The best pairings for prawns or shrimp

A freezer staple in my house, prawns or shrimp are quick and easy to cook but what should you drink with them?

Like other ingredients it depends how you cook them.

The simple plate or tankard of cooked prawns in the shell is a different customer from a spicy Thai prawn curry but in general prawns or shrimp have a delicate flavour that you want to respect. Your wine should act like a squeeze of lemon which generally points to a white or a crisp rosé.

Great wine pairings for prawns

Prawns or shrimp on the shell

A seasonal treat so the simpler the wine the better. I love those French seaside whites like Muscadet or Picpoul de Pinet with freshly cooked prawns. Italian whites like Pinot Grigio and Greco di Tufo also work well as do Vinho Verde, Albarino or a crisp Sancerre. Unoaked fresh whites in other words. Nothing wrong with a glass of prosecco though, obviously.

Prawn or shrimp salad

Similar wines to the above should also work unless the salad has a richer ingredient like mango or a spicy or zesty dressing in which case I’d be looking for a white with more personality like a sauvignon or semillon or a blend of the two.

Prawn or shrimp cocktail

Again it’s more about the sauce than the prawns, especially if it’s the classic marie-rose sauce. I haven’t found a better pairing than an off-dry riesling though a fruity rosé works well too (and has the virtue of being pink if you’re colour-theming your pairings ;-)

Garlicky prawns or shrimp

Garlic LOVES sauvignon blanc so that’s a good starting point. Other citrussy whites like Rueda, unoaked white Rioja, Godello, southern Italian whites like Fiano and Falanghina and English Bacchus will all work. Goodness, almost anything barring a big oaky chardonnay will do. Try manzanilla or fino sherry too.

Prawn or shrimp curry

How hot is the curry? If it’s a korma or dry tandoori try a fruity rosé, if it’s a Thai green curry, a pinot gris or a medium dry riesling may be the better pairing.

Spanish prawn or shrimp rice dishes like paella

Often contain chorizo, certainly seasonings like saffron, garlic and pimenton so they can be quite spicy. Dry Spanish rosados such as those from Rioja and Navarra work well but you could even try a young (joven) red Rioja.

Prawn or shrimp linguine - or other pasta

If your sauce is tomato-based like this one I’d lean towards a dry Italian white or light rosé like a Provence rosé or Bardolino. If it’s creamy like this tagliolini with prawns and treviso try a white with a litlle bit more weight and roundness like a Soave, Gavi, Chenin Blanc or Chablis

See also

Prawns and Greco di Tufo

Prawn raviole and white Bordeaux

photo © bit24 - Fotolia.com

The best food pairings for Mencia

When I scoured the website for existing pairings with mencia I was amazed how many dishes I’d suggested it with. It really is an incredibly versatile food wine.

For those of you who are not familiar with it it’s a grape variety which is grown in the Bierzo and Ribeira Sacra regions of north-west Spain and produces a vibrantly juicy red that reminds me of Beaujolais with a dash of Loire cabernet franc.

Top food matches for mencia

Cecina

Cecina is a really delicious deeply savoury cured smoked beef from the same region as mencia and goes brilliantly with it as you can see from this match of the week. So does chorizo and rough country hams

Almost any kind of grilled meat especially pork and lamb

Which makes it a good wine for a barbecue. That also applies to spiced meat like kebabs or these seftali

Hearty stews

The Spanish are not renowned for their vegetarian dishes so I’m thinking meat here. Robust dishes of pork and beans for example.

Empanadas

Again from the area they have these delicious tuna and red pepper pies called empanadas. Mencia would be good with the smaller Latin American version too

Sheep cheese

Mencia is a good all-rounder with cheese but especially hard sheep cheeses which are what you tend to find in the area.

Warm salads

I suggested mencia as a pairing with this warm lamb salad with a pea, mint and feta cheese dressing. It would be great with other warm salads too.

Pizza and pasta

Almost any kind of pasta with a meaty sauce. Spaghetti and meatballs for example. It’s the perfect pizza wine too.

Roast turkey

I know there are a lot of other great pairings for roast turkey but a vibrant mencia works surprisingly well with all the sides as I discovered one Christmas.

What wine - if any - goes with ice cream?

It’s not impossible to pair wine with ice cream but it’s not easy. And there are other drinks that match better.

First wine. What’s the problem? Well in addition to being sweet, ice cream is - er - icy so tends to strip the flavour out of sweet wines. One exception is unctuous sticky PX (Pedro Ximenez) sherry which is not only good with ice cream (preferably vanilla or rum and raisin) but on it.

Also if ice cream is served as part of a dessert especially a warm dessert like an apple pie or crumble it warms it up and makes it less difficult to match. In fact you're best to match the dessert rather than the ice cream. See the best pairings for apple desserts.

But in general it’s better to turn to liqueurs which are super-sweet and syrupy themselves. For example:

Cherry brandy with a cherry (or raspberry) ripple ice cream

Apricot brandy with apricot or peach ice cream

Salted caramel liqueur with praline (or other nut) ice cream

Amaretto with an almond semi-freddo

Fragolino (wild strawberry liqueur) with strawberry ice cream

A coffee liqueur (or an espresso martini!) with chocolate icecream

And if you want to experience something really left-field try this pairing of tonka bean ice cream with Pacharan (aniseed-flavoured Basque liqueur) I had a while back.

So basically enhance the flavour of the ice cream with a similar liqueur.

It works with sorbets too - think how good frozen vodka is poured over a lemon sorbet or of sipping a rhubarb gin with a rhubarb sorbet. A lot of fruit flavoured gins (which are essentially liqueurs) are sweet enough to go with a sorbet or ice cream.

You could of course just take the view that ice cream is enough of a treat as it is and that you don’t really need a shot of liqueur on top. Oh, go on then, if you must. I won’t tell!

Photo © MaraZe at shutterstock.com

Which wine pairs best with salad?

Asking which wine to pair with salad is a bit like asking about what wine to match with meat or fish. There's no single answer. It depends on the vegetables you use, what other ingredients it contains and what type of dressing you use.

That said, salad is normally a light dish so a full-bodied wine - white or red - is almost certainly going to overwhelm it. Unless you’re talking about steak and salad in which case it’s a question of matching the steak not the leaves. Or salads for a barbecue when the marinades used for the meat will probably have more of an impact than the dressings.

The problem ingredient in salads is vinegar which can throw wines off balance, accentuating the tannins in serious reds and making whites seem excessively sweet. You can get round this by including a bit of cream in the dressing or whisking in some meat juices, especially the juice from a roasted chicken. Rice and cider vinegar are also less harsh than wine vinegar

Other tricky ingredients are raw onion or garlic, best dealt with, I find, by pairing them with dry whites or rosés that have a high level of acidity.

Wines that have an overtly fruity character tend to match well with salad especially if it contains fruit such as peach or apricot (try a fruity Chardonnay, Colombard or Viognier) or cherries (good with a fruity red such as a Gamay or Pinot Noir)

If there’s more than one salad on the table good all-rounders are fruity whites such as Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc and fruity rosés

Wine pairings for 10 popular salads

Chicken caesar salad
Reasonably easy so long as it doesn’t have too much of an anchovy kick. A lightly oaked Chardonnay is a good match, a slightly fuller-bodied one if the chicken is chargrilled. Oaked Sauvignon Blanc and dry rosé also work well

Greek salad
Here the dominant ingredients are feta and olives which tend to work best with a citrussy white. Sauvignon Blanc - or Rueda - is fine but why not try a Greek Assyrtiko?

Salade Niçoise
The locals would drink dry Provençal rosé and I can’t think of a better match. Although Cotes du Rhône rosés are quite a bit cheaper.

Spinach and bacon salad with blue cheese dressing
Ah. Blue cheese dressing. Very tricky! I’d personally go for a soft red like a medium-bodied Merlot but you could equally well drink a white. What’s needed I think is a slight touch of sweetness - a German Kabinett Riesling should fit the bill. Or an off-dry one from New Zealand or Washington State

Goats cheese salad with asparagus or beetroot
Goats cheese overrides all other ingredients when it comes to salads, even powerfully flavoured ones like asparagus and beetroot. Sauvignon Blanc is the classic match and hard to better, I find.

Warm pigeon, duck or chicken liver salad
Once you introduce meat into a salad I reckon you’re better off to think in terms of reds than whites. Pinot Noir is the obvious pairing but Loire reds and other light-bodied reds from e.g. south-west France work well too.

Thai beef salad and other Asian salads
Great with Australian riesling as you can see from these matches of the week here and here. Gruner Veltliner is another good pairing

Seafood, prawn or shrimp salad, crab salad
Perhaps depend more than any other salad on the dressing. If the salad is built round some super-fresh shellfish like crab or prawns (shrimp) I’d go for a crisp minerally white like a Sancerre, Albarino, Picpoul de Pinet or Italian whites such as Pecorino and good quality Pinot Grigio. If you’re using a 1000 island dressing off-dry riesling should see you through. For tomato-based dressings see below.

Tomato-based salads
Raw tomatoes are supposed to pose problems for wine, tomato salad even more so though I’ve never found it much of a problem. Dry rosé, crisp whites and Sauvignon Blanc generally hit the spot though I generally go for an Italian white like a Verdicchio with a tomato, mozzarella and basil salad or pappa al pomodoro

Pasta salads
More often than not these are dressed with mayonnaise and are therefore quite mild in taste. I’d go for a smooth dry white like a Soave, Gavi, unoaked Chardonnay or Chenin Blanc

And here are five more:

Crisp duck salad with Fielding estate riesling

Layered tomato and egg salad with Verdejo

Pork, chilli, coconut and gapi salad with Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc

Rocket and parmesan salad with dry amontillado sherry

Smoked duck and blood orange salad with Chilean gewurztraminer

And don't forget, beer and cider pair well with salad too, sometimes better than wine!