whatscooking2

Geography Simply put, wine and food in certain parts of the world have evolved as partners. In places where wines have a long history, they tend to taste good with the local foods. And so we have the rieslings of Germany with their sweet-spicy sausages, Chianti with Tuscan pasta and, closer to home, local cabernet sauvignon and merlot with Sonoma lamb, Long Island duck and Texas wild game.

The geographic or regional principle works nicely up to a point. For today's creative cooks, however, it just doesn't go far enough. For one, there are exciting, delicious cuisines from many parts of the world where wine is simply not a part of the heritage -- Southeast Asia, Latin America and sections of the United States, for example. Moreover, today's inventive "fusion" cuisine, which combines ingredients and techniques from around the globe, blurs geographical boundaries.

Similarity Think of the people you enjoy being with. Your significant other, perhaps; your best friend. It's likely that you have a lot in common: similar backgrounds, interests, aspects of your personalities that act to help forge a bond between you.

With food and wine, the same thing can happen. When you can match a characteristic in the glass and on the plate, the wine and food tend to flow together, to mirror each other, to resonate, emphasizing that characteristic. This is similar to unison in music: when all the voices or instruments are sounding the same note, the effect is powerful and dramatic.

If you start with a wine that has strong cherry character for instance, such as a merlot or pinot noir, and make a cherry glaze or dried-cherry stuffing for a meat or poultry dish, the cherry flavors in the glass will echo those on the plate. Or start with a fresh pineapple salsa for grilled fish and choose a fresh, pineapply chardonnay to magnify the tropical flavors of both.

Saute a chicken breast in butter. Finish the dish with some heavy cream and add salt. Choose a creamy, buttery chardonnay. Try the two together. Do you like the way the flavors and textures match?

Contrast Sometimes, however, having something in common isn't quite enough. You might find it more interesting to choose a partner or friend who has different interests, so you can learn from each other, or whose personality complements rather than matches your own. This is comparable to harmony in music, when different notes, chosen deliberately, sound pleasing together.

In the kitchen, we create such balances as sweet and sour flavors, hot and cold temperatures, smooth and crunchy textures. This lets us add another dimension to something simple. Likewise, when you pair a food with a wine because of intentional differences, the whole, ideally, can seem greater than the sum of its parts. This is the contrast principle, and it brings added interest and complexity to food-and-wine matches.

Although the similarity and contrast principles seem contradictory, both are equally true and equally valid. And both can actually coexist in the same food-and-wine pairing.

Equal Intensity The most important thing to remember, though, when pairing food and wine, is to keep one from overpowering the other. Both partners should have about the same weight in the mouth, the same strength of flavor. This is the equal intensity principle, and it holds true whether the food and wine are both delicate, both full-flavored or both middle-of-the-road.

You can also fine-tune the equal intensity principle if you want either the food or the wine to stand out in any given pairing. Start, for example, with a dish that you really want to show off. Instead of choosing an exactly equal partner in the glass, pour something a bit lighter. Likewise, if you want the wine to star, cook your dish more simply.

Personal Preference We all have our own tastes, in everything from clothing to cars to entertainment to food and drink, and our preferences can be vastly different from those of the next person. In matters gustatory, our tastes come about through a combination of heredity -- a unique layout of aroma sensors and taste buds -- and environment – what we ate and drank growing up and what we have come to like or dislike as adults. With food and wine, personal preferences can follow traditional lines or break wildly from the norm.

Our tastes, moreover, change over time, and they vary according to season, time of day and our own unpredictable moods. Those sweet-spicy sausages that went so well with that chilled riesling on a summer afternoon might taste much better in the dead of winter with a hearty red zinfandel. And if you're grilling up some herb-marinated lamb chops at dinner, you'd probably opt for a red. But sizzle them in butter for lunch and you might just prefer a chardonnay.

You'll not only learn a lot about wines and the way they work with food but also a great deal about your own palate. Plus, you'll be adding an extra dimension to the enjoyment of a good meal, a dimension you can keep enjoying and exploring every time you pull the cork on a new bottle of wine. Back to top

Etiquette

Can you chew an oyster?

Surprisingly, yes. To sort this one out, we called upon Michael Kadamani of the Melbourne Oyster Bar, who in his 25 years as proprietor has seen more oysters slide than Jamaica's got mangoes.

The whole swallowing of the oyster thing came about in an effort to control the flavour of the oyster. When people are beginning to eat oysters, they are encouraged by such people as Michael and his Oyster Bar experts, to eat cooked oysters with a sauce. This way, the taste of the oyster is not overpowering and you're more likely to eat them again. "This is the best way to build up the palate toward eating them natural."

When you're comfortable eating oysters this way, it's onto fresh oysters. This is where the Swallow Your Oysters rule came in. Swallowing the oyster minimizes a bit of the taste, which when you're not used to it, can be a tad off-putting. Again, once you build up a taste for them fresh, the next step is to chew them. Only this way, says Michael, can you properly taste the oysters and all the regional differences between them. Otherwise, it's a waste of taste.

Mop up your slop with a bread roll?

There you are perched at the table, almost satisfied but for the puddle of warm, salty gravy spread over your plate. It's just you, your hosts, half a bread roll and a bubble of mystery. Can you mop up this sauce with your bread roll? "Yes you can." Bingo. "But only at the end," guides Kylie Carlson, etiquette specialist at the Suzan Johnston training organization in Melbourne. You can't go replacing your cutlery with a bread roll and eating your food from your roll, but you can mop your plate clean with your roll. It is in fact one of the uses of the dinner roll. If you're having soup, it's also fine to use your roll to collect what the spoon can't get to. Again, only at the end and make sure you tip the bowl away from you.

Can you ever eat with your fingers?

Yes says Kylie. But before you loosen your collar and roll up your sleeves in preparation for your next feed, keep in mind that according to etiquette law, only a few dishes offer this luxury. Surprisingly, asparagus is one of them. Take it by the stalk, (the hard end) and simply bite the head off. Reasons why vary but it seems that when asparagus is served as an hors d'oeuvre, it can be eaten with your fingers, but as a main, it's eaten like all good adult food, with a knife and fork.

Pizza is another that you can, but whether or not you do depends on who you're with and where you are. If you're in doubt, let someone else take the lead. As for corn, one 1960s publication on etiquette states that "No hostess in her right mind would offer this vegetable at a formal dinner." Fortunately things have changed -- top hosts serve corn, women get the vote and slaying your missus for overcooking your steak is now a crime. When it comes to eating with your fingers, and you've got no idea, look at what it's served with -- if you get a knife and fork, it's probably best you use it.

How do you remove an olive pit from your mouth?

The same way you remove a rogue pubic hair -- subtly and with your fingers. Look there's no need to leave the room every time you gotta bin an olive pit but it can be a little awkward if you're standing around in the company of others trying to maintain polite conversation while sifting 'round your mouth for a pit.

Along with your olive, try and get your hands on a napkin, lift it to your mouth and with a quick sigh, drop it in. Often there may be a little dish for you to put the pits in anyway. But just make sure that's what it is -- you don't want Nana putting her cup of tea back into a saucer full of your soggy, chewed olive pits, eh? And no matter what you're trying to dispose of, leave the plants alone.

Can you take your cell phone to dinner?

That mobile phones are even rude at the dinner table may come as a surprise to some and just plain horrify the rest. But for our etiquette expert Kylie Carlson, it's a "big no-no." The big problem seems to be how selfish you can be when you're on one. Explains Kylie, "When someone is on a call, conversation stops, no one else wants to talk for fear of interrupting, but they don't want to be all quiet and look like they're eavesdropping."

If you're waiting for an urgent phone call while you're having lunch, it's quite acceptable to give your phone to the MD and ask him or her to alert you when the call comes in. This way, you can excuse yourself from the table and take the call without disrupting everyone else. As not all of us dine in such establishments, you can always have it on vibrate so you know when it's ringing without alerting the whole restaurant. But there's still the option of having to answer it and no matter how well you package it, you're still interrupting a conversation with someone else to have one with another. Solution? "I tell them switch it over to message bank or just don't take it at all."

Tell someone they've got food on their face?

This doesn't usually apply to someone you know well -- that's just a case of laughing, pointing and mocking them until they've gotten the idea. But for those you're not so comfortable with, just make a little eye contact and indicate where the leftover food sits on their face by wiping or gesturing on your own. But make it swift: eye contact, food, wipe, smile. The aim is to get them to clean up their face, not to make the whole group think they're grubby. Back to top

Vodka

Flavored vodkas were slow to reach the mass U.S. market, however. Americans first became hooked on "the white spirit" after World War II, lured by the convenient fact that it had "no taste and no smell" (and could therefore be consumed on the sly). And for decades the classic vodka martini or vodka-tonic suited drinkers just fine. It wasn't until the cocktail craze of the late 90s that the current frenzy for vodka variety took off. Luckily, there are plenty of quality distillers out there to satisfy demand.

Among the first to tempt our palates with readily available flavored vodkas were Absolut and Stolichnaya. Absolut entered this niche market in 1986 with its Peppar, an aromatic, complex and spicy vodka that gets its kick from the spicy components in the capsicum pepper family and from fresh green jalapeño pepper. They later added Absolut Citron, Kurant and Mandarin and Vanilia. Stoli was also an early marketer of laced libations, luring many drinkers to the pleasures of flavored vodkas with its Vodka Razberi (made with ripe raspberries), Vodka Vanilla (with the pure essence of Madagascan and Indonesian vanilla beans) and Vodka Zinamon (infused with the zip of cinnamon).

Should a Cosmo with Burnett's Blood Orange Vodka or a Sunflower Martini with Vincent Van Gogh's Raspberry seem too traditional, frighten your drinking companions by ordering up a shot of Blavod, a smooth-tasting vodka colored black by the catcchu herb. While it looks like The Dark Prince's drink of choice, Blavod is surprisingly refreshing in a Black Bull (ice, Red Bull and Blavod) or a Sundance (ice, blue curacoa, soda water and Blavod).

Another far-out blend is Feigling, a fig-infused vodka that comes in a little bottle from Germany. Served straight or with a little tonic and a twist, Feigling is a unique taste and sure to throw a little variety into your drinking repertoire.

You can experiment with new ventures in vodka. Roll up your sleeves and concoct your own unique libations. Begin with a quality vodka. While "quality" is in the taste buds of the drinker, general wisdom holds that you’ll get better results and suffer fewer day-after side effects if you stick to a bottle in the $20-and-up range. Purchase anything under seven bucks to use in your infusion and you'll waste culinary effort as well as brain cells. Back to top