Food Pairing 101

posted by Callie in Wine, Guest Bloggers, Food

I’ve said before that I’m a firm believer in drinking whatever one’s heart desires; the rules can bend or break no matter the occasion, weather, or meal. However, it’s no secret that wine and food make quite a couple. When the two are put together the possibilities are endless.

You see every dish is dynamic…they are all made up of parts that sum up a truly tasty whole. The same goes for wine. It’s grown in soils, in different parts of the world, in different climates, in different barrels, for all different amounts of time. These ingredients make up the whole that is then placed into a bottle that lands on your table, onto your taste buds and so on. When food and wine are combined, the dynamics in both can change, resulting in a new and completely individual experience.

When pairing food and wine there are several things that can happen…

One possibility is for the food to exaggerate a characteristic of the wine. For example, think about eating blueberries and washing it down with a California Zinfandel. You may as well be drinking a container of Juicy Juice with all that berry overload.

On the flip side, the food could also diminish a characteristic of the wine. When you have a bold tannic wine, such as a Barolo or a Bordeaux, you will want to pair that with a protein so that it can soften the tannins and round out the flavors.

Another possibility is that the flavor intensity of the food can cancel out the flavor of the wine (and vice versa). If you’re drinking a very spicy Mexican dish, with a soft Pinot, you will most likely only taste the spicy hot Mexican dish.

Ideally, the food and wine can interact perfectly, creating a whole new experience that’s better than having the two separately. This is what we are all in search of when trying to pair food with wine.

I’ve taken the liberty to list general taste “classes” of wines with general pairing options below. Take a look and try them out if you want.

Generally, acidity is a characteristic used when talking about racy white wines such as a sauvignon blanc or sancerre. These wines tend to enhance salty flavors, therefore can be paired well with oysters or any kind of shell fish. Even a salad with vinaigrette dressing would play nicely against the dry acidity of these wines.

Alcoholic wines such as big California or fortified wines are typically grown in warm climates, which ripen the fruit more and give the wines a bigger, bolder taste. Generally, these wines couple well with foods that are just slightly sweet. Because they have a strong, raisiny flavor, you would probably want to steer clear of any type of dish that’s lightly flavored. These wines tend to have ripe fruit notes, so something that’s just slightly sweet would pair well, dark chocolate being a good example.

Most of us know that dry, tannic red wines are perfect with red meat proteins. As was mentioned previously, protein diminishes tannins and thus the flavor of the wine is rounded out. These wines tend to take away the perception of sweetness, therefore go ahead and try them out with your richer fattier dishes like BBQ ribs.

Moving on, we have wines that often carry a sweetness to them and can include dessert wines (Cali White Zin and many trocken Rieslings). These wines make saltier foods more appealing and can also go well with light desserts. Try having an Amarone while noshing on salted peanuts or pretzels sometime. The effect can be that it makes the wine more fruity than sweet.

As I said before, there are no real rules in wine but this is a time when the phrase, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” comes to mind. There’s no sense in messing up something that is already perfectly wonderful. While I encourage everyone to go forth and explore, I still want you all to know that there may be nothing better than an aged Barolo with a Peter Lugar Steak done medium rare. YUUUUUUUM.

Callie Exas has just launched her wine career at New York Wine Co. in Manhattan. So far so good!

Lacrima

posted by Kirstin in Wine, Guest Bloggers, Food

After a blind(folded) tasting, no one debating whether Lacrima’s delicious or complex. It’s clear by this point that it’s one hell of a grape. Rather the question is, what color is Lacrima?

Swirl it around in the glass, and it evokes scents normally devoted to Gewürztraminer. Lychee. Roses. Swirl the glass again and the orange blossom and peach scents released will convince you that you’re drinking muscato. Suddenly, you detect the pungent scent of dried strawberries. Then, actually sipping the wine provides you with floral notes, berry rich acidity and… light tannins?

Translating to tear in Italian, the red grape Lacrima is an ancient varietal indigenous to the Marche region of Italy. It’s traditionally produced in the “governo Toscano” method, which is a second fermentation most often including the must of dried or partially dried Lacrima grapes. Some Lacrimas also go through carbonic maceration.

After fermentation, Lacrima is treated like any other red wine, consumed in Italy, and some are sent to the rest of wine drinking world. Once it arrives in the new world, however, few know what to do with it on the dinner table. With characteristics ranging from rose and orange blossom to peach and dried strawberries, the grape does not
immediatelydirect itself to one particular food.

Without such direction, I would do one of a few of things.

1. Drink it with fresh chevre or mildly aged goat cheese. The Lacrima would bring out the fresh lemony and floral nature of the vibrant cheese and the chevre would know to leave well enough alone and let Lacrima be the star.

2. Sip the Lacrima with a crisp, roast chicken. Simple, and juicy on both the food and wine end.

3. Enjoy the wine with a cooked tomato dish with lighter meats like pork, veal, or chicken, or fresh fish. Herbs like rosemary and sage won’t compete with the floral flavors in the wine with fish or light meat or poultry.

4. Go the distance with artisan salamis. Fennel salami, sopresetta, coppa, drooling,……The juicy, bright acidity wine would highlight the luscious fattiness in the meat..

Even if you haven’t tasted Lacrima, as I hadn’t a month ago, what would you imagine eating it with?

Kirstin Jackson Ellis works as a wine bar manager and wine and food consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area and writes about wine and food pairing at Vin de La Table, her luxurious and lighthearted blog.

Crottin de Chavignol Cheese & it’s Wine Friends

posted by Kirstin in Wine, Guest Bloggers, Food

The dear Crottin de Chavignol, which first saw the light of day in the 16th century, was named “animal poop” or “dung” in honor of its similarity in size and shape to French horsey droppings.

That is how you know it’s good. Because, unlike the American dish, “shit on a shingle” that is fortunately served in even rarer instances than its distant cousin, green jello with canned fruit and mayo, people all over the world still eat this cheese.

To make this Crottin, cheesemakers take the whole milk of the famed goats in the area and ladle the smooth liquid into its tiny molds. The milk stays in the mold from twelve to twenty-four hours, where it starts to take it’s “Crottin-like” shape. The wrinkled, rippled surface develops on the cheese after it’s removed from the mold, salted and ripened from 10-12 days in a dry environment.

Fresh or fully mature, le Crottin de Chavignol exists in multiple forms that can soothe the dairy pains of many a particular cheese-eater. At different stages in its life, it seems to morph into entirely different types of cheese. Ranging from white and butter-colored when young to gray or off blue when older, and it’s texture respectively alternating from crumbly and lush to thick and hard enough to employ as a door knocker when one’s knuckles grow weary, le Crottin is a shape shifter.

With bright, herbaceous and lemony flavors, le Crottin can be enjoyed shortly after its creation as a spreadable or melting cheese . It is white or slightly yellow now, and soft and crumbly. One of the favorite ways to eat this Crottin young is warmed over toasted bread in a Chevre Chaud Salad in Parisian bistros. Later, as it matures-
sometimes as soon as a month or so after it arrives in the U.S., it develops a firmer texture that allows the cheese to be grated or sliced. This is the time to Introduce this Crottin “of a certain age” grated over gnocchi, or sliced atop artisan salumi with tarragon in a crusty baguette.

When young, le Crottin screams for a Sancerre, or other bright, fresh Sauvignon Blancs. But at this early stage it really pairs well with anything. As it ages, try it with another wine from the Loire Valley, where the cheese is made. Try it with a Cabernet Franc- the red grape of the region, or with a Chenin Blanc from Vouvray. Another good match is a Grenanche based wine. Fair warning: when young, notre petit Crottin can stand up to a Pinot Noir, but when it ages, it becomes a tad to strong for the delicate grape.

Next time: possibly another adventure in really specific cheese and wine pairing.

Kirstin Jackson Ellis works as a wine bar manager and wine and food consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area and writes about wine and food pairing at Vin de La Table, her luxurious and lighthearted blog.

Salads and Wines

posted by Kirstin in Wine, Guest Bloggers, Food

Someone, lets say it was one of the Hiltons because they are known to do odd things, once spread the word that salads do not pair well with wines. I know, horrible. But even worse was that some of us, not knowing that one of the Hiltons recently called West Africa a country or that the same one sometimes forgets about underpants, believed that there was a holy truth to this statement.

The horror.

Please allow me the honor of defalsifying the former accusation; Salads can be wonderful with wine.

The statement that salads can be hard to pair with wines does have some foundation, don’t get me wrong. Vinaigrettes, after all can be pains to match, as the acidity levels in the vinegar can just make a wine feel funny. With reds especially, they tend to remind them of their former salad days when they were this close from becoming vinegar if they made a wrong decision in their fermenting path. And this embarrasses them.

However, with a little love, a salad can grow up to be a fine pairing for wine. Here are some hints:

1. Make a salad dressing with a light vinegar. Stay away from recipes insisting that you use all balsamic. Balsamic is too harsh for wines. If you need to use balsamic for some reason, mix it with a wine-themed vinegar, like mucat or champagne to tame it’s bitter finish.

2. Use vinegars made from wine grapes or named after a wine growing regions (a.k.a “Champagne”). They are gentler on the palate, less acidic, and can easily snuggle up to their wine friends with a little olive-oil coaxing.

3. Skip vinegar all together and use lemon juice or another citrus fruit for the acid. Citrus fruit doesn’t feel like it’s in competition with wine. Rather, it aims at highlighting any citrus in the wine.

4. Drink Gruner Vetliner and other whites without oak with your salad. Wood and vinegar and letttuce, come on, does that even sound good?

5. If you are drinking reds with your salad, drink a higher acidity red with bright fruit, light tannins and very little oak (see # 4), like a Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley. Do not drink Cabernet Sauvignon with your salad. It will not taste good. It has too much oak and tannins to sweet talk a salad.

What do you drink with your salads?

Birthday Bash Wines

posted by Kirstin in Wine, Guest Bloggers, Food

To celebrate my husband’s most recent birthday, we invited my cousin and her man over to our place for exuberant bash for four. And by exuberant I mean that there was tons of food and wine and that I added chocolate chips to a cupcake recipe that didn’t call for it for dessert. This post is the wine and food pairing story of that night.

The food (albeit the Oreo cupcakes) was mainly Thai and Vietnamese inspired, but cooked by a very Scandinavian-American girl -me. The wines were all Spanish. The dinner menu starred my version of the carrot, cucumber, bell-pepper and light fish-sauce salad often served atop cold Vietnamese rice noodle dishes. Also sharing the stage were lime, honey and chili marinated skewered shrimp, and grilled flank steak served over wide rice noodles in a spicey, kaffir lime, lemongrass Thai inspired coconut sauce.

I choose Spanish wines for this Birthday Bash for three reasons. One, they were reasonably priced and my excellent foresight told me that we’d consume from two to three bottles between us friends. Two, because I’m enamored with Spanish wines (especially the whites, sparklings and rosés) and was selfishly catering to my happiness even on my husband’s birthday night. Three, I chose Spanish wines for the menu because they can be awesome matches for Vietnamese and Thai spices and flavors and seafood.

I popped our first wine while waiting for our guests. Our invitees claimed not to be huge fans of white wine, so I took it upon myself to thwart their past experiences by unleashing an Albarino. Albarinos are meant to charm. They’re from the Galacian coast of Spain and classically paired with seafood at Spanish tapas bars. With their apple, peachy, lime and sometimes floral scents, they’re instant pleaser’s. Furthermore, they’ve got enough going on in the glass that they can handle a little spice. Each dish I prepared for the dinner had lime juice, zest, or leaf mixed in, which I thought would play up the lime streak and cozy up to crisp and stoney fruits in the wine. Worked well. We sipped this while I put the finishing touches on the salad and headed to the BBQ to cook the shrimp and flank steak. Then we opened the Super Wine of the night.

My only firm and fast wine rule for a celebration such as a birthday, anniversary, or Christmas, is that something sparkling must be included amongst the wine entourage. Birthdays just don’t happen without bubbles. The bubbles don’t have to be big, but they have to be present.

Such reasoning led to the second wine that we drank that night- a Txakolina Rose from Spain. This was my favorite. It was luscious, oh so pink, peachy and rasberry-ie and tart and slightly. Txakolina (shock-oh-lee-nah) is the name of a Basque, Spanish wine made traditionally with the Hondarribi Zuri and Hondarribi Beltza grapes. They’re meant to drinken within a year or two after bottling, and will be, because you just can’t help yourself. Most Txakolinas aren’t Roses, but are just as enchanting as the pink bottle that we poured that night. Their pear, tart apple and lime flavors compete for attention with the tiny, spritzy bubbles that fill the glass. And bubbles go with almost anything, even egg breakfast sandwiches. They snuggled up to the coconut milk and spicy shrimp, and even handled the marbling in the rich flank steak. I looovvee this wine only slightly less than my man.

Towards the end of the night we slipped a light cheapy-but-goody Spanish Grenache on the table. Just in case someone wanted a little red with the flank steak. Spanish Grenaches (Garnachas) can be pretty dark and heady, but ours that night was a lighter style, with blackberry, stoney scents. And I didn’t just serve it because it was also left over from our wedding wine, I served it because Garnachas are great red wines for spicy foods. They’re spicy themselves, and the pepper streak in the grape can handle a chile or two.

Finally, we ended our night with a Birthday dessert request of cupcakes. Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate chips topped with cream cheese frosting and crushed Oreos. Muddlers are great Oreo crushers. It was a fantastic end for the night. My cousin and I ate two, and the guys ate three each. And I was just going to prepare a half dozen.

Kirstin Jackson Ellis works as a wine bar manager and wine and food consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area and writes about wine and food pairing at Vin de La Table, her luxurious and lighthearted blog.

Stealing From Our Favorite Thieves

posted by Todd in Guest Bloggers, Food

OK so I’ll admit it. Tonight’s dinner was stolen wholesale from Last Night’s Dinner. I know, I know. But wait. It was delicious. Seriously delicious.

I did make some changes though. First, I got arctic char instead of salmon since salmon is either ridiculously expensive or farm-raised; neither of which I am interested in. Second, um, I put some onions and celery in the sauté prior to the lentils, but pretty much what you read there is what I made. Like I mean even to the point of the pan sauce of mustard, white wine and meyer lemon juice. This is pretty much one of the best things I have made in a while. I used a simple Italian Pinot Grigio. Not much in the glass, but really gave some mild flavor to the dish, which is key. You don’t want to throw in a bold chardonnay here with the char and chard.

Here is the recipe. Seriously delicious.

Swiss Chard, Lentils and Fish

• 1 1/2 cups lentils (I used beluga!)
• 1 bunch swiss chard, leaves separated from stems. Stems chopped, leaves cut into ribbons.
• 1 small onion diced
• 3 cloves garlic, smashed
• 7 springs thyme
• 2 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 3 tbls sherry vinegar
• 2 fillets salmon or arctic char (or anything really)
• 2 tbls dijon mustard
• 1/2 cup Pinot Grigio
• 2 tbls butter
• juice of two meyer lemons (or some lemon juice)
• olive oil, salt and pepper

1. Heat up some olive oil in a sauté pan big enough to hold the lentils and stock; add the onions, stems and celery when the oil shimmers, a pinch of salt and turn down the heat.
2. Add the garlic when the vegetation is soft, after another 45-60 seconds, add the lentils and the stock. Bring to a boil, lid and reduce to simmer.
3. When the lentils are almost soft, add the leaves and re-lid. Heat up 1 tbls of olive oil in another frying pan.
4. Season the fish on both sides and place skin side down in the hot pan. After 3-4 minutes (or when the fillets easily separate from the bottom of the pan), flip over. Cook on the other side until the sides barely turn color. Remove from heat.
5. Deglaze with the wine, add the lemon juice and mustard and stir well. Bring to a boil and reduce by 1/3. Add the butter.
6. By this point the chard will have wilted; stir it in and the vinegar. Plate and put the fish on top. Then spoon on some sauce

[Todd Kennedy is a self-taught foodie/chef who writes the blog Gute Essen about the meals he cooks for himself and his friends. ]

“Reds for Cheeses: Meeting Demand with Suggestions”

posted by Kirstin in Wine, Guest Bloggers, Food

Despite the fact that white wines are ridiculously easier to pair with cheese than reds, some people still refuse to go walk on the light side even when they break out their cheese board.

“I don’t like white,” they say, wrinkling their noses. Well, I often find these people annoying because its quite clear that they just haven’t hand the RIGHT white (yes, I also think that I’m the right person to find it for them), I can’t be too upset because I too used to be a hater.

Even though I have long realized my wrongs and apologized to the Trebbianos, the Sauvignon Blancs, the Rieslings of the world, some people are not at that point.

In honor of people who haven’t yet found the light-hued wine that touches their heart, this post is about finding them a red to pair with cheeses that seemingly prefer whites.

Why do most cheeses generally fair better with whites?

Whether it’s the tannins, the heaver body, or the difference in flavors in reds that leads to the red-cheese conflict, I’m not entirely sure. I tell myself a story that its the scents and flavors in the wine that make the difference- that the apple, pear, quince, or light fig flavors in white wine, for example, naturally taste better with cheese than the blackberry, strawberry or raspberry, chocolate or tar flavors often found in reds. It’s possible. I’d rather have an apple with cheese than a raspberry.

Whatever the reason, the combination of red wine and cheese can taste off. Bitter, overly salty, astringent, or more gym sock-like than mass-produced, grated “Parmesan.” This isn’t good.

Here are two ways to find a red for your cheese:

1. If the cheese is European, what do people of the region from which the cheese comes sip with that cheese? In the Loire Valley, people drink their local wines, Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc, or Chenin Blanc with their local cheeses. They’re smart, those guys, they make sure that their local wines pair well their local foods. I firmly believe that if they didn’t, the towns would run the cheese or winemakers out of the region.If you have the wine you’re enjoying that night in your hand, walk into the cheese shop and tell them you want dairy deliciousness from the Loire Valley. Or, switch it up and walk into a wine shop with a Loire Valley cheese. A good cheesemonger or wine salesperson will meet your needs.

2. Choose a Rhone Valley wine from France or a Rhone-blend. Grenache, Syrah, and Mouvedre, the main grapes of a Rhone blend, are a god-send to red-heads. Anything from Chateauneuf-du-Pape to Cote du Rhone, to a Minervois Rhone-inspired blend will do. The spicy, earthy, meaty, peppery flavors gracing the wines snuggle up to familiar tastes in the cheeses without bringing out the “animal” scents in say, an aged, funky sheep’s cheese. Sometimes these Rhone blends even have aromas of mushroom that matches the savory flavors in the more pungent cheeses.

3. Sometimes, just sometimes, a thick, super fruity, low alcohol Zinfandel with a touch of residual sugar can cozy up to a ripe cheese like no other wine. The concentrated, heavier bodied lush wine essentially caresses the cheese into wine pairing submission.

4. Get to like whites! Start with a dry Riesling, Viognier, or another aromatic white. I’ve heard that they’re delicious with cheese.

What do you pair with your cheeses?

Kirstin Jackson Ellis works as a wine bar manager and wine and food consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area and writes about wine and food pairing at Vin de La Table, her luxurious and lighthearted blog.