Editor’s note: Graphic designer and writer Jacqueline Feldman has written about brisket and matzo balls for Food and is now learning about pairing wine with meals in this occasional feature.
I’m most certainly no wine snob. Food snob? Maybe.
Film snob? Perhaps, but I’ll succumb to a guilty pleasure at Blockbuster.
Music snob? Most definitely.
But as for wine, I’ve got few standards. As a young adult, I cut my teeth on Manischewitz and Magen David during Passover and bar/bat mitzvahs. In college, my friend Kat and I even sought out the worst wines. Boxed white zin? Wonderful. Screw cap and fruity taste? Even better.
As I got older, I developed a taste for the reds: merlot, syrah, shiraz. Anything that would stain my teeth was great. Then, about four years ago, I cut my alcohol consumption by about 80 percent. (Last year, I think I averaged one drink a month.) This year, my first taste of alcohol was a glass of wine at Passover.
My boyfriend, on the other hand, has discriminating taste when it comes to wine.
Every month, one or two bottles of wine arrive to his doorstep, courtesy of several small wineries in northern California. The bottles are placed lovingly in a wine cabinet he designed himself, where they sit, and sit, and sit. He drinks so rarely (about at the same rate I do), that the wine cabinet soon will no longer have room for new additions to his collection.
A few months ago, recognizing that we had to drink up or build another piece of furniture to hold the ever-arriving wine, we decided that once a month, we’d pick a bottle of wine, and I’d cook a dish to complement the selection.
Kyle Wagner, former dining critic at The Post, helped me find this shrimp curry with vegetables to accompany two chardonnays from Jodar Winery in Camino, Calif., a small winery outside Sacramento.
We invited a few friends for dinner and opened a 1996 chardonnay, to compare and contrast with a 1999 chardonnay. The ’96 was tasty, with a crisp bite. It was sweet, but not overly so.
We sat down to dinner about a half hour after opening the wine. Allowing it to breathe, along with the spices in the dish brought out tangy fruit flavors in the wine, giving it a fuller flavor.
We opened the 1999 chardonnay. It wasn’t as good a bottle of wine, I’m sorry to say. Either the two extra years of aging or perhaps the year itself had made the ’96 extraordinary.
The ’99 wine paired well with the food, though. Because this chardonnay wasn’t too oaky or buttery, the Carribean dish picked up its tropical flavors.
As a rule of thumb (which I gleaned watching a PBS cooking reality show), the food is supposed to show off the wine, not the other way around. So keep it simple.
That being said, this dish had simple flavors, although the prep time took a little more than an hour. Getting shrimp that already is peeled and
deveined will cut down on prep time. The original recipe called for green peppers. Because I’m allergic, I substituted snowpeas. Carrots also would work well.
For more information on the wines in this story, go to jodarwinery.com.
Staff writer Jacqueline Feldman can be reached at 303-820-1791 or jfeldman@denverpost.com.
Curried Shrimp and Vegetables
Serves 4.
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds raw medium-size shrimp
4 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/4 cup minced shallots
1 tablespoons finely minced ginger
3 tablespoons flavorless cooking oil
8 ounces pasta (I used linguine. The flat noodle works well with the sauce.)
1 green bell pepper, seeded (or red) and chopped (or snow peas or carrots)
1 1/2 cups seeded, chopped ripe tomatos
2 teaspoons curry powder
1/2 teaspoons allspice berries, finely crushed
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup Grand Marnier (or orange juice)
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon Caribbean or Asian chile sauce
1/2 cup cilantro sprigs, chopped
Directions
Up to 8 hours before you plan to cook the meal, shell, devein and split shrimp lengthwise nearly in half; refrigerate. In a small bowl, combine garlic, shallots, ginger and oil; refrigerate.
Bring 4 quarts of water to a rapid boil. Lightly salt water and cook pasta according to instructions. When pasta loses its raw texture but is still firm, remove from heat and drain.
Meanwhile, place a 12- or 14-inch sauté pan over high heat. When hot, add garlic-oil mixture. Sauté until garlic begins to sizzle but has not browned.
Combine bell pepper, tomatoes, curry powder, allspice, chicken stock, Grand Marnier, soy sauce, brown sugar, cornstarch and chile sauce and add to sauté pan. Bring sauce to a rapid boil and cook until it begins to thicken, about 3 minutes. Stir in shrimp. Stir and toss shrimp until they turn pink and have just lost their raw interior, about 2 minutes. Immediately add the pasta. Stir and toss until evenly combined and well heated.
Taste and adjust seasonings, especially for salt. Transfer pasta to a heated platter. Sprinkle on cilantro and serve at once.
