Pairing Wine with Vegetables is a guest post by Ann Fitzgerald
Many people enjoy knowing a lot about wine. Unlike almost any other food or drink, wine is something that can be studied and enjoyed in a huge range of ways – you may enjoy going to tastings and taking classes, or traveling to different famed wine regions, or even simply having a firm grasp on what wines pair well with certain foods. The latter is an acquired skill, something that can be researched, but which also requires a certain aptitude for detecting the subtleties in the taste of wines, and figuring out what pairings would work well. For example, many people know the general ideas, such as pairing rich red wines with heavy red meats, or sweet white wines with desserts. However, there are many other wine pairing ideas that are less well-known. For example, have you ever considered what wines work well for vegetarians, or what would taste good with a particular vegetable dish? Next time you go for a vegetarian meal, you may want to check out Marks and Spencer wine and grab a few bottles to try out. In the meantime, here are a few basic tips and comments:
- Generally, matching wine to foods involves finding some sort of similar quality or taste that the food and wine share, which will help to emphasize the flavor of both. For this reason, because many vegetables (especially when prepared in a specific dish or meal) carry a somewhat herbal taste quality, you may want to try sampling a wine with a similar taste. Some examples that may work well with certain vegetable dishes are Rieslings or Pinot Blancs, which are lighter white wines that could carry an herbal flavor quite well.
- Another thing to consider will be the texture, for lack of a better word, of your vegetable. For example, a juicier, more moist vegetable may go well with a sweeter wine like a Sauvignon Blanc, or even some sparkling wines or rosé varieties, whereas a more bland or dry vegetable may go well with a harsher white wine.
- The most important thing to remember is to find something that matches between your wine and your vegetable. But, as with any food, there are indeed certain wines that ought to pair very well with most vegetable dishes, and which will emphasize flavor and enhance your enjoyment of your meals.
Wine is not only for meaty dishes or special occasions – it can easily be enjoyed with the simplest of meals, even if all that is served is a nice vegetable dish.
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Research published in May 2010 has shown that when children are involved with vegetables in their play, they eat more vegetables. If they help grow, prepare and cook vegetables they are more interested in eating them.
plantkids
Professor Chutima Sirikulchayanonta, who led the research at Mahidol University in Bangkok, said: “We got the children planting vegetable seeds, taking part in fruit and vegetable tasting parties, cooking vegetable soup, and watching Popeye cartoons.”
The more we involve children in our vegetable gardening, the more vegetables they will eat and the healthier they will be!
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New to the GrowVeg.com garden planner this month is Weather Station data for the UK and Ireland. This means that the Garden Planner automatically adjusts the recommended planting dates when a user enters their location and gets accurate email planting reminders without having to know their local average frost dates.
We think GrowVeg.com are the only company in the world to have the ability to produce customized planting recommendations looked up using Google Maps since they have done all the statistical analysis of climate data themselves.
Australia and New Zealand are next on the list and GrowVeg.com will also be adding additional plants to the Garden Planner in the next month or two.
Having this weather station data on Garden Planner is a great addition the UK!
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Baby or mini vegetables are what the modern household requires – small, but perfectly formed vegetables.
Mini veg are produced in several ways:
CherryTomatoes
- harvesting vegetables when young – such as carrots
first-carrots
- planting seed close together – such as Leek King Richard, which can be direct sown closer together, without the need to transplant for mini leeks
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- special mini cultivars produce baby fruit from compact plants
examples include:
Gone are the days when a cabbage or cauliflower lasts a family a week – sections of the head being cut off and cooked each day. Now a baby or mini veg will provide a mature cabbage or cauliflower which is small enough to be eaten by one or two people in one sitting. If the household is larger, the baby mini veg provide the opportunity to present a selection of fresh vegetables, by using several different mini veg for one meal.
Gone are the days when a cabbage or cauliflower lasts a week – with sections being cut off and cooked each day. Now these vegetables have varieties which will mature quickly and produce a very small specimen, just large enough for one or two people to eat in one meal. Or, their compact size means that they can be mixed with other mini veg to provide a selection of fresh veg for one meal.
