“Wine Experience”

I am going to consolidate a couple of classes into one. Someone’s been slacking on these posts. Tsk tsk.

Anyhow the next two classes were going to end with about an hour and a half to two hours of a wine experience. But, of course, before this wine experience, we were put to the test. We knew beforehand that we were going to have to make a recipe without our recipe cards. We weren’t exactly sure which it was going to be, but we had a feeling it was going to be a chicken dish, particularly the Poule Roti Gran-mere (Grandmother style roasted Chicken)

He dropped a few clues in the last class such as a comment to the assistant chef: “you know what, order me a few extra chickens for the next class.” And the fact that its one of these easier dishes to make from memory, as it is not precisely measured ingredient extensive.

Suuuuure enough, it was the gran-mere chicken. Its actually a delicious dish, with the exception that the sauce is supposed to be a ‘jus-roti” or the juice of the roast, but we actually add so much veal stock that it overpowers the flavor of the chicken. And personally, I’m getting a little sick of the flavor of veal stock. It’s a bold veal flavor. It is delicious, but at the same time, enough is enough. When I eat chicken, I want to taste chicken.

Anyhow, the basic steps include preparing the chicken to be roasted (removing wishbone, washing, trimming fat, seasoning, trussing), sautéing then roasting the chicken with some carrots and onions, peeling pearl onions, cooking them “a brun” (simmer in water sugar butter and salt, as the water evaporates, the onions cook and the butter and sugar brown, leaving the color on the onions, not necessarily browning the onions themselves), cooking some bacon and mushrooms, and cocotteing potatoes and browning them and finishing them in the oven.

When the chicken comes out you’ve got to pour off the oil, reduce the juice, first with some wine then with some veal stock, strain, season, and serve over the cut chicken.

It took us about an hour and change. When you don’t have to focus on a second dish (or a first dish before this one) it’s really easy to focus fully on the one dish and get it done. But when you need to prep your second dish while you’re rushing to get your first one done, there are timing issues. It’s really difficult to get around this, but that’s what separates the good chefs from the great ones. Organization and order, focus and attention to details. I’m working on it.

The next day we had to make an apple tart and a pate a choux dough AND a genoise cake. We weren’t necessarily timed, but we had to rush. It was fun. Again, focusing on one dish at a time was easier than focusing on the two.

So wine tasting. The first night was pretty boring, until we got to taste some of the basic wines. The woman explaining it to us was enthusiastic and obviously extremely bright, but she first taught us the extreme basics, like how wine is made, and that it comes from grapes, and stuff like that. So maybe for someone who just graduated HS and hasn’t really looked into all of these things in their spare time at work, then its interesting. But if you understand that wine comes from grapes, and they prune trees to make sure the proper amount of grapes receive the proper resources from the tree, then all that mattered was the tasting.

I will do my best to recall what we tasted. But we tasted 6 basic grape varieties. We went down the line from whites to reds, lightest to strongest. For whites we tasted a Riesling, a sauvignon blanc, and a chardonnay. For the reds we did pinot noir, merlot then cabernet sauvignon.

They basically ranged from lighter to heavier, less alcoholic to more alcoholic, no oak, to very oaky. The point of our first night of wine was to be able to identify the flavors and descriptions that those wine-o’s always talk about with their noses submerged nostril deep in a glass. “Oh wow, that’s really fruity… the black cherry aromas are quite intense… that’s a really earthy wine…” etc. So we were able to distinguish some of the basic classifications, which were the less subjective ones, including dryness, acidity, oakyness, earthiness, and a couple of others.

It was a nice introduction.

The next day was more fun, and more interesting to say the least. We paired wines with different types of foods. We basically had sweet jam, salty/fatty cheese, salty and fatty sausage, hot sauce, butter, and one or two other flavors.

It was interesting to see and taste how the wine interacted with the different flavors in your mouth. How something sour cancelled out the sourness of the wine. Something sweet cancelled out the sweetness of a sweet white wine we tasted (which was perhaps my least favorite)

In brief, wine is one of the few alcohols, more so than any brew or spirit/cocktail, that is made for drinking with food. It not only enhances the flavor of the food, but the food enhances the flavor of the wine.