Summer Food & Wine Pairings
7/15:
Now that the rain has stopped (hopefully for the rest of the summer), and we’ve had some great weather, I got a chance to head out onto my roofdeck and fire up the grill. Last night I stopped by a local pizza joint and bought some fresh pizza dough to make grilled pizza. I wasn’t in the mood for the traditional tomato sauce based ‘za, so I lightened up some marscapone cheese with some lemon juice and lemon zest and used that as the base for my pizza. Then I threw down a layer of carmelized onions, grilled portabello mushrooms, grilled asparagus, and finished it with some chunks of really ripe goat cheese. Onto the grill and about 10 minutes later we had a perfectly grilled pizza. I went to this month’s PostScript for one of our “Fire up the Grill” Barbecue wine picks, and popped open a bottle of Charles Smith’s ‘Boom-Boom’ Syrah from Washington State (no connection to Fred Couples or the Venga Boys). This is the perfect summer red for pizza or anything else hot off the grill. The dark jammy fruit plays perfectly with that charcoal/carmelization flavor, and it’s definitley a lot lighter and softer than your typical Barossa valley Shiraz which can sometimes overpower grilled food unless you have a fat ribeye steak. Keep this wine in mind for your end of the summer BBQ parties.
7/12:
I came home Sunday night from a gorgeous day on the beach and was in the mood for something light but packed with tons of bold flavors. I stopped at my local fish monger (Yankee Lobster in Southie) and grabbed two beautiful thick pieces of Cod that were caught that morning. I wanted to try something different so I picked up a bunch of not your ordinary ingredients and went home to start cooking. I took out the food processor and made a cilantro pesto with macadamia nuts, garlic, jalepeno, lime juice/zest, manchego cheese, and some really good extra virgin olive oil. I encrusted the cod with macadamia nuts and baked it, letting the fresh pesto serve as a sauce. On the side, I served some cumin-carmelized cauliflower florets. The fish came out perfect, moist on the inside with some nice texture on top from the nuts, and the perfect amount of freshness from the cilantro with a little zip of heat. When the idea for this meal popped into my head on the beach, I immediatley thought of another one of our PostScript’s Fire up the Grill picks to accompany it. Feudi di San Gregorio Falanghina from the Campania region of Italy was a perfect fit! The citrusy flavors and aromas paired beautifully with the lime zest in the pesto. The minerality and strong punch of acidity in this wine was just what my palate needed to cut through the almost buttery quality of the macadamia nuts. The heat and smokieness of the jalepeno and cumin spice didn’t overpower this wine at all which was my initial worry. This wine is great for seafood lovers!
