How About Some Wine with that Sauce?
Go ahead..Put a little wine in that sauce. Maybe a lttle more…A little more..
by
Nancy
Berkoff
I am not the right person to be writing this article. I don't have the right background or the correct reverence for the art of sauce making. Let me explain.
My grandfather was a boot legger (I think that's okay to admit; the family reputation is pretty well tarnished at this point). To him, wine was a commodity of commerce, a way to get through the winter. Not to be wasted on the family, and absolutely (perish the thought) never used in the family's cooking.
My father became a legitimate bootlegger by going to college and becoming a food technologist. This allowed him to have a still ('xcuse us, a distillation apparatus) in plain sight. Dear old Dad was a quality control chemist and flavor scientist for some of the largest liquor and wine companies in the United States during the sixties. This also meant that I was surrounded by the science of flavor, rather than the feeling of flavor as I was growing up. I could talk tannin compounds and acidic back notes with the best of them.
And then I went to France. And realized that there was more to a glass of wine or a spoonful of sauce than the organoleptic evaluation (a fancy food technology term which basically means "howdaya think it tastes") of a product. That there was character and body and scintillating things that wine could do to your tongue. So maybe I am ready to write to you about the use of wine in sauce. Let's see.
Lord High Saucier In Escoffier's classical kitchen organization, the saucier (the sauce chef) is the most important station chef, ranking over the garde manger, bakery, roast, fish and dessert chefs. The saucier was expected to bring food to new heights. Sauces were not originally designed to mask poorly prepared food, but to enhance the qualities of excellent cuisine.
The saucier has to be part chemist, part dreamer, and part practitioner and part storeroom clerk. A saucier has to understand the relationship and interactions between ingredients and cooking techniques (smoking, steaming, drying, etc) in all menu items. Once understood, a sauce is prepared that acts as a pedestal for the customer's taste buds.
Quite a task. But with the right touch and the right ingredients, especially the right wines, it's a synch.
Garbage in, Garbage out Wine is one of the premier ingredients in sauces. The wine does not need to be premier, but it does have to have a good flavor. If you can't stand the flavor of a wine in its glass, no amount of cooking and handling is going to make it taste any better. If a wine is too acid, too underflavored, tastes like old socks or is a really weird color, adding it to a sauce will just transfer those properties to the sauce.
We are not saying that you should only use the $500 champagne for the sauce (and, as most wine people know, just because it's expensive doesn't mean it has a good flavor). What we are saying is that, just as you sample wine for your wine list, you should also sample the wine that will go into the sauce.
Make a Friend If there is a particular wine you enjoy, spend some time getting to know its personality. Once you know a wine's every nuance it is easy to relate it to the appropriate sauce. A good rule of thumb is that if you'd drink the wine with a particular food than it's probably a good fit for a sauce for the same food. And of course, the opposite is true; if you wouldn't pair a Merlot with cheesecake, then don't use Merlot for a dessert sauce for cheesecake.
For example, we especially like beaujolais villages. After experimenting and taste-testing, we find that we can serve beaujolais villages as an accompaniment wine for veal, grilled beef and steaks, venison, duck, grilled chicken, roast turkey, pasta dishes and berries, which means that we would not hesitate to prepare sauces for these dishes to which we'd add beaujolais.
We have also found that pinot gris goes well in a sauce for scallops, merlot with mushroom linguine, cabernet with chicken curry and a riesling with garlic shrimp. Now's the time for you to do your homework.
Chef's Tip: Wine sauces don't have to be long and involved. To prepare a fast white wine sauce just saute finely chopped onions or shallots in a small amount of butter. "Hit" the butter with a long splash of white wine, allow to reduce and spoon immediately over poultry, fish or veggies.
How About Some Wine with that Sauce?