B O O K R E V I E W BY K A R E N M I LLE R
Wine Lover’s Kitchen By Fiona Beckett Ryland Peters & Small 2017 $35
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eckett is a wine columnist for The Guardian in the U.K. and has experience pairing food with wine, so it seems likely using wine in cooking comes naturally. She encourages experimentation with wine in all types of dishes, beyond the classic “Coq au vin” (p.90), where a whole bottle is called for. She sure gives you a lot of inspiration for using up those leftover bits of wine (what?). Much in the way wine can elevate the flavours in a dish, the photographs are striking and lift the dishes off the pages. Needless to say there are wine recommendations for each dish and tips for cooking with wine. There are recipes for all courses, all seasons, and from many different cultural roots. Not all are slow braised, “Languedoc beef stew with red wine, herbs and olives”
(p.78), many are quick and easy, and some very intriguing. The “Red wine spaghetti with olives and anchovies” recipe on p.281 actually has you cooking the pasta in red wine. Although a lot of the recipes are meat-based, there is potential for vegetables and basic sauces, jams, and relishes (so many possibilities for the “Plum and Pinot jam” on p. 132). It is certainly not often you see a muffin recipe with wine, but the “Red wine, blue cheese, and pecan muffins” on p. 156, will certainly up your soup-for-lunch game. The sweets section is filled with mostly typical wine infused desserts, but why not add wine to fruit crumble (“Spiced plum, red wine, and amaretti crumble” on p. 155)? Beckett claims wine is the magic ingredient, and indeed her recipes make it so. Even recipes not needing wine as
a fundamental ingredient can benefit from that added boost of flavour. You can always start using wine by deglazing a pan to soak up the flavourful bits, and go on to opening up a bottle of Champagne just so you can make a personal favourite, the “Wild mushroom and champagne risotto” (p. 40). Whatever you try, no excuses now for leftover bits of wine! Karen is a lawyer by trade, who claims to have been on the “know where your food comes from” bandwagon sooner than most, and now focuses on foraging her daily food from local growers.
