Unexpected Lessons Learned @ LCB – Thursday, 18 June

Tonight I took a class at Le Cordon Bleu – “Food and wine pairing- Chardonnay and Cabrernet Sauvignon, France and new world.” It’s what was offered this week in terms of a “continuing ed” class – it wouldn’t have been my first choice, but hey, I always learn something at LCB (even if I try to make people think that I know it all!). The menu consisted of:
• Roasted stuffed baby mushrooms, tomatoes and zucchini and rocket (arugula) salad, followed by tomato granité
• Lamb noisette (loin) with hazelnut and rosemary crust and zucchini/carrot napoleon
• Melon and red berries with fruit/mint jelly

Most of the food was prepared in advance by the chef instructor and his assistants, so he primarily gave us brief descriptions of how the food was prepared and he answered questions. (In a typical class the chef would make the whole menu from scratch, describing all the steps, plus providing historical information, variations on the technique, etc.) With some knowledge of French cooking techniques and good notes from the chef’s descriptions, a girl could duplicate the menu.

The sommelier instructor, with a very impressive résumé of honors and restaurant experience, was challenged to find affordable wines to serve with each course, having been given just the list of ingredients and some hints as to the preparation. He described characteristics of the various wine regions of France and talked about similarities and differences of wine regions in other countries.

I wish that I could tell you more about the chef and the sommelier and about the specifics of the recipes and the wines, but here comes lesson #1: don’t leave your notes on the chair. When I got back to the apartment I discovered that I didn’t have my recipe sheets, on which I had taken extensive notes about the food prep and the wine. I called LCB on Friday morning, and they said that nobody had turned them in. (Why would a cleaning person pitch papers with voluminous handwritten notes all over them???) They offered me another set of the printed recipes/wine info, which is something (but I don’t have them yet), but I’m very irritated that I left behind the most valuable part of the class. I must be getting old or something!

But just a couple more observations and another photo. The first course was the most difficult to pair wine with – tomatoes are notorious “killers” of wine, the three vegetables would independently suggest different wine pairings, a salad containing the very pungent peppery arugula and some balsamic dressing needs a bold wine to stand up to it, and anything frozen (such as the tomato granité) tends to be a palate deadener. The sommelier’s selection of a white Beaujolais (made with Chardonnay grapes) from a highly respected vintner in the southern part of the region was quite amazing. Only about 1% of the wine produced in Beaujolais is white wine, and this one was a winner! It demonstrated its refreshing qualities with the mushroom, it was bolder with the tomato, it was fairly neutral with the zucchini, it intensified the peppery characteristics of the arugula and it exploded the flavors of the tomato granité. Wow!

The sommelier selected a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon to go with the lamb. It was good, but not particularly exciting. However, I did learn something interesting about using a two-step sniffing process to evaluate the maturity of wines. First pour the wine in the glass, spend a few seconds observing the color and the clarity, then stick in your nose and take a first sniff, observing the intensity and identifying various aromas that you can sense. Then swish the wine around in the glass to aerate it and sniff again. If the aromas are more intense at the second sniff, the wine could have stayed in the bottle longer. (Of course, once it’s open you gotta drink it, but this is a way to educate yourself about the aging possibilities of wines from various regions and winemakers – the same grape grown in various parts of the world will have different longevity in the bottle, and of course the vintner’s skill is a big part of the equation as well.)

For the fruit dessert the sommelier wanted to go with something sweet (his rule is “sweet with sweet”), and he chose a French port, served chilled (this dulls the sensation of the higher alcohol content). I say leave the port to the Portuguese – this was OK, but not outstanding. And the high alcohol content could have contributed to me forgetting to triple-check that I had all of my papers when I left the class!

At this point all I have of my notes is what’s in this photo of the main course with the Chilean Cab…sigh….