[MUSIC] Welcome back. In our previous video, we launched our module on food and wine pairing principles with an introduction to food and wine pairing. In this lesson, we will discuss food pairing. The marriage of wine and food is hugely popular. Advice for pairing can be found everywhere we turn. The wine reviewers are telling us what to eat with their wine choices. Food magazines are giving us detailed recipes and are directing us to the best accompanying wine. In fact, there's so much advice available that it becomes bewildering. What are they basing their suggestions on? Might there be advertisers paying to have these recommendations? What about the simple, old fashioned recommendations? Aren't there some fundamental principles from which we can obtain guidance? You think so? In the so-called old days, there are seemed to have been fewer choices. The available advice was so clear and simple. I found a nice quote on the dust jacket of a book from the 80s to authors from New York who reminded us of this simply advice and this was a quote. Some years ago, a wine enthusiast phoned the late Alexis Lichine for advice and reached the great wine writer's telephone answering machine. Following the usual apologies for not being able to come to the phone, Lichine added, quote. But if it is an emergency, remember, white wine with fish, red wine with meat, end quote. Amusing even then, it was the conventional wisdom. And as such, it was and is perfectly legitimate. This is a great book called Red Wine With Fish by Rosengarden and Wesson and they spend the whole book telling you how to evaluate what you're tasting and to not be afraid to break with the rules once in a while. So now, we live in a much faster paced more complexed world and there so much information bombarding us. Intercultural flavor fusion has caused confusion and the standard traditional dishes always seem to have a new twist not to mention the fact that the world of wines has exploded. The sheer number of wines available just really makes it baffling. Nowadays, we often hear discussed the marriage of wine and food. What an interesting turn of phrase. My favorite way to introduce this matrimonial topic is to quote the opening paragraph of an essay by another wine writer, one of my favorite, Gerald Asher. And Gerald Asher says, quote, do we fuss too much over pairing wine with food? Raymond Oliver, a distinguished chef and the proprietor of Le Grand Vefour, once wrote, apart from the occasional rare and obvious mistakes, there are a few wines and dishes which really do not marry. Asher continues, most would agree. From my part, I have enjoyed my share of awful food and miserable wines, but I have yet to be confronted with a truly well-prepared food and delicious wine in a combination so bizarre that either or both were actually ruined. Wine and food can be mutually enhancing, but they have a natural affinity in any case and are tolerant of each other to a broad degree. Well, I'm hoping that that will make you feel a little more relaxed about the subject and we could let it go at that, but both authors do continue and bemoan the fact that we have to leave, unfortunately, innocence and simplicity behind. Gerald Asher elaborates on the history of banquet food presentation and brings us into the modern era telling us how more complex things are these days, but encouraging us to make the extra effort to craft a good pairing between wine and food. Rosengarten and Wesson remind us, quote, much has changed in the intervening years not least of all the principles of fine civilized meals, the food and the wine. Cuisines the world over have been affected by the energetic creativity of today's chefs while similar impulses along with high-tech methods have altered wine making, end quote. In the food world, people talk about wine a lot of different ways is sort of depends on who's speaking. Some say, wine is a food and other say, well, no, wine is not a food, wine is a beverage. But since we have it with food, perhaps it is to some extent a food or maybe it's a condiment or maybe it's a seasoning when taken with food. That all simply adds to the confusion, but there's one thing that we know, balance within a wine and within a food and between a wine and a food is fundamental. Balance is fundamental. Some discussions will consider the wine to be the fixed entity, the unchangeable partner in the match since the food side could possibly be altered or manipulated to accommodate it. There's very little we could do to change a given wine other than chill it down or warm it up or maybe give it up an aeration, decanting to soften it up a little bit, but these scenario is usually only true when we have no other choice of wine. For example, a special customer brings a bottle with them for an anniversary or a birthday celebration. And if the chef is made aware of this situation and the nature of the wine that the customer brought, perhaps he or she can adjust the food or substitute some of the ingredients to make the food that the customer then orders to go with their wine a little bit more appropriate for that wine. But other then this type of instance, we can always review the wine list and chose something else or we can run down to the bottle shop or we can take a second trip down to the cellar and change to a different bottle. In this lesson, we discussed food pairing and a quotation from the book Red Wine with Fish. In our next lesson, we will turn our attention to deconstructing the flavors.
