Wine Dinner, February 14, 2016

Ahh, It's February, and love is in the air. Well, maybe, but more importantly, wine is being consumed. This Valentine's Day is the first I have shared with someone special in a long time, and I almost forgot how expensive gifts can get. Thankfully, she was more than happy to share a three-course meal as our gifts to each other. I bought the steak and the wine, and she got the rest. She wasn't too excited about me turning it into a project for this class, but she went along with it. So, without any further ado, here was my first attempt at wine and food pairing. And by the way, everything in this dinner was made from scratch as much as I was able to.




The first course was a personal favorite of my girlfriend's: Mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce. I decided to pair this appetizer with a white wine, and this one caught my eye, The Hermit Crab Viognier Marsanne, 2014. This wine had a very grassy, crisp, and lemony nose, and an even crispier, drier taste. I was really reminded of a crispy apple, with an acidic end.
When paired with the mozzarella sticks, the acidic bite of the wine nearly disappeared, and cheese sticks lost its greasiness. I feel that this wine and the appetizer paired really well together, and made for a great start to what I hope would be a great dinner. She also thought that the two paired very well together. While she didn't like the bite of the white wine, when mixed with the mozzarella sticks, it was really nice.



I decided for the second, and main course, I would try my hand at pan-searing a steak. I chose a flat iron cut for its great marbling as well as being delicious for a college kid on a budget. I cooked it as any one would: a few minutes on each side in a super-hot pan, then basted with a garlic and thyme butter sauce. Since I wanted her to enjoy this dinner, I decided on spicy Cajun fries (made from a real potato) as a side, since she loves them. I decided to pair this Chateau Morisette Chambourcin, 2012, as I thought a bold red wine would really pair well with the savory steak, and Cajun flavoring. By itself, this VERY dark red wine has a very earthy nose. I smelled some sweet cherries, some dark licorice, and a little tobacco as well. There is a fruity element to this wine at first taste, but as it develops on the tongue, some heat shows up with a dark cherry, earthy taste, and ends with a black pepper finish. By itself, I love this wine.

For my first time cooking steak, it was delicious in my opinion. Mine was rare, and her's was medium rare, our favorite! The fries had the perfect amount of spiciness and really tasted great as a side to the steak. When I mixed the wine with the meal, I was surprised to find that the saltiness and spiciness from the dish didn't pair all that well with the dry bite from the chambourcin, and slightly exacerbated the bitterness of the wine. It was still fine, and I would certainly recommend pairing the steak with the wine, but the Cajun fries was a slight detriment to the whole palate. We were planning to make corn pudding as a second side to add some sweetness to the dish, but when we realized it would have taken too long, we decided against it. It could have potentially completed the main course, and really brought that much needed sweetness to the overall bitterness.
She thought it was a great steak as well. The fries were also great in her opinion, but she just could not enjoy the wine as much as I did. It was much more bitter than the first course, but the meal was tasty.



The final course, the dessert, was primarily her idea. The meal was supposed to be a molten chocolate lava cake, but ended up just being a semi-solid chocolate cake. But we had some Ghiradelli chocolate sauce and powdered sugar, and I fashioned a strawberry in a really fancy sliced design:

The wine was chosen by her, mainly because of the sparkly label. The Barefoot Sweet Red Blend (Non-Vintage) has a sweet, yet sour nose, that really had a large bouquet of berries, like blackberries, strawberries, cherries, and more. It had a very sugary beginning, with a delicious cooked cherry finish. Overall it was quite dynamic, but very sweet by itself.
The cake was okay by itself, and the sweetness from the strawberry made it a decent dessert. When paired with the wine, the semi-sweet cake and the sweet wine went really well together. I felt that the sweetness built on itself and really came together nicely. But when I ate the strawberry and drank the wine at the same time, oddly enough, the wine just tasted like water to me.
She thought the wine and cake paired well together, but not as well as the first course. She said this was the sweetest wine she has tasted. Overall, she thought is was a very sweet meal, but she liked it.



As we crammed the last bite of this gigantic meal down our throats, we finally could relax. I think we both had a very enjoyable time, from the cooking all the way to the last bite. I'm glad I could share something this enjoyable and intimate with someone very special to me. My favorite part of the night was the actual cooking of the steak, as it was my first real experience with beef. Though she loved the mozzarella sticks most of all, I think she had a great time.