Silverman Hough - 100 Perfect Pairings: Small Plates to Enjoy with Wines You Love

Copyright 2010 by Jill Silverman Hough. All rights reserved

Photos Copyright 2010 by Lucy Schaeffer

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Hough, Jill Silverman.

100 perfect pairings : small plates to serve with wine you love / Jill Silverman

Hough.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-470-44631-7 (cloth); 978-1-1181-1319-6 (ebook); 978-1-1181-1320-2 (ebook)

1. Appetizers. 2. Cookery. 3. Wine and wine making. I. Title. II. Title: One hundred pairings.

TX740.H693 2009

641.812--dc22

2009017333

Printed in China

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

dedication

To my husband,

my hero,

my best friend

Im so lucky to be paired with someone as perfect as you

acknowledgments

A huge hug of gratitude to my agent, Jennifer Griffin, and everyone at The Miller Agency. It makes all the difference in the world to have someone else in your cornerespecially someone as savvy and supportive as Jennifer.

A big thank you to Linda Ingroia, and everyone at John Wiley & Sons, for helping my idea blossom and for having it turn out so beautifully. Thanks, too, to Lucy Schaeffer and her team and to Elizabeth Van ItallieIm proud to be the beneficiary of your obvious talents. Thank you to Laura Norcia Vitale for my author photo.

Anne Baker, Mia Malm, and Constellation Winesthank you for very generously donating wine to my project. Thanks, too, to Peter Marks for helping to make it happen.

Kevin Toomajian, Wine God, thank you for helping me look like I know something. I truly appreciate your friendship, and your expertise.

To my recipe tastersJohn Danby, Pam Fischer, Susan and David Norman, Andrea Stupka, and Beck, Tom, Kelse, and Meghan McIveryouve contributed to these pages, and me, immensely. Thank you for being on my team, and for proving that people are willing to participate, excited even, if you just ask them.

To all the editors Ive had the good fortune to work for and to all the cooks Ive had the good fortune to work alongsidethank you for the education.

Finally, thank you to my grandmothers and my parents for giving me the gift of good food. Thank you to my familyespecially my parents, brother, in-laws, and husbandand all my fabulous friends for your love and support, in this and all things. Thank you, mostly, for the delicious life I lead. I love you.

about this book

You are holding in your hands possibly the first-ever food and wine pairing book decidedly not written for food and wine geeks.

This book is for everyday wine drinkers, regular folks who like a glass of wine with a meal or with friends, or both, and who also like to eat good food and have that food complement the wine, and vice versa.

If that describes you, this book is for you.

In fact, in this book I will purposefully not attempt to educate you about the finer points of food and wine pairing. The general points, sure. But one of the things that drives me crazy about most food and wine pairing books is that their authors seem to think you have to learn about food and wine pairing before you can do food and wine pairing and then enjoy delicious food and wine.

But you dont have to know how to do food and wine pairing to enjoy it. You dont have to know all the dishes that pair well with, say, Zinfandel, or why they do, to make one of them and appreciate it with a glass of Zinfandel.

So with this book, you get to cut to the chase. Just open the chapter, pick a recipe, make it, and pour yourself a glass of Zinfandel as you sit down to eat.

Another thing that drives me crazy about most food and wine pairing booksthey recommend wines that most everyday wine drinkers have never heard of or cant afford. Try this with a Spanish Albario or that with a Puligny-Montrachet, theyll say. Or theyll mention a familiar wine, but recommend a specific producer or year. What if you cant find Robert Mondavi Winerys 2005 Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon? Guess you cant make that recipe.

So with this book, Ive stuck to twelve of the most basic varietals, wines you can find at great wine stores and also at the supermarket, at all price points. I couldnt resist throwing in a few that may be sort of new to you, because theyre good food wines, but theyre still easily and affordably available wherever you buy your wine.

And every recipe in each chapter will go with every bottle of that varietal. Some recipes might work better with certain styles of, for example, Chardonnay, but theyll all work with Chardonnay. If you know that your particular bottle of Chardonnay is buttery or that its crisp, great. If not, dont worry about it. At all.

All of this isnt to say that there arent really, really perfect food and wine pairings out there, ones that are a magical match between a very specific bottle of wine and a very specific dish. Ill never forget one incredible evening at a San Francisco restaurant, when my husband and I had a killer combination of smoked sea bass and Riesling. I wish I could remember what Riesling it was, so I could reproduce that positively perfect pairing again and again. But I still enjoy smoked sea bass with Riesling, all kinds of Riesling.

The bottom line is, if youd like to enjoy food and wine pairing without having to learn everything there is to know about food and wine pairing, this book is for you.

If you know a lot about food and wine pairing and simply want more recipes to enjoy with the wines you drink, this book is for you.