What wine to choose

Salut/Hi Darkginger,

le/on Sun, 11 Jul 2004 17:09:19 +0100, tu disais/you said:-

Well, I have to say that most of the sauces I make of this type are pretty rich, but you could probably adapt them.

Start by making a really good fish fumet. (that's a posh word for a strong white wine based white fish stock) I recommend the book "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" for recipes of this type.

Hey, an idea. Try the idea out on mussels, if you like them as they're FAR cheaper than scallops.

Open the mussels with herbs and white wine as for a marinière, but incorporating a good pinch of saffron and/or 1/4 tsp or so of a decent curry powder.

Concentrate down the cooking juices obtained until almost TOO salty.

Make a light velouté from this stock with a little roux, say 15 gm each of butter and flour to 350 mls stock. Now beat together 2 egg yolks and 150 mls of double cream and pour the boiling sauce into that mixture, in a VERY slow thin stream. When all added, return to pan and re-heat, stirring constantly. DON'T allow it to boil as it will curdle if you do. Check seasoning (possibly add a last minute pinch of curry powder or even garam massala).

You could perhaps cut back on the egg/cream liaison, though I'd not advise it.

You would pour this sauce over the mussels in the middle of a moulded ring of basmati rice. Serve with a really good white wine. Best would be a super Meursault-Charmes with some bottle age.

mmmmmmm melcome back Ian with more delectable pairings viva le summerfestivities !

Ratty, moi? Sorry, too used to ukrm I guess. I forget what sensitive souls can be found on other groups.

But I still don't like it that you say my tastes are "wrong" and yours are "right". Live and let live, accept that other people's tastes are equally valid and all that, eh?

I just happen to find, after years of experimenting, that full-bodied reds go very well with curry. Tell me I'm "wrong" and of course I'll get a bit shirty :-)

We did this recipe pretty much as described in Ian's original post last month, minus the carrots, and had it with a Sonoma Cutrer Chardonnay at the strong recommendation of one at the table. I was in doubt about the pairing, but it turned out to be excellent.

Hi,

A question from a regular lurker/ occassional poster: what makes you suggest a Meursault. Does it match specially well with saffron? For instance, would one match it with other dishes with saffron? Or is it more a mix of the ingredients.

Thanks in advance. Cheers

Salut/Hi TB,

le/on 12 Jul 2004 08:49:37 -0700, tu disais/you said:-

By an astonishingly serependitious coincidence, we went to lunch with a good friend, a Belgian restaurateur, and one of the four pre-prandial nibbles he gave us was - wait for it - mussels with a curry sauce!! And best of all, it was served with an excellent (sorry folks forgot the grower) Pinot Gris from Alsace. First of all, the match was good, not quite as good, IMO as it would have been with a wine with a bit more "oomph" to it, perhaps a Grand Cru Pinot Gris or perhaps an Auxerrois.

Thinking about you lot, I asked Jean-Claude what he'd done. Simplicity itself. He opened the mussels in a large pan, into which he'd tipped 1/4 litre or so of "crème fraîche" (this is the typically french slightly sour cream, that is thickened by the souring process), with a tsp of "curry powder". This will have been a french curry powder, with quite a lot of turmeric, and little ground chiles in it. Superb.

two and a half answers. One (half a reason) is that I have Meursault-Charmes with some bottle age in my cellar. I know it's a frivolous reason, but suggesting some obscure wine from the foothills of the Catskills, made only in leap years is not much help to someone reading in the depths of Solihull.

More seriously. The slight hazelnuttiness and general roundness of Meursault

- which has much less of the characteristic "white peach" of the neighbouring white burgundy villages - seems to me to make it a glorious match with mussels, when these are served in a fairly rich sauce. I'm not

The last reason is that I've served this combination myself (as well as others) to wine lovers on a number of occasions, and almost without exception, they've said that it has illustrated to perfection what is meant by a magnificent match between food and wine. OK, I know that the wine's no slouch, and that one would be hard put to it not to like it, and that - for those who can take their soft texture - a classic mouclade is a pretty magnificent dish. But we've all agreed that the marriage goes far beyond that.

As for the match between scallops done with a saffron/curry sauce, and a wine, I think there anough similarities of flavour for the match to be as good. I know I sometimes write as if I was postulating _the_ perfect match, specifying Mr Stepandcatchit's Outer Mongolian shiraz/malbec blend with a lamb stew made with 8 month old free range french lamb and organic sun dried apricots. But in truth, there are a sheaf of matches between food and wines, and that a 5/5 can occur with several of each.

Predicting food and wine matches is a bit like calculating the weather, where they calculate 1000s of times with very slight variations of input data, and then end up with a sheaf of results. If they all agree, they have a confident prediction. So food and wine matching is as much a matter of chaos theory and serendipity as anything, but just as in weather forecasting, you sometimes have a feeling about a match, and just as in weather forecasting, experience can often lead to wonderful results.

BTW, I was glad to have encouraged you to delurk.

Best wine with curry a glass of fresh cow piss.

(snip of a lot of interesting food & wine commentary)

I'll second that. I got some good ideas to try with scallops. They're not particularly expensive here. :^)

Tom S