CaLDRON February 2014 - Valentine's Day Special | Page 28

COVER FEATURE

Y

ou are flipping through the
pages of a food magazine
and you come across a interesting
recipe and think about trying it out.
You peruse the list of ingredients,
read that it includes Chardonnay
wine and decide to give this recipe
a pass. All because you are unsure if
cooking with wine is as simple as it
is made out to be?
WC Fields once said, “I cook with
wine. Sometimes, I even add it to
the food!” Jokes apart, cooking with
wine might come across as a daunting task, mostly because people are
apprehensive about investing time
and a nice bottle of premium wine;
and then ending up with some culinary gobbledygook. That need not
be the case. After all, early Romans
used to cook with wine regularly
since it was a great preservative to
store their meats, especially when
their troops trudged to war. This is
apart from mulling wine with spices
and citrus fruits as their beverage of
choice. And all this by just following
their nose for what worked in a dish,
and what didn’t. So what’s stopping
you?

Cooking with wine gained popularity wit h various European cultures,
because it was abundantly available and could replace vinegar in
some dishes too. Besides acting as a
preservative, wine elevated the taste
of various meat dishes and soon became a staple medium in cooking.

In TW’ine
TRUTH
here s

…or so said Pliny, The Elder, a Roman philosopher. So let’s raise a toast
to cooking with wine and adding this
epitome of truthfulness into your culinary experiments!

“Wine to Europe is what spices are
to India – helpful in most recipes
and but essential in a few,” explains
Chef Stephane Mathonneau, former
Head Chef of Delhi’s Le Bistro Du
Parc. “In some cases, wine is used to
lend colour to a dish like
28

CaLDRON February 2014