A few months ago the issue of gastriques came up in another part of the forum as a potential SCS module. Until that time, I started doing a little research and found that my local library (the one at my home) was amazingly devoid of information. Larousse defined it but never said how to make one.
The other night I was in need of a sauce to compliment some hunks of pork loin that I was pan roasting. So I decided to experiment. Given several types of vinegar and several types of other things I opted to use cider vinegar and some lingonberry jam (we had been it Ikea the week before), and reduced it to a concoction I dubbed a Lingonberry Gastrique. It needed a little tempering with additional sugar, to be really tasty and have a pleasant sweet-sour but not a vinegar bite.
I was afraid that it would set up like glue considering the pectin inherent in the jam, but somehow it cooled down to a really nice, thick, rich-flavored sauce. But I'm still not sure if I made a gen-u-wine gastrique, or just some sort of vinegary reduction of Swedish jam.
But it tasted good. In fact, so good that the rest of the family raided the pot and slathered it over their rice, basically ignoring my beautifully moist pan-roasted pork loin. Ahhhh... more for me!
Any one have any advise on gastriques? I think I'm interested in further experimentation but could use whatever advise anyone has to offer!