WINE & DESSERT!

 

There are a lot of good dessert recipes that use wine but you're likely to ask: Why waste the wine?

 

Well, alcohol does evaporate at 170F (77C), so even before a dish hits the boil, the buzz has vanished. However, there are myriad flavours in wine - acids, sugars, tannins, esters (which are fruity) and diacetyl (a buttery note) - all concentrated by cooking. You just can't find that stuff on the spice shelf. It's dead simple to use, and it only takes a few glugs to give a dish flavour. You can still drink the rest while you're cooking.

 

Take drab old tapioca. "Fish eyes and glue" to most kids; it screams for added flavour. A Brazilian dish called sagu de vinho uses a Bordeaux-style red to turn tapioca into a flamenco of flavour. Instead of cooking it in water alone, you use a two-to-one mix of wine to water. Serve it with cheesecake.

 

Few people have good things to say about custard, either. But Sicilians added Marsala and called it zabaglione. Marsala, like sherry or port, is a frequent choice for dessert.

If sagu de vinho is a flamenco, zabaglione is the pas de trois from Swan Lake. Its origins go back centuries, possibly as far as 9th century Turin. Maybe the Shroud of Turin was actually a napkin some guy used to wipe the zabaglione off his chin. All you do is whisk egg yolks, Marsala and sugar in a double boiler. The custard triples in volume, frothing into something rich and addictive.

 

Over in the UK there's the English trifle. So named because it's a fraud, invented to use up stale cake. It works like this: Aunt Edna shows up for dinner with a sponge cake she's been keeping in plastic for a little over six months. What to do? You get out a meat cleaver, hack the cake into bite-sized chunks and soak it in sherry. Fold in any or all of the following: fruit, more sherry, jello, whipped cream, ice cream, custard, more sherry and almonds. And you top it with Drambuie. With no cooking involved, the alcohol remains. Hence it's other nicknames: Tipsy Cake, Tipsy Parson and Tipsy Hedgehog.

If you Google "wine in dessert" you'll get scores of simple recipes, all part of a noble effort to keep the whole meal lubricated. Cheers!

…. By John Challis