subject: An Alternative Christmas Dinner [print this page] Author: Scott Lenik Author: Scott Lenik
Dry turkey matched with an overly heavy red wine bought online. A slab of smoked salmon with a glass of Pinot Grigio and Christmas pudding with brandy is enough to send any wine connoisseur into a frenzy.
This year, why not make the celebrations a little bit more special by mixing traditional and contemporary food and wine. Make sure you use wine as a condiment to the food to enhance both the dish and let the dish enhance the wine
The traditional wine line-up generally includes an online champagne before you get to the table, maybe a sherry for Grandma, a white wine online with the fish starter, a red with the turkey and a dessert wine with Xmas pudding.
Well this year, I have decided to turn the traditional wine line-up on its head. The menu below starts with a dessert wine for the entre then fizz with the starter, a Lebanese red for main and finishes with a sherry!
Go on try something new, I am sure you will not only love it but make it a Christmas to truly remember.
Entre
Start with a range of appetisers to wet the appetite.
A range of light pates including Fois Gras, Pate de Fois, Duck and Orange Pat, and other light pts of your choice, served on a variety of different textured breads, is a great way to start off the seasonal food festivities.
Serve with a dessert wine! Yes a dessert wine matches perfectly with the pt. The nuances and complexities of a lighter and less sweet dessert wine compliment light pts excellently, especially Fois Gras and the lighter goose and duck pts..
I recommend Etchart Torronts Tardi, Salta , Argentina. This online wine should be enjoyed chilled either as an aperitif or at the conclusion of the meal. - Its lightish style should be matched with equally light dishes and goes excellently with light and delicate pates.
The long ripening season of the Cafayate Valley enables the Torronts grapes used to make this rich, very grapey dessert wine achieve full maturity with correspondingly high natural sugar levels. The wine is cool-fermented in stainless steel vats and then bottled young.
Starter
I love smoked salmon, but it is so predictable. So throw away the lemon (lemon kills most white wines anyway) and be daring.
Do a triage of hot smoked salmon served with Thai sweet chilli sauce, Gravad-lax served with the traditional dill and mustard sauce, and smoked trout with nothing more than some capers and fresh tarragon. Top it off with one queen scallop seared in lemon chervil infused butter and finish with a smattering of sea salt crystals and a few redcurrants, and some crusty white bread.
For the wine at last some fizz, but not as you know it! Go for a ros Brut fizz, for the budget conscious, Codorniu Pinot Noir Brut Ros Cava , or if your budget stretches then the Duval Leroy Brut Ros bought exclusively online.
The pink fizz, especially the Bruts, is an enigma. You get all the sweet notes and delicate soft berry flavours juxtaposed against the astringency and buttery mouth feel of the classic white Brut. With delicate, sweetish fish and delicate herbs - this is a marriage made in heaven.
The addition of salt - in the capers and sea salt enhances the soft berry flavours and floral notes even further. Finally the sweet chilli (and don't use too much) makes your palate more receptive to flavours and sets off the dryness. The buttery texture of the mouth feel and the butter of the scallop are divine. In fact with each mouthful the wine will change subtly and work with each different dish in perfect harmony -even though you have four different meats and seven different flavours on one dish.
Cava made from 100% pinot noir grapes are lightly macerated after de-stemming, in order to extract a light pink colour from the skins before pressing. Bottle-fermentation and aged for a minimum of nine months, this delicious Spanish sparkling wine is full of ripe summer-fruit flavours and is presented in a clear Codornu gothic bottle.
The ros Champagne is delicate and well rounded, complete with aromas of wild cherries and redcurrants. Made from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, much of the colour coming from wine made from Pinot Noir grapes grown in the Premier Cruz of Vertus and the brilliantly named village of Bouzy . This is a beautiful salmon-pink coloured ros matured for over two years in bottle.
Main course
Turkey is an import from the states and a recent Xmas invention, not that that should stop us but I find it too dry and it takes too long to cook, why ruin Christmas with the family by cooking all the time?
I prefer traditional meats and they take no time to cook (except for some preparation on Christmas Eve). Try a Beef Wellington or a Woo, Coo, Rush, Grunt pie (wild venison, wild pigeon, wild hare and wild boar). Both take just 30 minutes to cook on the day.
If you do want a big bird, roast a goose or a brace of ducks which I find much nicer than turkey.
For the pastry add some seasonal spices (allspice or mixed spice) into the pastry and serve with a mustard and port or Madeira gravy - Don't forget to add lots of seasonal herbs, and garlic to the roast veggies and do use goose fat to roast them in and put everything in together to save on the washing up.
For the wine, have you tasted a Lebanese wine? The country has been growing vines and making wine in the Bekkar valley for over 5000 years - much longer than in Europe - so we really are talking ' Old World '.
I recommend the Hochar Pre et Fils Red, Chteau Musar, Bekaa Valley (from 11.43) or the Chateau Musar Red Gaston Hochar, Bekaa Valley, 2000 (from 20.60).
Both are savoury reds. If you think about traditional European fruits often the wines mirror the flavours (blackberry, plums, blackcurrants etc). Now imagine Lebanese fruits (dates, figs, raisins, sultanas, damsons, dried fruits, mixed spices), these wines mirror the fruits too. So if you imagine all the rich, warming comforting tastes and scents of Christmas and had to put it in a liquid, here you have it!
The perfect Christmas red wine, and excellent with richer fare. I call it Christmas in a glass.
Dessert
I love the flavours of Christmas puddings - a chocolate log and a warm minced pie.
But after all the above courses, I just don't have the stomach for them. So I prefer something lighter, yet with all the rich flavours. No easy task.
The only dish I have found to deliver everything I love, without feeling like a whale afterward, is Xmas Mess (much like Eton Mess but much more Christmassy). Plus it is so simple to make.
Break up a small Xmas Pud, a few mince pies, some bits of chocolate cake into small bits and add some raisins and broken chocolate. Lightly mix up with some vanilla ice-cream (the one with real vanilla pods in it), some very stiff whipped cream and finally add some broken up meringue. Generously drizzle some Gonzalez Byass Nectar, Pedro Ximnez Dulce (from 11.71) over it all and serve.
As you have it on the dessert it would be a shame not to serve it in a glass too. Pedro Ximnez is in fact a sherry. So why serve a sherry for dessert? Well the only way I can describe this wine is to ask you imagine the difference in taste between a sun dried tomato and an ordinary one. The grapes on PX (as it is affectionately known) are sun dried before pressing. This makes then so much sweeter and intensifies the flavours, so imagine a sun dried dessert wine!
When poured it has the colour of treacle not wine. The flavours however are like a liquid figgy pudding. Nectar by name and by nature and deserves its Gold medal
Made from 100% Pedro Ximnez, one of the two major sherry grapes. PX produces an intensely sweet, smooth Spanish dessert wine. With a bouquet of raisins and dried figs, it is delicious when poured over ice cream with fruit salad or dried fruit - serve chilled. The Gonzalaz Byass Nectar - Won Gold at the International Wine Challenge 2009 and Silver at the International Wine & Spirit Competition 2009.About the Author:
The Purveyor has a vast selection of red and white wine online as well Australian wines, French wines, Italian Wines and over 250 spirits online. Contacts For interviews, images or comments contact: Scott Lenik Sales and Marketing Director Email: scott@thepurveyor.com
