Szabo - Pairing food & wine for dummies

Pairing Food & Wine For Dummies

by John Szabo

Pairing Food & Wine For Dummies

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Szabo, John

Pairing Food & Wine For Dummies / John Szabo.

Includes index.

Issued also in an electronic format.

ISBN 978-1-11839-9-57-6

1. Food and wine pairing.

2. Wine and wine making. I. Title.

TP548.S98 2012 641.22 C2012-902743-X

ISBN 978-1-118-39957-6 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-41427-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-41428-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-41430-9 (ebk)

Printed in the United States

1 2 3 4 5 RRD 15 14 13 12 11 10

About the Author

John Szabo is the original Canadian master sommelier, earning the credentials in 2004, and is one of only 200 worldwide today. When not eating and drinking (professionally), he writes and reviews wines for WineAlign.com, NationalPost.com, TorontoStandard.com, Macleans Canadian Wine Guide, Wine Access Magazine, Grapevine Magazine, and is wine editor for Torontos CityBites Magazine.

John keeps his sommelier skills sharp as consulting wine director for the Trump Tower Toronto and for Torontos Pearson International Airport, among other projects. And just to make sure all angles are covered and his experience well rounded, he owns a vineyard in Eger, Hungary, the J&J Eger Wine Co., where he makes small quantities of food friendly Kkfrankos. As a holder of a third degree black belt in Goju-ryu karate, his grapes are well protected, too.

Dedication

For my wife, Alexandra, and my children Esmai and Julius, who supported long hours of writing, regular absence, and hundreds of bottles of wine on the table each week as I looked for that perfect match.

Author Acknowledgments

No book is ever the product of a single person (not the good ones, anyhow). To list all the people with whom Ive shared great, and not so great, moments of food and wine over the last 20 years, and from whom Ive learned pretty much everything I know would take a separate book to list. But let them all be acknowledged here; food and wine come together in company, and rarely when ones alone.

I owe many thanks to Anam Ahmed, Acquisitions Editor for Wiley, who had the confidence to engage me in the first place, as well as my editor Chad Sievers, who miraculously turned my twisted phrases and convoluted thoughts into readable text, and who pointed out many gaps, shortcomings, and incomplete ideas in the manuscript that I did my best to clarify. I would also have been buried in an avalanche of cookbooks (or lost in the surf on the Internet) were it not for chef, author, and repository of knowledge on world cuisine, Michael Pataran. Michael contributed the lions share of research into the traditional dishes from around the world that make up Part IV of this book, and his experience, particularly with eating and drinking Asian food, was invaluable.

Heartfelt thanks to my technical editor, author, and master sommelier Evan Goldstein, who was ever on hand to question, comment, and guide my ideas with his extensive knowledge on the subject of food and wine. No food and wine lovers should do without his two books, Perfect Pairings and Daring Pairings.

When things got a little hazy on the physiological side of tasting in Chapter 2, I was blessed to have Gary Pickering, PhD, Professor of Biological Sciences and Psychology and Research Scientist at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, to look to for answers. Dr. Pickering is one of the worlds foremost experts on supertasters, and if you want to find out if youre among them, go to his site at www.supertasting.com to test yourself.

I also owe sincere thanks to Wojciech Bonkwski, editor of the Polish Wine Guide (www.polishwineguide.com), who kindly ensured that my pairing suggestions with Polish food would not get me into trouble in Warsaw, as well as Bill Zacharkiw, wine columnist for the Montreal Gazette, who kindly shared the results of many of his legendary sessions on food and wine compatibility. Id also like to mention Franois Chartier, a Qubec-based sommelier and author of Taste Buds and Molecules: The Art and Science of Food with Wine, whos innovative line of inquiry has revolutionized the business of food and wine pairing. Its to him I owe the inspiration for the explorations on flavor harmony in Chapter 4.