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FOOD
SPECIAL Pairing Wonders
Indian
cuisine can go well with wines as a recent Chateau Margaux-Indian dinner
demonstrated
Drinking
a $500-odd Chateau Margaux 1985 with a biryani — even one as delicately
spiced as I had last week — would be considered blasphemy by purists.
Pairing the same great Bordeaux winery’s 2001 and 1996 vintages with lamb
done two Indian ways should be equally outré for connoisseurs, desi or
otherwise.
So hats off to the Delhi doyen of French wine,
Dhruv Sawhney, for presenting a five-course Indian meal with Chateau
Margaux’s wines last week for family and friends. It was as daring a move
as his inviting Delhi’s beau monde to have Chateau Margaux with the
vegetarian creations of L’Arpege’s Alain Passard in 2011.
The Passard meal was not a great success as the
Indian idea of ‘vegetarian’ includes a carb component and spices that the
great French chef did not address. We Indians have very definite food
preferences and are not swayed by food that does not concur with their idea
of ‘taste’ and ‘flavour’.
Mirch Masala
So matching ‘authentic’ Indian food with Chateau Margaux was a logical
challenge. Conventional wisdom decrees that the strong aromas and flavours
of Indian cuisines overpower French wines. Indeed, template ‘Indian’ dishes
do have spices, oils and rich ingredients aplenty. Even if aficionados
detect spicy undertones in Margaux, they aren’t in the same league as our
robust desi masalas!
Then there is the great Indian shaitan — the
chilli, in all its fiery glory. Barring the Gujarati and West Bengali
preference for sweetness in their food, most Indian cuisines are replete
with the tongue-numbing chilli. Although there are dishes without it, any
credible pairing has to face the chilli head-on.
That is precisely what Sawhney bravely did. Nor was
he foolhardy for, as Chateau Margaux’s famed winemaker Paul Pontallier
commented while tucking into his saufian nisha (tandoori prawn) with the Pavillon
Blanc 2009, he’s even had Chateau Margaux with fiery Sichuan fare.
Luckily for us, Chinese and Thais have bravely
ventured where Indians fear to tread. The Margaux-Indian dinner therefore
must be regarded as a brave step forward, albeit fraught with the usual
risks of being either too cautious or too ambitious. We all wondered how
would it compare to ‘traditional’ pairings.
As a reference point, next week a wine dinner in
Vancouver at the Jean-Georges will feature two of the wines we had. Chateau
Margaux 1996 and 1985 will be paired with roast squab, mushroom cavatelli,
brown butter emulsion, and beef tenderloin, oxtail croquette, cauliflower,
sauce Bordelaise, respectively.
Meat Test
As Chateau Margaux prefers rich meats and earthy flavours, the Sawhney
menu had to align with that. Choosing the vegetarian options were
particularly challenging, but absolutely imperative, given that the price
tag of Margaux puts it firmly in a sphere whose inhabitants at least in
India are largely herbivorous!
Clearly a lot of thought went into pairing gulhar
kebab (figs and chana dal) and the charoli dalcha kebab — the non-veg
counterparts being saufian nisha and nawabi murg tikka — with the rounded
Pavillon Blanc, a 100% Sauvignon Blanc. It was surprisingly harmonious, so
we were off to a flying start.
Chholiye ka shorba (I like to think of it as an
Indian vegetarian version of the Moroccan chickpea soup, harira) and
dhingri shorba with two mini poories arrived with the very drinkable
(though not wildly exciting) Pavillon Rouge 2003. There was a bit of
hesitation but the soups were mild and flavourful so the wine survived the
test!
Moving on to the 2001 and exalted 1996 vintages, it had to be lamb, and
they came as gosht korma and lagan ki boti, with morel and aubergine
bhartas as the vegetarian counterparts. There was even more reservation
about this pairing, especially as the spicerichness of the meats was
undeniable.
It didn’t help that the 2001 capriciously remained ‘closed’ as long as the
dishes were warm, and the 1996 was much too sophisticated to stand up to
the lagan though it paradoxically complemented the korma. It left me
feeling that curries and great cuvees don’t really marry but can have a
nice platonic relationship — no co-habiting! But that’s not to say a
carnivorous relationship was impossible, as the very next course
established: a subtle lamb biryani opened at the table so that the aromas
wafted up enticingly. With the complex and absolutely peak form 1985, the
meat pieces became redundant as the broth had mixed so well with the rice.
Coup de Maitre
The biryani-Chateau Margaux 1985 was the discovery of the evening, and
one for which I would have willingly foregone most of the other courses.
The menu did prove that good red wines can face Indian food — indeed all
wines are made to be had with food unlike spirits — but a Chateau Margaux
is an overkill!
Indian food, so far, has not evolved to be paired with alcohol of any kind.
But nor did most wines taste the way they do now, even a century ago.
Wineries are not immune to market forces (look at what Robert Parker has
done to the ‘Bordeaux style’) nor are they cuisine inured to changing
lifestyles and taste preferences.
Evolution affects them both. So there is reason to believe that in the
future their paths may converge as they warm up to each others
characteristics and consider an alliance. Till then, it is left to
aficionados like Dhruv Sawhney to demonstrate the delicious possibilities
of give-and-take.
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