Food and Wine Pairings

It has been an exceptionally long time since I’ve written in this blog, but last night’s experience mandated an update. Last night I went out with my family to a wine and food pairing event put on by the fantastic people at Total Wine and More. They are passionate about their booze, which is completely understandable – and encouraged. I am a young n00bling when it comes to wine, much in the way I was to beer before Eric and I began stretching our boundaries and exploring the beer world. Now that both of us have expanded into wine, I hope that this post will be helpful.

I will be creating an excel sheet of some sort to display all of the matching research and information I learned last night, but for the post I will also write out some key rules to follow.

1.Match food and wine FLAVORS: herbal Sauvignon Blancs match vegetables and goat cheese; peppery and cedary Cabernet Sauvignons match steak in pepper sauce; buttery, oaky Chardonnays match fish and pastas in creamy sauces.

2.Match food and wine TEXTURES: the sweet unctuousness of Sauternes matches foie gras, pate, crème brule, moussee, etc.., crisp lively Sancerre matches perfectly with oysters.

3.Match food and wine WEIGHTS: Sauternes and heavy mousse match in richness, big Napa Cabernet with heavy steaks, Barolo with robust, gamey dishes, lightly poached fish dishes with light dry wines.

4.If reasonable, you should cook with the same wines you will be drinking with the food.

5.Use the regional and local wine associations: what do they eat in the region the wine is coming from?

6.Follow the sauces of a dish and use its dominant flavor as your guide.

7.Opposites can attract as well: a sweet wine can balance an acidic or sour food.

8.Strive for balance between food and wine: an older more complex wine takes center stage and should be served with very simple foods, not heavy sauces that will drown it.

9.Hard to match foods such as chocolate, strong cheeses, grapefruit, asparagus, and pickles should be matched with wines from the same regions as the dish.

10.Keep in mind the cooking method of the dish. Poached or steamed, you want lighter whites and reds as the cooking technigque is delicate, so should the wine be. Braising and grilling usually call for heavier wines, like Cabernet, Zinfandel, or Barolo. Roasting meats generally calls for elegant and mature reds.

11.When in doubt, Champagne works well with almost everything.

One of the biggest points of emphasis on the night was that it’s hard to go wrong with pairing a wine. It really is up to your own personal tastes. To prove it, we had a lamb dish and two reds, a Clos Ste. Michelle CDP Reserve and a Grand Puy Lacoste. These two wines are apparently entrenched into a debate larger than even Western v Eastern NC BBQ. Both wines come from rival vineyard regions and both claim to be the best pairing for lamb. Half of the group last night chose the CDP and half chose the Grand Puy.

A second point of emphasis was that one food can have multiple pairings based on how it was cooked. To quote GourmetSleuth.com,

“Imagine a chicken breast poached (i.e. cooked in water) with a light lemon herb sauce. This might be a dish that could be friendly with light to medium bodied white wines like Pinot Gris and Sauvignon Blanc. Now add a cream sauce and you can move up in body to a fuller bodied wine, maybe a Chardonnay. Or try it roasted and suddenly the flavors are such that it can marry with light to medium bodied reds, like Pinot Noir or Sangiovese. Grill it and it becomes great with fuller bodied reds, even Zinfandel or Shiraz (Syrah).”

Also, I have compiled (with help from GourmetSleuth.com) a spreadsheet that pairs up foods and cheeses with wines. Here is the link.

I hope that you enjoy it. I am very new to this, so I made the Google Doc editable. If you have additions, feel free to make them.

Testing out some Facebook ML

Personal Hell

Scientologists
Circle I Limbo

Parents who bring squalling brats to R-rated movies
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

Hipsters
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

George Bush
Circle IV Rolling Weights

Rednecks
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

PETA Members, Militant Vegans
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

The New York Yankees
Circle VII Burning Sands

Osama bin Laden
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

Jerry Falwell
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

Cold

Well, it's frozen over twice now. The entire US has been blanketed with snow these past few weekends (with the exception of Hawaii). It has cost me three days of work, so I've had to play catch up. Unfortunately, last night I came down with a pretty bad cold and was bedridden for about 24 hours. Not to get into the messy details, but I think I am pulling through it now.

My AMST class is really getting to me now. I am consistently unable to get into Wilson library to do research. I will have to try tomorrow because I had a very poor product to show last time and am running out of time to do these projects.

The CSRI event is going so slow due to exceptionally poor leadership and planning. There is no efficiency at all because there does not seem to be a process!

I digress from what was not meant to be a downer post. This will be an exceptionally busy two weeks for me, starting with tomorrow's dance practice. Diversions has to rehearse for our DM performance (4am Saturday). This means that I will be unable to attend the pledge retreat to Blacksburg Va to visit the VT chapter.

Speaking of the pledges, they have a midterm coming up. I just wrote it and I tried to be fair but not too easy. They have to learn to take this seriously. Their big brother reveal is coming up as is their El Gigante challenge. No pledge class since mine has come close to putting up a decent performance at that event. I hope these guys have it in them.

Oddjob

It's been an up and down few days. Everyone knows how strongly I feel (about anything, I just have very strong emotional responses to almost everything) and has been very supportive. If I did not proudly wear my heart on my sleeve, I would be embarrassed by the last post being public(ish).

My parents are in town tonight to see a production. I'm going to catch up with them briefly. Hopefully I can talk to them about some pressing issues; there are several which require attention immediately. I also want their advice and, for the second time, to actually speak with them about relationships.

In more cheerful news, my first long day at work wasn't bad at all once I got used to getting randomly snowed on, freezing rained on, told my backbreaking labor wasn't good enough by the customer's fat, white trash girlfriend, not getting tipped a lot, and stiff knees. I had fun because the skeleton crew we were working was mostly comprised of managers who had senses of humor.

While on my break, I went over to Petsmart and played with the cats and dogs on display for the adoption Saturday event. I fell in love with a male cat, an American Gray named Joop. He was strikingly calm and good natured, liked to be held and was immediately trusting and loving. It's a shame that I can't adopt him. I do not have the money and I would get kicked out of my house for owning a pet anyway. That made me sad, but I'm still more happy to have been able to meet him. I'll go back on my breaks until someone chooses him (which may not be long. An old couple walked in while I was playing with him and they thought he was the best thing since sliced bread).

My parents are going to be here soon and I need to go do pushups, so I'll wrap up. I haven't eaten since 8:30am. There is Diversions dance practice tonight to gear up for our Dance Marathon performance. I'm excited, it's been a while and it's a great stress reliever. After that, Pierce's UGA friends will still be here and wanting to party. Who knows what tonight has in store.

Party at McCauley St tomorrow! GEAUX SAINTS!

Devstating Loss

I feel very lonely. Like a giant hole has been violently blown from my life. Kelsey and I split up after more than two years together. I thought I would marry her. I'm hoping for a happy ending, but after getting off the phone with her for the second time tonight, I just feel empty. I am going to have trouble picking up the pieces of my life and move on with things - I know myself too well to kid it.

Over two years. So much comfort and familiarity. That's partly what caused the break. We were too comfortable with each other and too complacent to fix our problems. Both of us have a list of things we need to improve on, just so we become better people/partners.

We've left things somewhat open to the possibility of getting back together once we've had our time apart, but to be honest, I have no idea when that would be. There is no way to set a timeline to this sort of thing. All I DO know is that I want it to happen, whenever that time is.

Weekend Wrap up

As I sit in the living room with Pierce watching a stellar Jon Stewart Daily Show, I figure this is a good down time to write.

Kelsey arrived on Thursday and stayed through this afternoon because we got a freak snowstorm up here and it iced in everything - including trains. Unfortunately, none of my classes were canceled, but I persevered. We grabbed sushi at Kanki on Friday and then got snowed in for two nights. Thankfully Domino's delivered last night. Kelsey grabbed a sausage and pepperoni and I got a chicken and tomato. Mine randomly came with garlic butter sauce all over the crust which made it deliciously gag worthy. Out of 5, I would rate it a 3. There you go, an official rating on this "new" pizza.

Unranked UNC lost to UVa in Chapel Hill which represents the worst loss since before Williams arrived. Joe Lunardi was on ESPN and said we were NIT bound if we did not win Thursday against VT. I say we're NIT bound anyway.

In other basketball news, the Charlotte Bobcats won again, bringing their record above .500 and in the middle of the East's playoff race. Larry Brown is doing a great job, but needs to find some 4/5 and 2 help at the trade deadline. I'm watching them play against a Brandon Roy-less Portland and they're not looking too good. Portland is one of those young West teams that are fun to watch, so a .500 team from the East would naturally be overmatched. Interesting NBA news: Kevin Durant is eclipsing Carmelo Anthony for the league scoring title and Durant just turned 22. This kid is going to be a superstar.

In Panthers news, Julius Peppers's agent has reported to ESPN and the Charlotte Observer that Peppers has almost certainly played his last game as a Panther. I'm not sure what is going to happen, but the Panthers have GOT to get draft picks out of this situation, but Peppers is an unrestricted free agent.

To cycle back up to the Daily Show, Jon Stewart just did a tremendous piece on President Obama's Q&A with Republicans followed by a one on one with a White House economic adviser. Best show I've seen in a long time. To follow that, Stephen Colbert won a Grammy last night and is parading it around during his show.

Before I sign off I'd like to remind everyone that Bank of America stadium in Charlotte will be hosting a Mexico v. Iceland World Cup friendly on March 24.