|
  |
|
|
Cooking With Wine
Cooking with wine is a subject that could easily have a book to itself. This article is simply intended to be a broad guide. Wine is used to enhance the flavor of a meal and as such is a replacement - or addition to - stock. It should be seen in that light. It is not a way of making the food alcoholic, since the alcohol will evaporate very quickly during the cooking process, which is just as well. Alcohol does nothing for the flavor. It's also important to realise that wine largely consists of four basic elements; water, sugar, alcohol and flavor, this latter being the fruit residue. What we are looking for in using it is that wonderful residue because of its complexity. It therefore follows, if the wine is not worth drinking it is not worth cooking with. Run that up the flagpole and salute it! Or maybe, to make myself perfectly clear, I should express that another way; if the wine is not worth cooking with, it is not worth drinking! We don't want the alcohol, it makes the food bitter. We don't want the sugar and the water - we can get them more cheaply. We want the concentrated residue, and that is the fermented and matured flavors of the grape varieties that produced the wine in the first place. Which brings me to another very important point; it must therefore be obvious that the color of the wine is immaterial. It's all about the flavors and the quality. Now, in general, chefs are taught to use the same wine for the food as has been selected to serve with the meal. That's if they have a choice in the matter. Talk about cart before horse! In the auberges and restaurants of France I learned to tread a different path and I recommend it to you. Cook your food in the wine that best enhances the flavor of the food, and then recommend that same wine be drunk with the meal. Not the other way round! For example, in Bourgogne a cockerel is cooked in red Burgundy to make coq au vin. Two bottles of it, as a matter of fact. And that is also the best wine to drink with the finished meal. In fact, for many of us, it's the only wine to drink with it. By all means cook your chicken in Riesling instead, but then be sure to serve the same Riesling with the meal. Can you see the drift here? It's the same with every cuisine where wine is used. Let the food determine what the wine should be and not the other way round. As a final note, wine must be added in such a way that all the alcohol is evaporated, either through prolonged cooking or by high temperature cooking when it's used to deglaze* a pan. It also needs to cook long enough for most of the water to be driven off - a process known in cooking as reduction. Nothing is worse in food than the taste and aftertaste of raw alcohol. *Deglazing in cooking parlance means the splashing of alcohol such as wine into a hot pan in order to loosen and scrape up the burnt on residue left after cooking meat in particular. |
|
 |
|
PLEASE VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S WEBSITE
The Cool Cook
Taking the heat out of the kitchen
www.all-about-cooking.com
|
|
No reactions yet.
Please login or sign up to rate this intel.
The copyright for this content entitled "Cooking With Wine" has been specified by the contributor as:
All Rights Reserved
This content may not be copied, distributed or adapted by anyone under any circumstances.
|
|
May, 2012
2008
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2009
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2010
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2011
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2012
January, February, March, April, May
|
|
Not a member yet?
Qondio is a powerful network for making it online. If you have a website to
promote, we can help.
Sign up and get in on the action.
|
|
Welcome to Qondio! Discover the awesome power this network can deliver by going to our About page. Or you could skip straight to the Sign Up form.
|
|
