Every Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine that exceeds its normal £10 ($20) threshold with one great meal, prepared following the instructions of some the Internet’s best food blogs.

This week’s ‘Blow the Bank’ comes courtesy of Danielle of Habeas Brûlée and the intriguingly titled Crypto-Jewish Brazilian Yellow Stew, the inspiration for which she explains in her post came from the book A Drizzle of Honey: The Life and Recipes of Spain’s Secret Jews, by David M. Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson.

At first thought, cooking meats with fruit might seem rather unorthodox in the English-speaking world — like fusion cuisine. Yet, it is a long-standing tradition across most of Asia, the South Pacific, Africa, Latin America, and large parts of continental Europe. After all, who hasn’t heard of such classic fruit and meat pairings as melon and prosciutto or Duck l’Orange?

In contrast to those familiar staples Danielle’s Brazilian Yellow stew is simultaneously classic and modern, steeped as it is in the history of Iberia, the Spanish Inquisition, the Jewish Diaspora and the popular tropical fruits of South America.

And it’s the marriage of old and new that makes the dish so refreshingly light and flavourful. This isn’t the heavy winter stews of InterWined’s youth.

Paired with Danielle’s Crypto-Jewish Brazilian Yellow Stew was the 2005 Pazo Señorans Albariño from Philglas & Swiggot at £11.99 and widely available in the US for around $20. (At Philglas & Swiggot, the 2001 Pazo retails for £26.99.)

Like Danielle’s stew, Albariño is an old wine made new again by the popularity of its dry, sometimes Riesling-like, flavour and crisp fruity nose. While the precise history of the grape seems hard to confirm, its production has reputedly increased five-fold since the 1990s with winemakers exporting the grape for the first time to California, where a handful of winemakers such as Cambiata now produce American Albariño.

With a light straw colour, the 2005 Pazo Señorans smells of stone-fruit, maybe even faint watermelon, and grass. Its slightly acidic flavour instantly highlights the ripeness of the stew’s mango. A treat.

Danielle’s Recipe in Full

Crypto-Jewish Brazilian Yellow Stew

Click on the post to view and download the recipe

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InterWined.con recently procured a £12 bottle of Merlot from a small Italian importer. Fortunately, the wine was sold at a 25% discount, and once tax was added the bottle came in right under the 10 quid limit…£9.7125 (yes, they charged me to the 10,000th of a pence).

The 2002 Monreale Rosso di Ture Merlot smells of fresh, black ink with a hint of the dairy farm thrown in. The wine could age for another 5 years, easy, but is already tempting with its jasmine-like perfumed aroma.

Deep ruby colour, densely coiled in its core. The wine slips gobs of tannin under the tongue with some zip. There is a bit of throat burn, so it could easily take to decanting. The mellowed-out wine (after an hour in the decanter) is strong and burly and could easily slaughter a spring lamb: 9.1.

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The 2006 Menhir Verdeca (white wine grape) from Salento in Puglia, southern Italy (very southern Italy; the heel in fact), was served with the smoked fish and pasta. The wine went great, and since it was a gift: 8.8, with friends.

However, whenInterWined.com bought a bottle for review (we except no gifts), the wine seemed more flabby than fleshy this time round. The zip had turned hot, but the lemony hints and some tropical fruits saved the wine. It has a decent slow-medium finish and is very savoury.

But it was better the first time…8.4, without friends.

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Sadly, even the most educated seem susceptible to race bias, even if they are unaware of their behavior.
According to Alexander Green from Harvard Medical School, doctors’ unconscious racial biases may influence their decisions to treat patients and explain racial and ethnic disparities in the use of certain medical procedures. Green and his teams’ research, published […]

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The organic 2006 Limney, made by Davenport in Horsmonden, is a bargain at about £8 from the Organic Delivery company. Bone dry, light and refreshing. Zippy citrus (this might sound trite, but it’s true. Swear.) and light body make it perfect for a hot summer day; even though, this bottle was consumed huddled outside, late at night, in the pouring rain: 8.5. Made from five white grapes: Ortega, Faber, Siegerrebe, Bacchus, Huxelrebe.

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Every Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine that exceeds its normal £10 ($20) threshold with one great meal, prepared following the instructions of some the Internet’s best food blogs.

This week’s ‘Blow the Bank’ comes courtesy of Lynette at Lex Culinaria and a tantalizing Pistachio-crusted Elk Roast with Wasabi Mash.

Alongside the recipe at Lex Culinaria is a post on a story that appeared in The Age, an Australian, Melbourne-based Newspaper, concerning fraud in the food industry and recipe theft in particular. In 2006, a Melbourne restaurateur, it seems, had begun copying other restaurants’ recipes and serving them in his restaurant. Given the shapelessness of the Web, Lynette pondered what, if any, lessons the article imparted to the food blogger. Her conclusion? The same as InterWined’s: few ideas and few recipes are truly original; and, whether copying or adapting, always give credit where credit’s due.

Bearing this sage advice in mind, InterWined decided to adapt Lynette’s excellent Pistachio-crusted Elk Roast with Wasabi Mash recipe, rather than copy it. And, instead, prepared a quicker ‘Blow the Bank’-friendly Pistachio-crusted Venison Steak with Wasabi Mash. (For those disinclined toward elk or venison, Lynette assures that beef works too.)

To accompany InterWined’s Lex Culinaira-inspired Pistachio-crusted Venison Steak, the 2005 Espelt Sauló, from Emporado along the Costa Brava in Catalonia, Spain, £12 from Philglas & Swiggot and widely available online in North America.

Sauló is Catalan for sand gravel and, oddly, an almost fitting description of the wine and the soil in which the grapes (Garnacha & Cariñena) were grown. There’s a dirt quality to the wine, but it’s also low in tannins, soft, and has a nice fruitiness. The wine’ earthiness makes it durable and helps it stand up against the Asian, sugary flavours of the dishes glaze, while the soft fruit pairs very nicely with the meat.

Lynette’s Recipe in Full

Pistachio-crusted Elk Roast with Wasabi Mash

Click on the post to view and download the recipe

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The 2004 Hogue Riesling, approximately $6.95 a glass from P.F. Chang’s Chinese Restaurant Chain (branches everywhere).

The 2006 Chateau St. Michelle Riesling, available for $7.99 at WineDelight.com.

The 2006 Snoqualmie Winemaker’s Secret Riesling, available for $8.96 from Wine Chateau for the 2005 vintage.

The driest of the three, the Hogue went excellently well with Ginger Chicken and Candied Walnut Shrimp. The nose screamed apricot, the flavour said the same thing, but, thankfully, in a much quieter voice. A great wine for P.F. Chang’s: 8.8.

An off-dry wine that battled the Hogue for the most-dry prize, the Chateau St. Michelle was light and refreshing. It paired superbly with a half-dozen oysters and thinly-cut Miso Tuna Rolls in a light batter: 8.8.

The Snoqualmie was by far the sweetest. While its label recommends Asian food, fruit, and cheese pairings, InterWined is hard pressed to agree. For all of its protestations, the Snoqualmie is more akin to a Late Harvest Riesling, making it an excellent dessert wine or digestif. Reading that it pairs with ‘Asian’ food, fruit, cheese seems like sloppy marketing. Indeed, it’s always strange to read that a wine would make an excellent match for cheese, as cheese is a dairy. Dairy coats the mouth and masks the flavours and flaws of the wine. In the case of the Snoqualmie, it is an unnecessary and misleading tasting note. The wine’s better than that: 8.6.

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In a recent edition of ‘Blow the Bank’, InterWined.com relayed the popular, and mostly accurate, professional dictum that red wine and fish &mash: well, red wine and white fish — go together about as well as red wine and Coca Cola.

So what about red wine and red fish? Is there a difference? In a word, yes. Think about a white fish (cod or haddock, for instance); then, think about a red fish (a salmon or tuna).
The one glaring flaw to the above bit of professional advice is that it glosses over at best and ignores at worse the differences in textures and flavours within fish — something that would never take place with meat or poultry.

Case in point: Summer in the United States, as in many other parts of the world, means outdoor barbecues. At a recent evening barbecue held in honour of InterWined’s journey to the US, the host prepared salmon steaks with a lemon and pepper rub. Since other guests were eating burgers instead of salmon, InterWined opted for a red wine that would compliment both the firmness and flavour of the salmon steak and the juiciness of the burgers.

Enter the 2006 Cloudline Pinot Noir from the Williamette Valley in Oregon. In recent years, Oregon and the Williamette Valley have grown in fame for the quality of their Pinot Noir, and the 2006 Cloudline is very good example. It’s deep-red with a forest gateaux cherry kind of flavour. Left open to breathe for 20 minutes, it softened nicely and paired better than expected with the salmon, helping to highlight the meatiness of the Pacific salmon served at the barbecue.

As its press will attest, Cloudline’s debut vintage was 2002. And, it already sells in some restaurants for $10 a glass — something of an indication of the league of wines with which its makers see it competing. Retailing at just over $20 a bottle, InterWined says save your money and, as is common in the US, buy in bulk, bottle over glass: 8.7.

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InterWined.com promotes the development of the senses in order to enjoy everything that much more. A recent report highlighted this, with the ‘discovery’ that compounds in the skins of fruits and vegetables provide humans with beneficial qualities.
In fact, this is old news — the compound anthocyanidin, which pigments skin across the plant world, especially with […]

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First up: the 2006 Burgáns Albariño from Rias Baixas in Galicia, bought for under $12. (It currently sells from Oddbins in the UK for £8.99.)

A native and little-planted grape in Galicia, it was not until the Spanish government awarded it with its own D.O. or Denominación de Origen in 1986 (a classification similar to the French appellation) that production began to rapidly increase along with name recognition. Now, it has emerged as the grape of 2007, earning coverage in most wine-related media outlets for its crisp taste and seemingly endless versatility, as InterWined highlighted in two recent posts and as its readers and contributors have mentioned in the comments.

While the 2006 Burgáns isn’t the best Albariño that InterWined has ever tasted (that honour probably goes to the bottle served at Back to Basics in London), it’s a very good wine. Yellow in colour and apple in flavour, it was Appletiser with the bubbles (meant as compliment, by the way). For those unfamiliar with the UK Sparkling Fruit Drink, don’t think cider, but rather the crisp, sometimes slightly syrupy flavour one gets when biting into a really ripe apple from a farmer’s market. Think summer; think sun; think serve with almost anything: 8.2.

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