $50 to $75, I'd be curious as to whether you confessed that purchase to your spouse and what his reaction was.

Many moons ago when our kids were small (now one's in college and that's where all the money goes) and we were doing the "Trying to Stay Out of Credit Card Debt Hell Dance," I decided I couldn't live without a 2-ounce bottle of 50-year-old balsamic. With my chef's discount, it was still $125 and you had to use an eyedropper to dispense the one or two drops you might use at a time.

Well, Janice, I've been called a lot of things _ in this case "level-headed" was not one of them. My wife, (God bless her) who manages the bills, asked me to explain why that $125 wouldn't have been better used paying down one of the credit cards. But I stubbornly argued that as a chef I should own a $10-a-drop aged balsamic ... because "that's who I am."

As it turned out, I may have pulled that balsamic out of the pantry three times because then I felt it was too expensive to use more often than that. But if buying the stuff was a lapse in judgment (as my wife tried to convince me) then not using it after I had it was an even bigger mistake. Looking back, I wish I had just enjoyed it while I had it. It's like waiting until you can afford to have kids; unless you are a sports superstar or a movie idol, by the time you are financially able to start a family you're 80 years old.

I'm sure you paid handsomely for your aged balsamic, Janice. But isn't it strange that you can go to any grocery store and pick up a balsamic in a fancy bottle with an important looking label that costs $3.95? Isn't it true that balsamic vinegar is supposed to be aged a minimum of 10 years and should only come from the Modina and Reggio Emilia provinces in Italy? And isn't it treated almost like wine where the freshly pressed juice of the Trebbiano grape is boiled down by half with some sugar and then transferred to special wooden barrels and is re-barreled a couple of times to help with the evaporation that truly makes it unique? And you get all of this for ...