Aubergine vs The Restaurant
The contestants?
Graeme Shapiro
owner/chef at The Restaurant, CT
Graeme bases his food
on the classics, but likes to fuse them with Oriental elements he learned while
travelling and working in Thailand, Australia and India. An honours graduate
in religious studies, he enjoys exploring new ideas and tastes. Since he was
a boy, he's competed with his father to see who can eat the most adventurous
food.
It's a tradition he's continuing with his young sons, Abraham and Jude.
Harald Bresselschmidt
owner/chef at Aubergine, CT
Harald fuses classical European cuisine with African ingredients and the Asian flavouring he's learnt
from his Indian wife, Sudeshnie Naidoo. Growing up on a farm in Germany taught
him from a very young age "how everything is supposed to taste". He's
been cooking since he was 11. Few chefs are as passionate about the pairing
of food and wine. He spends hours on end testing, tasting and comparing. But
for him it's all worth it when he sees that flicker of "A-Ha!" cross
a satisfied guest's face.
The judges?
Allan Mullins, Cape Wine Master and Woolworths wine buyer Lannice Snyman, culinary
consultant and Eat Out restaurant guide editor.
What Graeme did
Graeme found the Du Toitskloof Pinotage an easy-to-drink wine, full of upfront
fruit, with hints of chocolate. He played with several food-pairing options,
including something with chocolate in it, before he decided to serve rare springbok
fillet with a blue cheese and mushroom risotto and vygie (sour fig) sauce.
"I like to do indigenous dishes with indigenous wine, because I find regional dishes often go naturally with the wine of the area."
What the judges said
"I think the food and wine are well matched," Allan remarked soon
after taking his first sip and bite. "The wine's light-bodied, well made,
well balanced, gentle and elegant, and the food is similar in that it's not
a big redmeat-in-your-face dish and has all kinds of interesting subtle nuances.
Both have a lot of delicacy."
Lannice agreed. "The wine was quite quiet initially, but the springbok's definitely intensified the fruit in the wine.
I was initially wary of the blue cheese with this wine, but it's coping fine."
Graeme remarked that he had also considered teaming the wine with Norwegian salmon with Chinese sauce, shiitake mushrooms and fried bok choi. At this, Lannice sat bolt upright and insisted he let them try the combination.
What Graeme did next
A similar salmon dish is on his menu so Graeme was able to produce it at short
notice. The moment the plate arrived at their table, Lannice and Allan pushed
the venison aside.
The sauce, explained Graeme, is based on a Chinese red braising sauce. It combines pork trotters' stock, which lends a gelatinous texture, with subtle spices: dried mandarin peel, cinnamon, star anise and ginger.
What the judges then said
"Oh, this excites me so much more," Lannice exclaimed. "You wouldn't
expect Pinotage, even a subtle Pinotage, to work with salmon, but it does, it
really does. The weights are well matched and the surprise of it is just wonderful."
Allan was equally impressed. "It's interesting how the venison brought out the fruitiness of the wine, but the salmon, this sauce and the bok choi have brought out the spiciness in the wine."
Lannice nodded. "Yes, and on another level the chocolate in the wine finds the caramel in the fish. I love the way Graeme gave the fish a helluva whack in the pan, caramelising and crisping it on the outside, giving it texture and doubling its flavour."
With each bite and sip she took, Lannice's delight grew. Thoroughly enjoying the whole exercise, she waved her fork wildly in the air and declared: "This is not just a food and wine relationship. Nor just an ordinary marriage. It's a great, long-lasting marriage - like the one I have - because they carry on sparking each other off in so many ways. A Scorpio and Gemini kind of match! A ferris wheel at the funfair! I'll remember it all my life!
"Yes, the wine and the springbok did marry too, but they'll probably end up getting divorced."
What Harald did
"I broke my head trying to match this wine," Harald confesses. When
he first tasted it his response was an unequivocal: "I don't know what
to do with this - it's so big and bold!"
But after he'd decanted it for a few hours, he found it had softened and integrated considerably. He decided to go for contrast. "I wanted some parts of the dish to absorb the big flavours and some to play with them."
So he served the Du Toitskloof with rabbit sausage with parsnip purée,
mung bean curry, coriander potatoes and pineapple relish.
What the judges said
Both Allan and Lannice found the layers of flavour in the dish very clever,
sophisticated and adventurous. "This dish is bringing out all the layers
of the wine," said Lannice.
"It plays with the wine in an infinite number of ways," agreed Allan. "The only problem is there are so many elements you can't put them all in your mouth at the same time!" He felt the dish would "slaughter" a lighter wine, but "the wine's strong and layered so it works".
He initially found the pineapple "a scary thought" because acidic
food is always tricky to match with wine, but because it was cooked, it was
not
that acidic.
Lannice felt the mung bean curry drew everything together, creating a lovely counterpoint in terms of texture and weight. And she relished the Indian flavour, created from subtly integrated Indian spices: chilli powder, mustard seeds, coriander seeds, turmeric. "Food that's too spicy tends not to work with a big wine."
She added: "In a dish you can experience many reactions and responses as you go through it. Sometimes something that starts off matching well can taste gross 20 mouthfuls later. In this case the match gets better and better until both the food and wine are soaring. Like now!"
What they concluded
We could not persuade the judges to pick a winner. "Both chefs rose brilliantly
to the challenge," Lannice and Allan agreed. "And they showed how
different dishes bring out different personality traits in the wine," said
Lannice. "This exercise really demonstrates how fascinating - and what
fun - food and wine pairing is."
