I cook with wine. Sometimes, I even add it to the food. We taste with our eyes, ears, noses, tongue and even our sense of touch. We taste with our emotions and our state of mind. This has been demonstrated time after time. Wine and food pairing is all the rage in the food/wine world at the moment and having a meal combining both is an extremely uplifting experience, as they compliment one another bring out the best flavours that they might have to offer.
Of course, the setting also needs to be in a relaxed atmosphere of a fine dining environment, as opposed to a noisy fast-food restaurant.
While matching food and wine, you don’t have to learn complicated systems for selecting the right wine to enhance the food on the table. A few simple guidelines will help you make successful wine-and-food pairings:
Look for balance (Consider the weight—or body, or richness— of both the food and the wine. The wine and the dish should be equal partners, with neither overwhelming the other)
Match the wine with the most prominent element of the dish. (Identifying the most dominant character, could be the sauce, seasoning or cooking method)
It’s fun to experiment and fine-tune, and sometimes you are able to create spectacular matches that dramatically improve both the dish and the wine. Like for e.g. When we had a special champagne dinner and I served this dish – “Grilled Peruvian Asparagus with smoked yoghurt, granola and a black cherry compote” and paired it with Bollinger Grand Anee which also had complimentary flavours of cinnamon and cherries. The dish tasted awesome. No one knew that the smoked yoghurt would pair so well with the asparagus and champagne.
Another time, when I made a dish for our Chocolate Pairing Week we paired a brie stuffed chicken, roulade flavoured with black currant, coffee and chocolate and served it with a yellow tail shiraz with hints of licorice and black currant. I remember all the guests getting blown away by that combination. I think both the wine and the food would not have tasted that good without each other. It took the whole experience to the next level. Another weird pairing is to combine champagne and fried food, And here’s why it really works: the effervescence of a brut Champagne cuts straight through the fat and salt of fried food. Weird goodness! This happened when my husband and I opened a bottle of champagne I received for my birthday last year. We were hungry and wanted to eat something with champagne and the only thing we had was French fries. As a chef, it is extremely exciting to discover these new flavour profiles that constantly surprise you in a good way. Never stop experimenting, you don’t know what you might discover.
(Megha Balasubramanian is Chef de Cuisine at The Flying Elephant, Park Hyatt)