What to drink with Middle Eastern food?

With middle-eastern food still very much on-trend Dubai-based blogger Sally Prosser of mycustardpie.com tells us which drinks she thinks makes the best pairings

Can you remember a time when hummus didn’t fill the end of every supermarket aisle and come in ten different flavours? Now Middle Eastern influences in food are ubiquitous and restaurants abound, but what should you drink with a Middle Eastern meal?

Typically you’ll be served a wide range of mezze to start, from creamy, smoky baba ganoush, lemon-sharp tabouleh with fresh herbs, a fattoush or bread salad dusted with tangy sumac, vine leaves stuffed with rice and herbs, earthy hummus, delicate pastries stuffed with cheese, spinach or meat, spicy chicken livers and fried kibbeh coated in crunchy, cracked wheat with a lamb and pine nut filling. Some restaurants may even serve raw mezze such as finely minced spiced raw lamb kibbeh or cubes of uncooked liver eaten with garlic sauce and mint leaves.

The mezze course is usually followed by grilled meats, cooked over charcoal, which means an array of lamb chops, kebabs both with cubed meats and spicy, minced kofta, chicken and beef. So given this vast array of flavours, what would be a good choice of wine?

It’s quite a good rule of thumb that local food and wine go together. Regional cuisine has often evolved alongside wine making; Chianti complements the roast tomato-based dishes of Tuscany, for instance, and think how well a crisp Riesling cuts through the heaviness of a wiener schnitzel.

If you are looking for a local match (and don’t have the pleasure of sitting down to eat this spread in one of the countries of the Middle East that serve alcohol) then many winemakers in the Levant export widely; Chateau Musar from the Lebanon is probably the best known, with other Lebanese wines such as Chateau Kefraya, Chateau Ksara and Massaya following suit. Domaine de Bargylus is still managing to produce and export fine wine from Syria. The excellent St George wines of Jordan made by Zumat rarely make it outside the country. Morocco has the most established and extensive wine industry in North Africa with fourteen appellations, and Algeria is the biggest producer so there could be some interesting developments there when the local situation stabilises.

Don’t expect unusual grape varieties however. Although there have been vineyards in the region since biblical times (the Persians were making wine 7000 years ago) modern wine-making techniques, styles and grape varieties from other regions have been adopted across the board.

So what should you choose with a middle-eastern feast? Here are my top tips:

Reach for something pink

Choosing a wine to match this huge array of tastes and flavours could be a challenge, but my first choice would be a rosé. Altitude Rosé by Ixsir, a new winery in the Lebanon, is reminiscent of the fresh, crisp, dry styles of Provence, is one I’d recommend, and the spicy note in Ksara Sunset Rosé, made from Cabernet Franc and Syrah, goes well with mezze like muhammara (a red pepper and walnut dip).

Otherwise I would generally look to Southern France - you want a wine with enough fruit flavours but avoiding anything that’s sweet. Of late I’ve tasted some refreshing rosés from English vineyards such as Sharpham and wonderfully versatile Blanc de Noirs from South African Boschendal that I’d be happy to drink with a table of mezze.

Forget your ABC

Forget the buttery, rich, over oaked style that led to the ABC movement (anything but Chardonnay). A well-structured white from Burgundy could keep you going throughout the meal; a Rully would offer enough complexity but an entry-level white such at Drouhin’s La Forêt would do very well. The new world has learnt its lesson – look for wines that are unoaked and from cooler climate vineyards, for example Adelaide Hills in Australia and Walker Bay in South Africa.

Herbal essences

A wine to balance the intense flavours of the parsley and coriander in tabouleh or the mouth watering lemony acidity of fattoush is a tall order. I haven’t tested this match but I’m wondering if the herbal notes of Gewurztraminer might be the perfect foil? I’m a big fan of Vina Esmeralda from Torres, a muscatel/ Gewurz blend which makes very easy drinking. Don’t be put off by the green bottle which looks like it comes from the Wizard of Oz. A ‘dry as a bone’ well-chilled fino sherry would be fantastic with the vine leaves and mezze containing pine nuts. Another wine to try would be an herbaceous New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

Meat match

A savoury red from the Mediterranean seems the best place to start when looking for a match for the meat course. Over seven hundred years of Arab occupation affected Spanish culture profoundly including their cuisine. There’s a cultural continuity in choosing a Spanish wine.

I’d choose a spicy Rioja Crianza which would be versatile enough to go with chicken and dark meats but not overwhelming. For something with more body, I’d try a Nero d’Avola from Sicily, another part of the world where an Arab presence in the first century is still evident today in the distinct food of the island. This dark, inky wine is laced with black cherry and tobacco flavours, matching the charcoal smokiness of the food.

The family behind Domain du Vieux Télégraphe invested in Massaya and there’s some Rhone spiciness in Massaya Silver Selection that makes it a great match for grilled meats and one my favourite Lebanese reds.

I tasted many of the wines at an Arabic meal in Dubai with Ramzi Ghosn of the Massaya winery; the evening proved conclusively that these wines travel well. Rhône grape varieties (Cinsault and Carignan) also lend spice and fragrance to the deep berry flavours of Cabernet Sauvignon in Chateau Musar red; the 2004 vintage is drinking well now.

A spirited alternative

Food writer Anissa Helou confesses that she abandons wine altogether when she is in Lebanon and drinks the local aniseed spirit arak with water instead.

While mint tea or coffee is usual with sweet Arabic pastries you might try a glass of Marsala. The name of this fortified wine from Sicily comes from the Arabic marsa Allah (the harbour of God).

Without alcohol

I’ve been lucky enough to taste some wonderful wines over the 18 years I’ve lived and traveled in the Middle East but of course there are occasions when alcohol is not served either due to local regulations or to respect non-drinkers with whom you are sharing the meal.

Alcohol is forbidden in a few countries in the Middle East, notably Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Yemen and Libya and may not be available in some areas. When I was hiking along the Lebanon Mountain Trail there were some valleys in the North of the country, which were alcohol free, and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates is completely dry.

Wherever you are in the Arab world, water will usually be brought to the table without asking. In this part of the world where water is often in short supply it is prized; if you are dining with someone of importance, it is the done thing to fill up their glass with water. Fresh fruit juice will also be readily available - watermelon and pomegranate juices are particularly refreshing. I would avoid mango juice with a meal though as it can be very filling.

Sherbets are a cooling fruit juice cordial which are very popular in Egypt, but variations such as Sekanjabin (a Persian vinegar and sugar syrup) exist throughout the region. Laban or ayran is a popular yoghurt drink but not usually with lunch or dinner.

Mint tea or infusions are popular throughout the Middle East, usually served in small glass cups and with sugar. Coffee, which was first roasted and traded from Yemen (via the port of Mocha) is served in very small handle-less cups and can be mixed with different spices, usually saffron and cardamom. If you are at a gathering and would like a refill, keep the cup still; tip the cup from side to side if you do not.

Middle East Matching

As with all food and wine pairing, there is no right or wrong match and with such a wide array of tastes and textures in a Middle Eastern feast, discovering which wine works best for you is part of the fun. If you do get to taste the food in its country of origin, it's always worth trying the local wine.

Sally Prosser, the author of mycustardpie.com, a food and wine blog that was listed in The Independent’s top 50 food websites, has lived in the Middle East for 18 years, currently in Dubai, UAE. During this time she’s tasted coffee in Libya, champagne in Saudi and Kuwait, wine in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Oman and Jordan and a cocktail made with edible gold in Dubai! She’s furthered her interest in wine throughout this time (she took Jancis Robinson’s wine course book to Saudi Arabia) and gained Wines and Spirits Education Trust Advanced Level.

Top picture ©Bethany Kehdy of Dirty Kitchen Secrets.

Pairing whisky with Indian food

Among the many invitations I get to food and drink matching events a recent one to attend a dinner at the Bombay Brasserie in London where each course was paired with whisky sounded the most intriguing. But pairing a high strength spirit with spicy food was surely a recipe for disaster?

As it turned out it was a) not that unusual - a number of Indian whisky dinners have been held before and b) a revelation - the whiskies went much, much better with the food than I could have imagined.

The pairings had been devised by the restaurant’s head chef Sriram Aylur in conjunction with whisky expert (and old friend and colleague) Dave Broom, a brilliant master of ceremonies. The whiskies, which were served blind, could be from anywhere in the world, we were told.

It was a relief to find that almost all the assembled company of whisky experts got at least one of them wrong (at a wine event a few clever clogs would have made the rest of us feel totally inadequate). The gentle sweet aperifif whisky, for example was not Scotch, not a 10 year old as suggested, but a 3 y.o. Indian single malt called Paul John (it turns out there are quite a few Indian whiskies).

We then had a delicious bitter-sweet cocktail created by mixologist Ryan Chetiyawardana, a mixture of Eagle Rare 10 y.o. bourbon which Ryan described as ‘grown-up Buffalo Trace’, Cocchi Americano which is rich in quinine and a homemade turmeric liqueur infused with cloves, cardamom, cinnamon and coriander seed. There was also a basil garnish though I didn’t pick up a lot of flavour from that.

The first food pairing was palak patta chaat, crisp baby spinach with a mango dressing that was paired with a sweet, fragrant Balvenie 14 y.o. aged in Caribbean casks seasoned with three types of rum. The tropical fruit flavours chimed in really well with the mango.

Next we had two spicy fish dishes with a big chilli hit - prawn tokri and a masala-coated tilapia which was successfully partnered - to everyone’s surprise - with Johnnie Walker Blue Label. (Several thought it was a whisky aged in a Sauternes cask.) Dave said that blends were often easier to match with food because they were ‘inherently complex spirits’ whereas “single malts are all about the intensity of a single flavour.”

The main course, although plated individually, was much more what people would think of as a typical Indian meal: lamb rogan josh, chicken biryani, a dal, a spicy potato dish called aloo Katliyan, paratha and yoghurt. The lamb was possibly the hardest element to match but the other components all went well with another surprising choice of whisky: the fragrant, honeyed, slightly smoky Barry Crockett Legacy Single Pot Still whiskey from the Midleton distillery in Ireland.

Unfortunately I had to leave before the dessert (probably just as well . . .) but the last two pairings were apparently Ardbeg Uigeadail with a milk pudding with berries andmalai kulfi (not totally convincing, I was later told) and Glenfarclas 20 y.o.105 with chocolates.

Two thoughts overall: first of all that some degree of sweetness - as with wine - is the key to matching whisky with spicy food. None of the whiskies had a powerfully woody flavour, particularly when diluted, thus avoiding the tannins that can cause problems with chillies and spice.

And you do need to water them down. Nick Morgan of Diageo, who I was sitting next to, says that you shouldn’t hesitate to dilute them to 12-13%, a similar strength to wine, i.e., in some cases, less than a third of their original strength. I found that made them much more palatable but it does diminish their individual character. You could also serve them with soda, Dave Broom suggested.

So maybe it’s India - and other Asian countries who don’t hesitate to put whisky on the table - who’ve got it right and not us? “In India they don't have our hang-ups about whisky and food not going together” said Dave. “We can learn something from the rest of the world.”

This article was first published in September 2012. I was invited to the dinner as a guest of Diageo.

Pairing Indian wine with Indian cheese

Chef Shaun Kenworthy reports on what he believes to be a unique tasting of Indian wine and Indian cheese.

Shaun writes: "There is a rumble of change in almost every facet of life in today’s India. If we go back not too many years the idea of drinking wine as opposed to whisky and any other cheese than the processed stuff that the whole country has a fascination for made by enormous companies such as Amul and Britannia were little known anomalies.

That said, India does have an artisanal tradition of cheese and wine making that goes back a couple of hundred or so years to the Portuguese and British. A scant few traditional cheeses are still made in the mountainous regions of northern India and I’ve personally taken some around the world demonstrating with them and showing them off but how much longer they have left, being made in such small quantities is sadly anyone’s guess.

India’s wines have traditionally been produced along the hilly ridges of southern India, which run through Maharashtra and Karnataka but by the 1950s whatever little interest there was in wine, dwindled once India became independent and it wasn’t until the 90s, that a whole new generation of winemakers started to come through using modern wine making techniques.

There has been much talk about Indian wines in India recently, so much so that sales have been doubling each year, with all the 5 star hotel chains and higher end restaurants in the major Indian cities putting home-grown wines on their lists.

A sommelier friend of mine, Keith Edgar and I were recently asked by the Calcutta Wine Club to do a cheese and wine tasting. It was such a great opportunity that we decided to do a completely blind tasting of four wines and six cheeses so that we could keep secret the fact that they were all Indian.

I’m not quite sure what the members were really expecting but more than likely some domestic and imported wines and imported cheeses?! Of which there are few that find their way into the supermarkets other than the likely suspects such as ricotta, mozzarella, gouda, parmesan, cheddar, Danish blue and brie although as hoteliers with access to wholesale suppliers we do get much more to choose from.

The local cheeses I chose were fresh and smoked Bandel, both a little salty and crumbly in texture, round and small in size, still produced in a small Portuguese settlement town, around 60km from the city, Kalimpong cheese which is still made in 12kg and 1kg wheels by a few different cheesemakers, the texture being like a rustic Caerphilly: white and crumbly in the centre and yellowy inside the rind with a bit of a tang. It’s made in Kalimpong, a small hill station around 200km from Calcutta.

The other three, relatively new cheeses made by La Ferme, Auroville, in the old French city of Pondicherry, close to Chennai (formerly Madras): a good strong tangy Cheddar, their Auroblochon (but don’t let the name seduce you into thinking otherwise - this cheese is similar to an intensely ripe Pecorino) and their delicious semi-soft Gorgonzola.

Thankfully it’s easier to introduce our wines for the evening as you’d know what to expect from the grape varieties but again they were all Indian: a Sula Sauvignon Blanc 2012*, Fratelli Sangiovese 2011, Four Seasons Cabernet Sauvignon 2011and finally, India’s only dessert wine, Sula’s late harvest Chenin Blanc 2012.

We started off, as you would expect, with the milder cheeses and lighter wines, not wanting to make this too challenging a test for the wine club. After much discussion and many ooo’s and aaah’s, we ended up with very few hits but at least we’d conducted what was probably the first completely Indian cheese and wine tasting in the world to date!

Our top Indian wine and cheese pairings:

Sula Sauvignon Blanc 2012

I think we both expected this to go better with the salty fresh Bandel but it wasn’t unpalatable and maybe a little extra fattiness in the cheese would have helped

Fratelli, Sangiovese 2011

A good pairing with the fresh and smoked Bandel and Kalinpong

Four Seasons, Cabernet Sauvignon 2011

The smoked, Kalimpong and the hefty cheddar worked best

Sula late harvest Chenin Blanc 2012

And I don’t think anything could take away from this star of the show with the Auroblochon and the Gorgonzola."

For more information about Indian cheese read this article in the Telegraph, Calcutta.

UK-born and bred, chef Shaun Kenworthy began his career in Yorkshire but worked for some of London’s best known restaurants including Bibendum, The Atlantic Bar, Coast, Air, Mash and Quaglino’s. Since he arrived in India in 2000 he has worked as an executive chef and consultant in Kolkata, New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad. In whatever little spare time he has left he writes about his love of good food.

* which seems to be available in the UK if you'd like to try it.

Can you match wine and chillies?

Who better to turn to than the Aussies for advice on pairing wines with a wide range of spicy Asian food? Here's another preview of the food and wine matching sessions at the Melbourne Food Festival - Solving the Eternal Chilli Dilemma. Answers from Neil Prentice of Moondarra Wines and chef Benjamin Cooper of Chin Chin.

Q So what should we be thinking about in wine terms when we're matching wines to chilli?

NP "I am always primarily conscious of avoiding a clash between tannin and chilli. Though my Koh Samui friends love to point out that locals only ever drink beer (bitter) or Black tea (bitter/tannic) with their food."

BC "I tend to go with something that has a reasonable residual sugar level and lower alcohol levels. (The sugar tends to mellow the chilli heat) . You want something that is happy to play second fiddle rather than fighting for attention.

A good acid structure also makes pairing easier eg a good Sauvignon Blanc."

Q Can you give some examples of the styles of wines that work best with individual hot dishes?

BC "Riesling, Gewurtztraminer, Sav Blanc, Pinot Gris/Grigio, Pinot Noir.

The sweeter whites work really well with things like jungle curry or som tum (papaya salad) while the pinot will go with a red duck curry or rare beef salad."

NP "The sherbet /sweet/sour of riesling harmonises with the combination of spice and seafood.

The viscosity and mouthfeel of Pinot Gris is great friend of spicy pork.

The classic combination of duck and Pinot Noir transcends cultures by crossing wonderfully from French cuisine to Thai."

Q And some of the ones that don't hit it off so well?

NP "To my mind bordeaux/cabernet is a clash because of the chilli/tannin conflict. So while Bordeaux is the most "digestible" of wines I don't think it has empathy for highly spiced dishes."

BC "I don’t really enjoy chardonnay and spicy curries together

Big heavy reds and wines with high alcohol content are slightly more challenging to pair with Asian food. For example a big shiraz and massaman curry for me doesn’t work so well. I find it leaves the palate all a bit overpowered. The high alcohol also igniting the chilli further."

Q Are there other ingredients/sides you can bring to the party that makes a pairing more likely to work?

BC "Definitely - for instance the duck and pinot thing

Tomatoes help to bring the chilli and wine together

Proteins definitely help. The classic meat and red wine pairing or seafood and white

Herbs can help to bridge the flavour profiles as well

Chocolate also helps eg chocolate moles in Mexican cuisine"

NP "A little sweetness in Riesling, Pinot Gris or Chenin Blanc can enhance aromatic herbs like coriander and also be a beautiful foil for both the fire of chilli and pungency of fish sauce."

Q Surprise me with a match I'd never think would work and tell me why it did.

NP "Pinot Noir with spicy seafood can work - a red curry of soft shell crab for instance. The glycerol in Pinot Noir has empathy for red chilli and breaks the seafood/red wine rule. A slightly sweet riesling an be a wonderful match with a Massaman Curry - breaking the preconceived rules of beef and white wine."

BC "Pinot noir and stir fried mussels in tomato and chilli jam.

Seafood is traditionally a white wine food but the tomatoes and the smokey wok and chilli heat really work well with the pinot."

The Melbourne Food Festival starts this Friday and runs until March 17th.

You can find Benjamin Cooper's top Melbourne food tips here. And Neil's article on Wagyu and wine (he also rears Wagyu cattle)