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