Sunday, June 7 2009
What's Cookin', With Winesense
It's a good life, if you don't weaken.
"A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine."
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste (1825)
I'm M. Brillat-Savarin, and since there's not much sunshine to be had in Winnipeg this weekend, we made do with a food and wine tasting for the staff at Winesense. I do educational events for their staff on a yearly basis. This weekend we combined a seminar on Inventory Control and Management (woo, I'm a barrel of excitement!) with a food and wine pairing event at The Food Studio on Roblin Boulevard.
Hey, it looks yummy in there: let me in!
They normally do cooking lessons for everything from barbecue and butchery to sushi and pastry. It's a great concept with a show kitchen for demonstrating cooking techniques and a seating area for enjoying the fruits of the kitchen. I presented them with an ambitious menu of disparate flavours. We were tasting Sonoma Pinot Noir, Sonoma Cabernet Sauvignon and Okanagan Pinot Blanc. For the Pinot Blanc I wanted a multitude of pairings: goat cheese, endive, walnuts, pear, apple and a sauteed prawn in butter and garlic. The object of the exercise was to get everyone to taste the wine, try the food sample and then try the wine again to see how it complimented or contrasted with the food.
Take one down, pass it around, how many glasses of wine on the wall . . .
It went very well: the Pinot Blanc worked with everything (I distinctly heard moaning over the prawns) and for the final touch I got everyone to assemble the endive with the cheese, topping it with walnut and pear and then crunch it down in a single bite. It was like a grown-up version of Cheez-Wiz in celery! Except not made out of plastic, and fabulous with the wine.
Chef that night was Peter Ecker, a veteran of the cooking industry who really knew his stuff. As a former professional cook I'm as judgemental as anyone on those reality shows when it comes to watching someone cook, and he's the real deal: fast, organised, precise, knows his ingredients and techniques in his sleep and can demonstrate and explain them like nobody's business.
Chef Peter, rockin' the sautee
The next course was with the Pinot Noir: we did salmon in green salt and duck in cherry sauce. Green salt is totally cool, and such a great accompaniment to grilled meats and fish that I can't imagine living my life without it. You make it like this: in a food processor process until smooth
- ¼ cup sel gris
- 3 bay leaves
- 2 teaspoons fresh flat-leaf parsley
- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme
- 1 teaspoon fresh oregano
Sel gris is a type of sea salt. It's very coarse, usually a greyish colour, and it's damp and squishy. I buy a brand from Brittany (France) and use it for lots of things. Use green salt gently, as it's quite salty, but the flavour is exquisite. It gives a hint of garrigue, the herbaceous character that good terroir can produce. Most people don't pair red wine with fish, but the rich, oily salmon was perfect with the Pinot's smooth tannins and gentle acidity, and the herbs played off the red fruits wonderfully.
Glarrgh! Nom nom nom!
The duck was pan-fried to de-fat it as much as possible and served with a cherry sauce on the side, accompanied by a couple of fresh raspberries. We smelled the raspberries to pick that character out of the wine, tasted the duck to see how the savour and tannins worked with the fatty duck, and then did it again dipped in the cherry sauce to see how the fruit counterpointed it all. The cherry sauce was really great, made with freshly sun-dried cherries. Mmm!
Please sir, may I have some more?
Next we moved to the Sonoma Cabernet, which we had with red meat and chocolate, two of my favorite things. The meat was a grilled filet of beef done on the rare side of medium-rare, cut in slices for tasting. For this pairing the level of doneness is critical to the mouthfeel and character of the wine. If it's too well it won't work, as the proteins coagulate and the juices leave the meat (plus, overcooking good beef is a sin against nature that can't be contemplated).
On the side we had a green peppercorn sauce, and some plain batons of green pepper. We smelled the green pepper to try and pick it out of the cab, tasted the beef plain to see how the tannins worked with the meat, and then tasted it again dipped in the peppercorn sauce to see how it works against the pepper character and the cream. There were an awful lot of levels of flavour in this pairing, and people were amazed at how the initially herbaceous character of the Cabernet gave way to fruit and touches of smoke and vanilla when paired up with the meat, and especially with the peppercorn sauce.
Boy, try not to look so depressed!
The chocolate was easy: we used Lindt dark chocolate in 70%, 85% and 99% cacao content. Each one is vastly different in character, dropping in sweetness and increasing in tannin/umami (savoury character) as the sugar levels drop and the cacao content rises. Most people agreed that the 70% had the most wonderful tropical notes to it, and the 85% is delightful, but the dry, bold, savoury richness of the 99% is inspiring, and rounds out and enriches the Cabernet in a way you wouldn't associate with chocolate bars and red wine.
I'm really pleased with how it all turned out. We had a great time exploring the flavours of the wine, and how they changed and expressed when paired with different foods, and there were a lot of great questions and a whole bunch of fun was had. Too bad I had to spoil it today by conducting an inventory management seminar, but you have to pay for your fun fellas!
Now, off to the gym: I've got to work off that dinner before I can have another one!
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