Match of the week

Chicken korma and viognier

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on February 17 2016 at 10:30

I spent last week on the road in Ireland with wine importer Febvre hosting food and wine matching events for some of their restaurant customers. We covered a lot of ground from Enniskillen to Cork taking in Belfast, Galway and Dublin on the way and enjoyed a lot of amazing food matches.

How to pick just one? Well that IS difficult but I’m going for a really unusual presentation of chicken korma at a brilliant Indian restaurant called Ananda on the outskirts of Dublin.

They serve their food in a very unconventional way - first of all as separate courses rather than putting all the dishes on the table at the same time and secondly, by plating the meat elegantly and serving the sauce separately (see below for their normal plating). So this was a chicken korma unlike those you would have tasted before with an elegant piece of marinated grilled chicken and a rich indulgently creamy sauce alongside.

On the basis that the dish contained saffron I’d opted for a viognier, the Triennes Viognier Sainte Fleur 2014 from Provence and it worked brilliantly with the sauce. (With the dish on its own, interestingly. which also had a smear of beetroot purée we found a Henry Fessy Brouilly was an equally good match.)

Triennes, incidentally, is a collaboration between two top Burgundian winemakers, Jacques Seysses of Domaine Dujac and Aubert de Villaine of Domaine de la Romanée Conti. You can buy the viognier online in the UK from The Vinorium for what I think is the very reasonable price of £15. It’s also quite heavenly with Vacherin Mont d’Or!

Photo (not of the original dish at Ananda) © paul_brighton at fotolia.com

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Tags: chicken food:chicken & poultry saffron chicken korma Indian food food:world food Provence viognier drink:white wine

Comments: 2 (Add)

Fiona Beckett on February 18 2016 at 09:55

Oh, gosh, that WAS good, wasn't it? As I say, so hard to single a dish out! Lovely to see you again.

The Irish Wino on February 17 2016 at 11:29

Fiona, it was great having you over here with us again; always a pleasure to meet you. It is hard to pick a favourite match from that meal in Ananda. That Viognier match was fabulous, but reckon the star for me was the Duck Tikka and Plum sauce with the Gustave Lorentz Gewurtztraminer.
Fabulous match.
I look forward to meeting you again soon.

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