Friday, April 30, 2010

Spicy Food & Wine Parings

Sara from the OneTribeGourment blog brings us a recipe for Moroccan Style Chickpea Soup with a Spicy Harissa that was featured in today's Foodbuzz Top 9.

http://www.foodbuzz.com/blogs/2200492-moroccan-style-chickpea-soup-with-a-spicy-harissa

Pairing wine with anything can be a challenge without practice and experience, but spicy cuisine has offered me some unique experiences as I have grown to love pairing wine with food. I have found good matches for Mexican, Indian, Middle Eastern, Asian and others.

My general rules are to find a wine with nice fruity and/or flowery aromas, some residual sugar to help moderate the heat and enough crisp acidity not to destroy the flavors of the food. For this dish I would recomend the Ironstone Obsession Symphony from California. This wine has the up-front aromas, is off-dry and has a slight feel of small bubbles that are crisp on your tongue. The wine reminded me of a drier Moscato which would be another wine I would recomend trying with some spicy foods although some selections are too sweet and overrun the food.

This dish is comfort food as so many cultures define it and I think this down to earth wine will both match the food and the mood of enjoying it.

Cheers!

--Jason

1 comment:

Sara said...

Hey Jason, Great pairing for the Chickpea Soup!! :)