A Little Wine with Dinner

As many of you readers know, last week I celebrated my 25th birthday. On Monday night I went to Picholine with my parents, on Thursday I went to Momofuku an split a Bo Ssam with some friends, on Saturday a couple of friends hosted a party for me (thanks!) and on Friday I did a little cooking so that I might have some food to eat while me and some friends drank wines from 1983.

Instead of experimenting, I cooked a couple of rather simple tried and true favorites to go with a bevy of delicious wine. This is one of the few times that I have paired food with wine and not the other way around, and I have to say I find the practice interesting and quite enjoyable.

The idea behind the meal was to start off with some seared foie gras and cherries to pair with an ’83 Chateau Guiraud Sauternes. This was followed by some fennel crusted halibut with walnut parsely pesto over pan roasted mushrooms paired with an ’05 Cakebread Chardonnay that I picked up in California this past summer. The third and final savory course was a very large braised short rib over hash with roasted beets and carrots that went with an ’83 Langoa Barton from Pessac-Leognan. Along the way we also had a ’95 Chateau Sociando-Mallet from Haut Medoc, a Marques de Rescal Riserva Rioja and some Chateau Carmes de Rieussec Sauternes. In all a very fun night with a few friends and a lot of years worth of wine. I should celebrate my birthday like this every year.

It’s now time to get back to real life and a little experimentation…