Saturday Night Combique – Mustangs and Mini-vans

This past Saturday we got together with Mick, Amy, Steve, Melanie, Zdenka and Alex for a Combique. A Combique is our pet name for a get together where each couple brings a course and a bottle of wine to pair with their course.

The evening started off with cars being the big topic of the evening. Steve just picked up a 2011 Mustang GT which I thought was funny as most people after having their 3rd child lose the Mustang for a Mini-van but Steve went the other way. I would have thought a Minivan with its 2 in the front and 5 in the rear seating would be much more practical for a family of 5 but hey who I’m I to judge. I will say the new Mustang is a pretty sweet ride. Mick (who has a 2010 Mustang GT) and Steve were busy talking about the cars and their differences. Zdenka and Alex are shopping for a replacement vehicle as Alex’s was stolen recently. Kathy’s new Audi also was discussed. Enough about cars and on with this article…

The first course was mine and I did a poached pear salad with spiced pecans and blue cheese with a raspberry vinaigrette. I picked a 2007 Lingenfelder Kabinett Riesling to pair with. This wine is on the Zippy Sauce Top Ten Whites and we haven’t had it in the awhile so I was looking forward to sampling it again.

The wine paired nicely with salad though I was a bit disappointed with it as it didn’t seem quite as good as I remembered it being. This may have just been me over anticipating it. In the end the eight of us had no problems killing two bottles of it so it couldn’t have been that bad!

The second course was Melanie’s and she made pulled pork tacos with guacamole, grape tomato salsa & lime cilantro sour cream. She picked a 2007 Couly-Dutheil Chinon (Cab. Franc). As the pulled pork had a sweeter BBQ sauce with it I probably wouldn’t have picked a Cabernet Franc as my pairing. Trying the wine without the food it was very dry, almost bone dry with not much fruit showing. Trying the wine again with the food was amazing as the fruit popped out at you and the wine became much more accessible; it was a truly stunning pairing.

The third course was Mick’s and he made Tandoori chicken skewers with rice. He went with a 2008 Becker-Steinhauer Kabinett Riesling to pair with this.

Mick course had quite a bit of spice to it and the Riesling loved it. The Becker-Steinhauer Kabinett Riesling had a nice balance of sweetness and acidity and had a bit of frizzante happening as well and made a great pairing to the food.

The fourth course was Alex’s and he made grilled rib-eye with peppercorn brandy sauce & prosciutto parmesan asparagus. He paired this with a 2008 Rodney Strong Pinot Noir.

I feel very bad as I didn’t eat much of it as I was well past comfortably full at this point. The rib-eye and sauce were very good. I’m usually not a huge fan of asparagus but Alex cook these to absolute perfection; soft enough to enjoy but with a nice amount of firmness to them that they weren’t limp and overcooked. Add the prosciutto and parmesan and these were some seriously good asparagus. The Pinot was a good pairing with this dish; enough fruit and crisp acidity to stand up to the all the flavours in the dish but not overpowering the food either.

I picked up a Brown Sugar Torte Cake made by La Rocca for dessert. I had never seen this dessert before so either it was new or it is something our local supermarket doesn’t normally carry. I passed on the Torte that night as I mention earlier I was too full. I tried it the next day and found the two main flavours were maple and mocha and it was overly sweet for my taste buds, oh well they can’t all be winners.


I would like to thank Alex, Mick and Melanie for there wonderful courses and the hard work they put into them. I would also like to thank Melanie as a certain Official Zippy Sauce Photographer forgot her memory card for her camera, Melanie jumped in with hers and took all the pictures displayed in this article.

These Combiques are always a blast as I’m sure everyone had a good time and I always look forward to them. Next time though we are going to have to watch portion sizes or my ever expanding waistline is going to require a mini-van to get me around!

Cheers!

Mark