My beverage of choice is beer. That is what I would drink for the sake of drinking an alcoholic beverage. But, nothing goes better with most food quite like wine and I like to have a good bottle with dinner. I also like to cook with wine and enjoy the challenge of finding just the right wine to boost a dish. This can be harder than simply finding a wine you like and adding it to the dish; wine reacts with flavour molecules in the dish that may or may not combine cohesively. Following the simple rules we established in an earlier post can help. In addition, more than one type of wine may go with any given dish depending on whether you are trying to mellow the wine, cut the richness of the food or enhance the underlying flavours of the dish.
This past Saturday I was invited to a dinner of Lobster and I offered to bring a soup and two wines to go with it that I asked my friends to give me their opinions on. The soup was a Cream of Leek, Potato and Blue Cheese (recipe to follow). Now, a leek and potato soup might enjoy the company of any number of wines, depending on what was served before and after, anything from a white Burgundy, Chardonnay or Chianti. But, add some strong blue cheese and the matching gets a little more difficult because the dominant flavour is going to be the cheese. It would seem that the logical pairing would be a Vintage Port, oaked Viognier or even a Sauternes. Add the cream and the choices change again with the Sauternes being the best match followed by a younger Bordeaux or New World Cabernet Sauvignon.
After checking the LCBO available stock of Sauternes and noting that the lowest priced available was about $60 I decided to go in a different direction. The wines I chose were a 2008 Bordeaux Pessac-Leognan Chateau Pontet-Caillou for $27.95 and a, wait for it, Niagara VQA Inniskillin Late Autumn Riesling $13. Now, the first one is straight forward, as for the second, if we think of the characteristics of a Sauternes we have a wine that has stayed on the vine long enough to be allowed to raisinate and results in a wine with residual sugars. This is similar to what is being accomplished with a late autumn Riesling, albeit with a different grape. And, it is the flavour elements of the Riesling that I was looking for when choosing the wine: honey, pear and apple, all of which compliment a blue cheese.
As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, or in this case the wine. So what did my friends think? Overall they felt both wines went well with the soup, though they preferred the experience of the Bordeaux as the cheese and cream mellowed the tannins in the wine and allowed its fruit characters to come through. This was highlighted later when we tasted the wines without the soup and those harsher tannins came through. The soup also tended to reduce the sweetness of the Riesling and this, also, was noted in the later tasting. Now, a Sauternes is a much fuller and more complex wine, so the experience would have been slightly different but, I still maintain that the Riesling was an excellent choice as the fruit flavours were not overwhelmed by the soup's intense flavours and it only cost $13! Either way, I would not hesitate to serve either wine with the soup, the Sauternes will have to wait for a more important occasion.
Cream of Leek, Potato and Blue Cheese Soup
I will give this recipe as a ratio of ingredients so that you can increase the amount simply by increasing the ratios.
2 Leeks
1 Potato
125 ml Heavy Cream
225 grams of Blue Cheese
2 Tbsp of Butter
500 ml of Chicken Stock
Melt the butter in a pot on medium high heat. Add the leeks and potatoes and sauté with lid on for 10 minutes to sweat the vegetables. Add the chicken stock and simmer until the potatoes are very soft. Turn off the heat and add the cream and then blend, with an immersion blender, until smooth (if you only have a blender be sure to remove the centre disk of the lid before turning on the blender to avoid the contents blowing up). Once the blending is done, add the blue cheese a little bit at a time until well blended. You can add more blue cheese crumbled on top when serving.
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