Each Friday we turn to the wine community for news, tips and recipes for great food and wine pairings . . .
How to pair wine with Chinese tak-eout
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How to pair wine …This week: Chinese take-out
After reservations, the easiest thing to make for dinner is called “take out” or “order in.” For that reason, no recipe here today, but some suggestions for pairing up wines for Chinese — and the reasons behind them.
The food: Beef chow fun
Beef chow fun is one of the most popular takeout orders. The standard Cantonese recipe: thin slices of beef interspersed among wide rice noodles and bean sprouts, flavored in the wok with chopped onion, scallion, bean sprouts, soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar and sesame oil.
With this dish (and many an Asian food preparation), the key elements for wine pairing are salt and sweet. Wines to steer away from in the presence of salt and sweet are tannic, high-alcohol reds with low acidity. Their opposites — crisp reds and whites with moderate alcohol — do the trick nicely.
