This year, why not make the celebrations a little bit more special by mixing traditional and contemporary food and wine dalmore 1973 30 year old. Make sure you use wine as a condiment to the food to enhance both the dish and let the dish enhance the wine. The traditional wine line-up generally includes an online champagne before you get to the table, maybe a sherry for Grandma, a white wine online with the fish starter, a red with the turkey and a dessert wine with Xmas pudding.
Well this year, I have decided to turn the traditional wine line-up on its head. The menu below starts with a dessert wine for the entrée then fizz with the starter, a Lebanese red for main and finishes with a sherry! Go on try something new, I am sure you will not only love it but make it a Christmas to truly remember.
A range of light pates including Fois Gras, Pate de Fois, Duck and Orange Paté, and other light pâtés of your choice, served on a variety of different textured breads, is a great way to start off the seasonal food festivities. Serve with a dessert wine! Yes a dessert wine matches perfectly with the pâté. The nuances and complexities of a lighter and less sweet dessert wine compliment light pâtés excellently, especially Fois Gras and the lighter goose and duck pâtés..
I recommend Etchart Torrontés Tardió, Salta, Argentina. This online wine should be enjoyed chilled either as an aperitif or at the conclusion of the meal. – Its lightish style should be matched with equally light dishes and goes excellently with light and delicate pates. The long ripening season of the Cafayate Valley enables the Torrontés grapes used to make this rich, very grapey dessert wine achieve full maturity with correspondingly high natural sugar levels. The wine is cool-fermented in stainless steel vats and then bottled young.
Do a triage of hot smoked salmon served with Thai sweet chilli sauce, Gravad-lax served with the traditional dill and mustard sauce, and smoked trout with nothing more than some capers and fresh tarragon. Top it off with one queen scallop seared in lemon chervil infused butter and finish with a smattering of sea salt crystals and a few redcurrants, and some crusty white bread. For the wine at last some fizz, but not as you know it! Go for a rosé Brut fizz, for the budget conscious, Codorniu Pinot Noir Brut Rosé Cava, or if your budget stretches then the Duval Leroy Brut Rosé bought exclusively online.
The pink fizz, especially the Bruts, is an enigma. You get all the sweet notes and delicate soft berry flavours juxtaposed against the astringency and buttery mouth feel of the classic white Brut. With delicate, sweetish fish and delicate herbs – this is a marriage made in heaven.
The addition of salt – in the capers and sea salt enhances the soft berry flavours and floral notes even further. Finally the sweet chilli (and don’t use too much) makes your palate more receptive to flavours and sets off the dryness. The buttery texture of the mouth feel and the butter of the scallop are divine. In fact with each mouthful the wine will change subtly and work with each different dish in perfect harmony -even though you have four different meats and seven different flavours on one dish. The pretty brown haired child with big brown eyes, who came in earlier wore a pretty spring dress accented with a pair of black cow girl boots. Patty’s Dad had originally brought his daughter into the shop to bring home a baby boy look a like named Andrew with whom they had seen in an ad over the internet.
The artist at the shop greeted the father and daughter and proceeded to show little Patty and her Dad the various collectibles. There had been a lovely selection of gorgeous looking collectibles carefully displayed on the shelves. There were many realistic looking babies who came in different sizes and nationalities.
Patty’s father asked the artist if his daughter could hold some of the babies. Patty had eagerly sat on a chair and carefully held several baby look a likes. She said, “Dad, I really like this one” as she held a life-like looking baby girl wearing a lovely yellow and pink dress adorned with white ruffles and accented with a pair of pink and white tights. Her father said “I thought you wanted the little boy baby named Andrew. ” She said, “I did, but, I think I want one of these pretty girl babies. ”
The father of the little girl asked the artist where Baby Andrew was. The lady brought over the little baby boy doll which her father had already requested through an email. The cute baby boy doll with closed eyes had reddish-brown hair and was wearing a blue checkered jacket with a grey colored hood. His trousers were dark blue and he wore matching socks. Patty held him, said she liked him, but insisted that she would like a little girl baby instead.
Upon request, the artist handed Patty some more girl babies for the little girl to hold. One of the babies was a lovely preemie having opened dark blue eyes and adorned in a beautiful crocheted pink and white dress with matching bonnet and booties. As Patty held the tiniest of the babies, her eyes lit up. She said, “Daddy I want this one. “Are you sure? ” he asked. Patty said, “Dad, I need this one. I love her! I’m going to name her Sherry. ”
Patty’s Dad told the reborn doll artist that his daughter rarely reacted that way toward anything. The little girl was definitely drawn toward the smallest baby in the crocheted dress. Patty insisted on holding her baby instead of carrying her in a carefully wrapped box. She was grinning from ear to ear as she lovingly held Baby Sherry in her arms. The artist reminded the little girl to please remember to always hold Baby Sherry as gently as she would a real baby. As Patty’s Dad was paying for the reborn baby doll, he pleasantly told the lady that they would be returning again soon to buy another collectible.
After they left, the artist thought about all the love and care that she used as she recreated each baby from their original kits. So much preparation went into making them. First, she would paint the soft vinyl head and limbs of the kits to give it a natural skin color, baking the pieces after each layer of paint was added. The artist remembered the steps of preparation such as mottling, and painting veins on each piece to give the babies that natural, realistic look. She thought of all the intricate details she used on painting the nails, lips, eyes and eyebrows of a baby. Sometimes she had even rooted the eyelashes of the closed eyed babies with a lock of her own hair. Several hours had been spent just rooting the mohair on each of the heads of the babies. The final step of reborning would be attaching the limbs and head to a baby doll’s body. She had routinely filled the finished heads with polyester stuffing and a nylon sack containing glass beads. She thought about how she would then attach all the body parts and prefilled head to the filled doe body slip with the cable ties to finish the reborning process. The artist had always sewn the back of the neck and limbs where the cables were to tidy everything up on the reborned baby. The artist thought how the enjoyment of reborning each lovely baby doll had only been a part of it.