SFGate: Pairings

From SFGate.com: the Bay Area's home page, online home of the San Francisco Chronicle and much more.

• A spring treat: strawberries, sabayon and Moscato
  Strawberries - the quintessential fruit of spring - are featured in all manner of desserts, but garnishing a goblet full of them with a light, soft zabaglione custard is one of the nicest. This slightly frothy dessert originated in Italy; the custard itself,...
  
  
  
• Getting a jump on salmon season
  Local commercial salmon season starts later this week, and I, like many other folks, can hardly wait. Grilled, poached, roasted, broiled and encrusted, in pasta, salads and salmon cakes, I plan to enjoy them all. It was with this anticipatory mind-set that I...
  
  
  
• End-of-week recipe leftovers yield a superior soup
  Every home cook has run into the situation where you have dribs and drabs of this and that left after making a recipe. You're not alone. It is often difficult to guess how much to purchase when the recipe calls for "1 cup chopped leek" or "2 cups thinly...
  
  
  
• Asparagus & Ham Bread Pudding
  When it comes to enjoying wine, spirits or milk-based products, I consider myself a fortunate Chinese American. A number of Asians lack the enzymes to process alcohol (alcohol dehydrogenase) or lactose (the lactase enzyme). Luckily, I am enzyme sufficient....
  
  
  
• Earthy, pungent turmeric demands caution from cook
  The time for decorating hard-cooked eggs is just a few weeks away, and more people are forgoing the commercial dyes for natural ingredients such as beets, black tea and onion skins. If you want a yellow or golden color, turmeric would do the trick - although...
  
  
  
• Riesling offers good balance with Chinese bacon
  Nothing gets us into our test kitchen faster than certain cooking aromas. When someone is testing a bacon-containing recipe, "Ummm, that smells good," and "Is someone cooking bacon?" soon follow. In the United States, the term bacon generally means the cured (...
  
  
  
• Try lighter reds with osso buco with Asian spices
  Nowadays, more folks - particularly here in the Bay Area - want to know where their food comes from. Is it locally grown? Organic? Sustainably raised? Grass fed? Free range? Back in Oklahoma, where the doggies roam and where I grew up decades ago, most cattle...
  
  
  
• Wine to match sauces, condiments
  Enjoyable wine and food pairings depend on many variables, such as whether the dish includes a sauce or condiment as a primary flavor component. This year, I've created three entree recipes, each accompanied by a sauce or condiment, to pair with a general...
  
  
  
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• Pinot Noir pairs well with ricotta gnocchi
  I've always appreciated tender, delicate gnocchi, which are often a challenge to find. Many versions seem dense and doughy. One of my gnocchi benchmarks is served at Perbacco in San Francisco. Perbacco executive chef Staffan Terje makes his with ricotta, not...
  
  
  
• Pinot Noir can pair well with salmon
  It's been terrific to have local salmon this year, though I haven't indulged as often as intended. As with many things, time somehow slips away. I last cooked salmon for a dinner party a few weekends ago and selected bigger, thicker fillets. They hold...
  
  
  
• Seasonal hatch chiles pair with chicken, corn
  Fall is the time for all types of peppers, both sweet and hot. Sweet bell peppers and some hot varieties such as jalapeno and serrano are available year-round, but others, such as the Hatch chile, have a shorter, more definitive season. The Hatch chile, grown...