Thursday, May 8, 2014

FOOD SPECIAL ................Pairing Wonders


FOOD SPECIAL Pairing Wonders 

Indian cuisine can go well with wines as a recent Chateau Margaux-Indian dinner demonstrated 

    Drinking a $500-odd Chateau Margaux 1985 with a biryani — even one as delicately spiced as I had last week — would be considered blasphemy by purists. Pairing the same great Bordeaux winery’s 2001 and 1996 vintages with lamb done two Indian ways should be equally outrĂ© for connoisseurs, desi or otherwise.
    So hats off to the Delhi doyen of French wine, Dhruv Sawhney, for presenting a five-course Indian meal with Chateau Margaux’s wines last week for family and friends. It was as daring a move as his inviting Delhi’s beau monde to have Chateau Margaux with the vegetarian creations of L’Arpege’s Alain Passard in 2011.
    The Passard meal was not a great success as the Indian idea of ‘vegetarian’ includes a carb component and spices that the great French chef did not address. We Indians have very definite food preferences and are not swayed by food that does not concur with their idea of ‘taste’ and ‘flavour’.
Mirch Masala
So matching ‘authentic’ Indian food with Chateau Margaux was a logical challenge. Conventional wisdom decrees that the strong aromas and flavours of Indian cuisines overpower French wines. Indeed, template ‘Indian’ dishes do have spices, oils and rich ingredients aplenty. Even if aficionados detect spicy undertones in Margaux, they aren’t in the same league as our robust desi masalas!
    Then there is the great Indian shaitan — the chilli, in all its fiery glory. Barring the Gujarati and West Bengali preference for sweetness in their food, most Indian cuisines are replete with the tongue-numbing chilli. Although there are dishes without it, any credible pairing has to face the chilli head-on.
    That is precisely what Sawhney bravely did. Nor was he foolhardy for, as Chateau Margaux’s famed winemaker Paul Pontallier commented while tucking into his saufian nisha (tandoori prawn) with the Pavillon Blanc 2009, he’s even had Chateau Margaux with fiery Sichuan fare.
    Luckily for us, Chinese and Thais have bravely ventured where Indians fear to tread. The Margaux-Indian dinner therefore must be regarded as a brave step forward, albeit fraught with the usual risks of being either too cautious or too ambitious. We all wondered how would it compare to ‘traditional’ pairings.
    As a reference point, next week a wine dinner in Vancouver at the Jean-Georges will feature two of the wines we had. Chateau Margaux 1996 and 1985 will be paired with roast squab, mushroom cavatelli, brown butter emulsion, and beef tenderloin, oxtail croquette, cauliflower, sauce Bordelaise, respectively.
Meat Test
As Chateau Margaux prefers rich meats and earthy flavours, the Sawhney menu had to align with that. Choosing the vegetarian options were particularly challenging, but absolutely imperative, given that the price tag of Margaux puts it firmly in a sphere whose inhabitants at least in India are largely herbivorous!
    Clearly a lot of thought went into pairing gulhar kebab (figs and chana dal) and the charoli dalcha kebab — the non-veg counterparts being saufian nisha and nawabi murg tikka — with the rounded Pavillon Blanc, a 100% Sauvignon Blanc. It was surprisingly harmonious, so we were off to a flying start.
    Chholiye ka shorba (I like to think of it as an Indian vegetarian version of the Moroccan chickpea soup, harira) and dhingri shorba with two mini poories arrived with the very drinkable (though not wildly exciting) Pavillon Rouge 2003. There was a bit of hesitation but the soups were mild and flavourful so the wine survived the test!
Moving on to the 2001 and exalted 1996 vintages, it had to be lamb, and they came as gosht korma and lagan ki boti, with morel and aubergine bhartas as the vegetarian counterparts. There was even more reservation about this pairing, especially as the spicerichness of the meats was undeniable.
It didn’t help that the 2001 capriciously remained ‘closed’ as long as the dishes were warm, and the 1996 was much too sophisticated to stand up to the lagan though it paradoxically complemented the korma. It left me feeling that curries and great cuvees don’t really marry but can have a nice platonic relationship — no co-habiting! But that’s not to say a carnivorous relationship was impossible, as the very next course established: a subtle lamb biryani opened at the table so that the aromas wafted up enticingly. With the complex and absolutely peak form 1985, the meat pieces became redundant as the broth had mixed so well with the rice.
Coup de Maitre
The biryani-Chateau Margaux 1985 was the discovery of the evening, and one for which I would have willingly foregone most of the other courses. The menu did prove that good red wines can face Indian food — indeed all wines are made to be had with food unlike spirits — but a Chateau Margaux is an overkill!
Indian food, so far, has not evolved to be paired with alcohol of any kind. But nor did most wines taste the way they do now, even a century ago. Wineries are not immune to market forces (look at what Robert Parker has done to the ‘Bordeaux style’) nor are they cuisine inured to changing lifestyles and taste preferences.
Evolution affects them both. So there is reason to believe that in the future their paths may converge as they warm up to each others characteristics and consider an alliance. Till then, it is left to aficionados like Dhruv Sawhney to demonstrate the delicious possibilities of give-and-take.

:: Reshmi R Dasgupta ET140427

No comments: