Sunday, May 27, 2012

Saturday Night – As per recipe – Part 1

Mick and Amy were hosting again this week as I will be hosting back to back Saturdays in the next couple of weeks.   Mick had two new recipes on tap and three new wines selected for the night.

The first course was a curried butternut squash hummus with pita which was a recipe that Mick hadn’t tried before.  He paired this with a 2008 D’Arenberg “The Last Ditch” Viognier.


The nose was powerful with pink grapefruit, lime, banana and lilac aromas.  Tasting the wine, honeydew melon and grapefruit flavours ran the length of the wine.  The structure on the wine was good with crisp acidity but it finished a bit shaper than I would like.  I liked this as a pairing for the hummus as it really helped in quelling the spicy burn of the dish.

Here is the group rating for the wine -Mick – 87, Mark - 87, Kathy – 86, Amy – 87, Overall – 86.75.

There was no LCBO information for the wine but Mick said it was around $18 a bottle when he bought it.  You can get the D’Arenberg “Hermit Crab” which is 70% Viognier and 30% Marsanne for about the same price and I would suggest going that way as I find the Marsanne really softens and rounds out the Viognier nicely.

The curried butternut squash hummus was good except for two things – way too much garlic and way too much spice.  The recipe had both roasted garlic and uncooked garlic in it and the combo was too much, Mick will try this again in the future but will leave out the straight garlic.  Too be fair to Mick here, he did the garlic as per recipe so it wasn’t as if he added more garlic than intended.  The recipe also called for mild curry paste and Mick used the same amount but with hot curry paste which made it very potent, he will use half of the hot in the future or find mild for the next time.

No comments: