Of all the culinary harbingers of spring, asparagus is probably the most popular – but undoubtedly the most challenging to pair with wine. Anyone who has tried to find the perfect accompaniment knows it can be a daunting task. The vegetable has been called the No. 1 enemy of chefs, the bête noire of the best home cooks – and worse. Wine critic Bill St. John has gone so far as to refer to asparagus as “Frankenstein on a plate.”
What about asparagus merits such epithets? The chemical compounds in this unique vegetable can make wine taste metallic or strangely sweet. However, the flavor profile is milder at the start of the season, intensifying in the months to come.
Last week, when the Farm restaurant at the Carneros Inn previewed its spring menu (debuting later this month), the restaurant’s sommelier, Gillian Ballance, was charged with pairing wines with all the courses, two of which featured asparagus.
The first course was a velouté of green asparagus with Dungeness crab and curried crème fraiche.
“I had tasted the asparagus and I knew the flavor was not so pungent,” said Ballance, “so it did not affect my decision all that much. I knew I wanted to pair it with Grüner Veltliner, an Austrian white wine grape with a quality similar to that of asparagus. It has a really vegetal flavor profile, especially on the nose.”
Farm (spelled FARM by its owners) is part of PlumpJack, a winery-lodging-restaurant collection that promotes the use of regional ingredients. “I tried to pick something local that sort of emulated Grüner Veltliner, but there are no known plantings of the grape in the United States,” said Balance. “So I looked for a white wine with that kind of minerality, vegetal and herbaceous, but one with enough weight and acidity to cut the curried crème fraiche and the richness of the velouté” (a classic French sauce in which a light stock is thickened with a blond roux).
Velouté of green asparagus, Dungeness crab, curried crème fraiche
Serves 8
Ingredients
4 bunches of jumbo asparagus, peeled
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 quarts water (filtered)
Salt and white pepper to taste
8 ounces Dungeness crab meat
1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon Meyer lemon juice
1 bunch chives
1 lemon, zested (grated with microplane)
1 orange, zested (grated with microplane)
1 cup crème fraiche
easpoon curry powder
8 sprigs chervil
Instructions
For asparagus velouté
Bring a large pot of water to a boil, season well with kosher salt. Cook peeled asparagus in boiling water until soft. Transfer to a container of ice water and let cool about 15 minutes.
Transfer asparagus to a blender and puree until smooth. Slowly add one cup olive oil, salt (if necessary) and white pepper to taste. Set mixture aside.
For crab
Make sure there are no remaining shells in the crab meat. Season crab meat with the citrus zest, teaspoon of olive oil and Meyer lemon juice; add salt, white pepper and chive last.
For curried crème fraiche
Whip cup of crème fraiche with curry powder until you get a soft peak; season with salt and pepper and touch of lemon juice.
To serve
Pour cold velouté of asparagus into soup bowl, center a small amount of crab salad in the center of the soup and top with a small amount of crème fraiche.
Garnish with a fresh sprig of chervil.
As a general rule in pairing wines with asparagus, Balance said, “If you do anything too buttery or oaky, it will make the asparagus taste a little too sweet, whereas a wine with acidity will tame the vegetal nature.”
A resourceful sommelier, Ballance came up with Matthiasson’s 2007 White Wine, a blend of sauvignon blanc (for citrusy acidity), semillon (which contributes gravity and weight) and Ribolla gialla, a grape indigenous to Italy’s Friuli region that is known for its minerality, spice and structure. The winery sources the latter from the Vare vineyards in Napa’s Dry Creek canyon, which apparently produces the only Ribolla in this country. The varietal is so rare, in fact, that Matthiasson made only 220 cases of the blend in 2007. (The winery’s Web site is matthiasson.com.)
