Food substitions

Don't know about the vinegar. But leeks might be a good sub for the shallots if you can get them use the light part only not the green stem of the leek.

Substitutions

These things depend a lot on how dominant the flavors of the wine vinegar or shallots are to the recipe.

Some commercial vinegar products are sold as "wine-flavored" vinegar. While I don't recommend them, they are essentially ordinary distilled vinegar diluted to normal strength with de-alcoholized dry red wine. If your recipe includes other liquids and if if will be heated to drive off the alcohol, you could try that. Use the amount of vinegar called for and an equal amount of red wine, decreasing another liquid by the amount of the wine. Obviously, this won't work in things like salad dressings where you're stuck with the residual alcohol.

If you can get wine and you can find vinegar that's not been heat-treated to destroy the "mother", you can easily make your own vinegar. I've done it (from red zinfandel, a grape with great fruitness that Ilike) and it's mostly just a matter of time, not skill. Unlike wine making where you must be careful to keep oxygen out, getting oxygen in is what makes the process go. You can find complete instructions at many sites by doing a Google search on vinegar making.

In any case, if you have to substitute a different vinegar, you'll just have a different recipe, not a bad one. I'd avoid distinctively-flavored vinegars, however, like apple cider or herb unless you think that's a compatible flavor.

If the shallots are a minor component in the recipe, especially one where they are cooked, I'd use an equal amount of onion with just a touch of garlic. I've made the substitution many times when we've run out of our home-grown shallots, and I was not hankering for a trip to the store. Again, even where the shallots play a bigger role, you will have a dish that tastes different, but still good.

Shallots are used when the recipe requires an intense onion flavor in a small amount. And the shallot turns very soft and mushy, kind of absorbs itself into the sauce.
Leeks will stay too firm, best bet is to take white or yellow onion, cook it very, very slow it will get mushy and release more moisture and texture. Depending on what you are making and how important the onion flavor is to the dish, you may want to chop the onion finer, using a little more, cook it slow and then just remove some with a slotted spoon and continue on.

If I needed a subsitute for wine vinager for a dish, I would use some white vinager with a decent wine added to it. Saving that last swallow in the wine bottle is ideal for this. Try mixing a 1 part wine to 2 part white vinager. White is more acidic, a little harsher than cider and a wine vinager is more mellow as a general rule. The only other thing I can see is that the recipe may require a small touch (like a pinch, 1/4 of a teaspoon would be a lot) of sugar to bring it around, simply because wine vinagers can be a little sweeter than most.

Just go to http://www.foodsubs.com.

How quickly we forget :( http://cheftalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16942

http://www.davejoachim.com/