Applegater., May 01, 2009, Page 4, Image 4

4 Spring 2009 Applegater
HEARD IT ON THE GRAPEVINE
Six easy steps to pairing food and wine
BY CHRIS DENNETT
In the world of food and wine,
one of the more daunting tasks for many
people is that of pairing the two. When
done well, food and wine pairings can
border on the sublime. When done poorly,
the pairing can be worse than forgettable.
There are, however a few guidelines that
can be followed that will help you make
the most of your pairings.
Before I get into the specifics about
pairing food and wine, there are two
important things to keep in mind. First
and foremost, the enjoyment of wine and
food is one of the things that separate
humans from the rest of the animal
kingdom. It’s meant to be fun, and it’s
meant to make you happy. Second, don’t
be afraid to try things that fly in the face
of conventional thinking. Sure, there are
traditional pairings in food and wine in
the same way that there are traditional
recipes. But the world of wine is one that
can be heavily populated by irrationally
traditional people with overly developed
encyclopedic knowledge and under-
developed creativity and forward thinking.
So don’t take yourself too seriously, be
open to new ideas and flavors, and always
trust your own palate. At my restaurant,
some of the most successful pairings that
my chef and I have made are ones that
seem odd at first glance: for instance, white
pepper-seared Ahi tuna with Syrah.
So here are six things to keep in
mind while pairing food and wine that will
help you be a success every time.
1. Taste the Wine First.
In my experience, this has made
all the difference. While most people will
decide what to make and then head to the
store to grab a wine that will work with it,
I believe it is much easier to pair food with
a wine than it is to pair a wine with food.
There are two reasons for this.
First, generally speaking, wine can
vary more dramatically than food. For
instance, the Cabernet Sauvignon grape
can have a variety of flavors that depend
on factors other than the actual fruit. The
nuances of soil, climate, ripeness at time
of harvest, and winemaker style can make
this single variety jammy, vegetal, herbal,
or gamey, to name but a few. While I guess
technically the soil and weather could
slightly change the flavor of broccoli, food
is almost always grown so that it tastes the
same. You will never find a farmer that
grows their broccoli crop in such a manner
as to magnify a particular aspect of the
natural broccoli flavor – something that
vineyard managers and viticulturists in this
country will do with their grape varietals.
Second, and connected to the first,
most of us are more familiar with food
than we are with wine. Think of it this way:
which can you more easily imagine, the
taste of cherries, or the taste of malbec from
Mendoza, Argentina? Because winemakers
have different styles and use different
fruit from different places, every wine will
have something different happening. You
can get a good sense of what to expect in
general terms from particular varietals, but
every wine is different, and the average
person will have more success tasting a
wine and imagining a food pairing with it
than the other way around.
If you don’t have time, or don’t want
to taste your wine first, you can almost
always find reliable tasting notes online.
2. Consider the Flavor Interactions.
There are essentially three ways that
you can play with the flavor interactions
of food and wine. You can match a wine
with a food that has similar flavors,
contradictory flavors, or some combination
of both. All ways are complementary when
done right.
For example, if you are tasting a
white wine that has good stone fruit flavors
(like a typical viognier), you can choose
to complement the fruit characteristic
by matching it with something similar
in flavor, like fresh or dried apricot with
rich cheese (to balance the body, which I
will address next). A contradictory flavor
that would match well with this viognier
would be a spicy Thai stir fry. Spicy and
sweet are always good counterpoints and,
while there may not be any residual sugar
in our make-believe wine, the strength of
the fruit will be perceived by the palate
as sweet against the spice. Finally, to use
something that has a little bit of both, any
food with a heavy ginger presence would
work well with this wine, since the mild
sweetness of ginger will match the fruit
of the wine, and the natural spice of the
ginger will complement at the same time.
3. Consider the Relative Gravity.
Perhaps the most important aspect
in food and wine pairing is the relative
gravity or heaviness of the wine and the
food you want to pair it with. This is where
the traditional concept of red wine with
red meat and white wine with white meat
comes from. It’s not that red always goes
with red, it’s that heavy always goes with
heavy. You will typically match white wines
with fish not because the meat is white, but
because fish tends to be a more delicate
protein with more subtle flavors, and white
wines will not overpower the fish.
Choosing your protein for the
pairing is so vital, because some are heavy
(beef, lamb, duck, elk or other game),
some are light (flaky whitefish, shellfish,
and most poultry), and some can go either
way depending on how you prepare it
(pork, salmon, and meaty fish like Ahi
or swordfish). The most important thing
to remember is that you can always find
something to match or contradict flavor,
but relative gravity in both your wine and
food are more or less static. They should
always be matched. In other words,
don’t serve Tempranillo with ceviche, or
Sauvignon Blanc with braised lamb shank.
4. Make the Food as Dynamic as the
Wine.
Remember that your food, like your
wine, should be well-balanced. The best
pairings include all the various elements
of flavor interaction and relative gravity. It
allows both the wine and the food to shine
and the sum to become more than its parts.
But remember that balance is important,
and that means not trying to do too much.
The food should be dynamic not in its
difficulty or complexity of preparation, but
in its simplicity and complexity of natural
flavors. Which leads us to our fifth and
final step…
5. Keep it Simple and Respect Your
Ingredients.
Food is good just as it is, and some
of the best dishes are prepared simply,
without a bunch of fancy preparations
and complicated sauces. Don’t abuse your
food; let it speak for itself. For example,
if you need to beer-batter your prawns,
deep fry them and serve them with a
sauce made of figs, cherries, morels,
port, garlic, shallots, and cream in order
to stand up to a Mouvedre, maybe you
should choose a different protein for your
wine. In my estimation, simple, fresh,
quality ingredients always will be better
in a pairing.
Both food and wine have enough
going on with their flavors by themselves,
you don’t need to make it more complicated.
Choose one or two things in the wine that
you want to emphasize and stick to that,
using one or two things in your food to
accomplish your goal. You’ll find that it
makes pairing food and wine that much
more interesting, since both have multiple
facets. You might choose to highlight the
red cherry flavor of your favorite Pinot Noir
this week with duck in a cherry gastrique,
and honor the same wine next week with
an apple sage pork roulade that accentuates
its more tannic tea characteristics.
6. Cook with the Wine.
Finally, give cooking with the wine
you’re pairing a shot. If you’re pairing clams
with a Chardonnay, steam them in the
Chardonnay. You will find that most dishes
will benefit from a touch of wine anyway,
and what better way to bring the food and
wine closer than to cook your food in the
wine you’re drinking?
Time to put it all together. At the
beginning of this article I talked about a
pairing that my chef and I made with Ahi
tuna and Syrah. Here’s why we did what
we did, and why it was successful:
We seared the Ahi in white pepper,
which was something we tasted in the
wine (similar flavor interaction). Ahi is a
meaty fish (matching relative gravity) so it
could stand up to the body of a Syrah. We
finished the dish with just a bit of some
pickled onion that provided a nice sharp
acidity to compliment the rich dark fruit of
the wine (contradictory flavor interaction).
So give it a try, keep experimenting,
and don’t get discouraged if something you
try doesn’t work out perfectly. The real fun
in mastering wine and food pairings is
eating good food and drinking good wine.
Chris Dennett
541-779-0135
Chris @elementsmedford.com
Chris Dennett is proprietor of
Elements Tapas Bar and Lounge on Main
Street in downtown Medford.
Squaw Lakes has new interpretive trail and a wildlife viewing blind
If you haven’t been up to Squaw Lakes in a while you may want to
make a trip. Thanks to two Eagle Scouts it now has a wildlife viewing blind
and a new interpretive trail. Both seniors at South Medford, Garrett Gustafson
and Lucas Asman-Prudell, completed their Eagle Scout projects at the lake
last summer. Gustafson and Asman-Prudell, 18, are Ruch School alumni.
The wildlife viewing blind is on Big Squaw between campsites 10 and
11 at the north end of the Lake. It is 8’ x 10’, with a metal roof and a resting
bench to sit and view wildlife without them viewing you. Gustafson would
like to thank local businesses for donating over $1,200 worth of materials:
Jacksonville Lumber, Economy Plywood, Hughes Lumber, Mainwaring
Construction, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Miller Paint and the numerous hands-
on volunteers who helped with the construction.
Asman-Prudell created and refurbished a nature interpretive trail
identifying native trees and shrubs. He installed boxes for his pamphlets at
both ends of the trail. The trail is #928 and goes to Little Squaw or from
Little Squaw back to Big Squaw.
Gustafson and Asman-Prudell are with Troop 7 based in Medford at
the United Methodist Church.
Meg Gustafson • 541-899-8807
Photo from left to right standing in front of the Wildlife Viewing Blind at Big Squaw:
Dave DeCarlow, Scoutmaster Troop 7; Lucas Asman-Prudell, Eagle Scout; Garrett
Gustafson, Eagle Scout; Gary Leaming, Troop Leader; Dale Coleman, former
Boy Scout; Tom Suttles, Troop 7 Scoutmaster; and Dog (Dog’s name unknown).