deVine Table

What a tough day of food + wine pairing at NW Wine Academy looks like

As a student at the Northwest Wine Academy,  finals in food and wine pairing classes involve creating and presenting our very best pairings. In Varietals I, a class focusing on white varietals, our friend Vivian prepared this “Magical Austrian Soup”. Our instructor, Chef Lenny Rede still waxes poetic about this warming wonder.

Many thanks to Vivian for her generosity and willingness to share this delectable recipe she adapted from Bernard Clayton Jr.’s  The Complete Book of Soups and Stews.

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Curried Quinoa Salad

This salad is terrific for summer meals on the patio with a refreshing wine such as Gewürztraminer. I’ve adapted the recipe from the Bon Appétit Fast Easy Fresh Cookbook to incorporate more ingredients from my farmer’s market and local producers. Serves 4

For the quinoa:

• 2 cups water
• 1 cup quinoa rinsed (you must rinse the quinoa otherwise it tastes bitter)

For the dressing:

• 1/4 cup oil
• 2 tablespoons vinegar
• 1 tablespoon chutney
• 2 teaspoons Madras curry powder
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

For the salad:

• 2 ripe peaches, chopped
• 1 cucumber, peeled and chopped
• 1 salad onion, chopped

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Curried Sweet Potato Soup

This dish was part of our meatless week menu. It is wonderful for anyone who enjoys sweet, savory, and tropical elements. To speed up cooking time, you can cut the vegetables into small dice.

Serves 4 very hungry people

• 2 cups onion, coarsely chopped
• 1 T palm oil
• 1 stalk celery, coarsely chopped
• 1 carrot, coarsely chopped
• 3 cups sweet potatoes (I used garnet), peeled and cut into 1 1/2″ dice
• 2 teaspoons Madras curry powder
• 1 teaspoon grated ginger
• 2 cups “no chicken” broth
• 1 cup coconut milk

In a large pot, saute the onion in the palm oil over medium heat for several minutes. Add the celery, carrot, sweet potatoes, and cook for 5 minutes longer. Add the curry powder and ginger and cook for another minute while stirring.

Prepped Veggies

Add the stock and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer until vegetables are tender and you can easily stick a fork through a chunk of sweet potato. Stir in the coconut milk. Puree the soup until smooth either using an immersion blender or food processor. Serve at once.

Wine Pairing

We paired this soup with the Tyrus Evan 2007 Viognier from Del Rio Vineyard. Viogniers that emphasize fruit over minerality are my preference. This wine produced by Ken Wright delivers primarily pineapple on the palate. It’s a nice pairing with curry.

The challenge with this soup is that it is a little sweet. You want to be sure the wine you serve is as sweet as or slightly sweeter than the food. With that in mind, an off dry riesling would be a potentially good match with this dish.

Truffled Bean Puree on Fresh Fennel

Serves a crowd.

1 15 ounce can cannellini beans
2 tablespoons truffle oil

Wine Pairing

This appetizer was prepared with Chardonnay in mind. We enjoyed it with the buttery O Wines Chardonnay. My friend Bean also found this dip with fennel to be the ultimate pairing with Columbia Winery David Lake Syrah.

Compote Made with Grapes

Three things have me coming back to this recipe time and time again. For one thing, preparation is easy. Also, this is an incredibly versatile dish. Most importantly, if you are planning on serving it at a party, it can be made ahead of time.

This is inspired by a recipe from Culinary Communion.

• 1 – 2 pounds of pitted cherries*
• herbs of your choice – either a couple of sprigs of rosemary or thyme, or 1 teaspoon Herbs de Provence
• 1 head of garlic, cloves removed and peeled
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• pinch of salt
• approximately 1/2 bottle red table wine

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Place fruit, herbs, garlic, olive oil, and salt in a medium baking dish or Pyrex bowl. Pour enough wine so that it is level with the top of the fruit. Place dish in oven and cook for about 45 minutes until wine is syrupy. Check on the dish periodically, and if it is getting overly brown around the edges or cooking down too fast, cover it with foil.

You can serve this dish warm as an accompaniment to an entree – anything from chicken to pork. Or, allow the dish to cool and serve it with a cheese platter.

* If cherries aren’t in season, substitute seedless red grapes removed from the stems. Fresh figs are also wonderful in this dish; simply cut each fig in half. Or, try green grapes and white wine.

Grape Compote Before Roasting

Wine Pairing

One of the “rules” of wine pairing says that the wine you serve should be as sweet, or sweeter than, the food you are serving. It is true that I often break some of the traditional wine pairing guidelines. However, this is a rule I abide by, because food that is sweeter than the wine will tend to accentuate the acid, astringency, and bitterness in the wine. Who wants that? So here are a couple of things to consider. Are you serving this compote along side meat or cheese, thereby making the dish more savory? Then it should stand up to a red wine. Or are you serving this over ice cream for dessert? Then consider pouring a port. These factors will affect the overall sweetness of the food, so be sure to think about that before selecting what you pour in your glass. In most cases, the wine you used in the dish will likely be a good drinking companion.