Three Wine Paired Dishes

Today’s Prompt queried – ‘What are your family’s top 3 favorite meals’? So here goes.

Food and Wine Pairing

A plus point of being a wine enthusiast family has been the exposure to the wonderful world of wine paired cuisines.

Wine and food pairing is the process of pairing food dishes with wine to enhance the dining experience. The main concept behind pairings is that certain elements (such as texture and flavor) in both food and wine interact with each other, and thus finding the right combination of these elements will make the entire dining experience more enjoyable.

As suggested by today’s WordPress Prompt, here are three such dishes which we love.

Vol Au Vent

Meriam Webster Dictionary defines a Vol Au Vent, pronounced (vɔlovɑ̃)’ as ‘baked patty shell filled with meat, fowl, game, or seafood in sauce’. However, it is the lightness which gives meaning to vol-au-vent, literally meaning ‘flying in the wind’.

Invented in the early 1800s in Antonin Carême’s pastry store in Paris, these round, light, airy puff pastries are baked such that the center part can be removed, creating a cavity that is then filled with either sweet or savory fillings.

In a recent wine dinner this was served as a starter and paired with Fratelli Gran Cuvèe Brut, Chenin Blanc I Gewürztraminer

French Onion Soup

As per a legend, this was invented King Louis XV of France late one night at his hunting lodge when he was very hungry. When he found that there are onions, butter and champagne in the pantry, he directed the chefs to use the three ingredients to make the French onion soup and rest is history.

We relished this in a wine dinner at Hotel Imperial New Delhi recently where their French Executive Chef explained how he had made it by a special technique where onions were stirred over a medium flame for more than ten hours.

Paired nicely with Fratelli Master Selection, Chardonnay | Sauvignon Blanc, 2023

Chicken Burgundy

Prepared with Slow Braised Free-Range Chicken, Portobello Mushrooms, Creamy Polenta and Buttered Carrots, this tasted wonderfully.

It formed a great pairing with Fratelli Sette, Sangiovese I Cabernet Sauvignon, 2022.

These were the three scrumptious dishes we relished with paired wines. Hope you liked reading about it.

Cheers !!