|
| What to Drink with What You Eat: The Definitive Guide to Pairing Food with Wine, Beer, Spirits, Coffee, Tea - Even Water - Based on Expert Advice from America's Best Sommeliers | 
 enlarge | Authors: Andrew Dornenburg, Karen Page
Creator: Michael Sofronski
Publisher: Bulfinch
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $19.01
You Save: $15.99 (46%)
New (27) Used (8) from $18.35
Avg. Customer Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 6000
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.4
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 7.6 x 1.5
ISBN: 0821257188
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5
EAN: 9780821257180
ASIN: 0821257188
Publication Date: September 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: H20081010205928T
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The most comprehensive guide to matching food and drink ever compiled, by the James Beard Award winning author team of Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, with practical advice from more than seventy of Americas leading pairing experts In a great meal, what you drink is just as important as what you eat. This groundbreaking food and beverage pairing reference allows food lovers to learn to think like a sommelier, and to transform every meal - breakfast, lunch, and dinner - from ordinary to extraordinary. Exceptional in its depth and scope - with over fifteen hundred entries - What to Drink with What You Eat is based on the collective wisdom of experts at dozens of Americas best restaurants, including Alinea, Babbo, Berns, Blue Hill, Chanterelle, Daniel, Emerils, French Laundry, Frontera Grill, Inn at Little Washington, Jean Georges, Masas, The Modern, Per Se, Rubicon, Tru, and Valentino. Youll find authoritative recommendations for stocking your cellar and kitchen with must-have beverages, from wines to waters. Youll also learn what to drink with everything from French toast to Chinese food, and what to eat with everything from Pinot Noir to green tea, to create mouthwatering matches. Follow the authors three simple Rules to Remember when making a match - or just dive into the wide-ranging listings in chapters 5 and 6. This incisive, hip writing team (Publishers Weekly) distills history, geography, science, expert technique, and original insight to create a remarkably user-friendly and engaging reference. Lavishly illustrated with gorgeous four-color photographs, What to Drink with What You Eat is an instant classic essential to every connoisseurs bookshelf.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 29 more reviews...
From http://www.AWineStory.com Publisher Marisa D'Vari April 9, 2007
19 out of 22 found this review helpful
Are you curious about what wine to order with your cheesecake? Intimidated by five-hundred page wine list at a top restaurant? Downright scared when the sommelier comes charging toward your table?
Relax. Authors Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page have created a resource that helps even the `average Joe or Jane' understand the principles of wine and food pairing. They take the conventional, canned, old-school advice of "red wine with meat, white wine with fish" to an entirely new level, based on insights learned from their previous books on cuisine, as well as interviews with America's top, cutting-edge sommeliers.
In many ways, the format of What to Drink with What You Eat resembles a substantial wine/food pairing encyclopedia specifically designed to be quickly skimmed before heading off to a restaurant or purchasing wine for a dinner party. For example, let's say you are entertaining clients at a steakhouse, and want to sound intelligent about wine. You know red wine typically goes with red meat, but which red? Old world or new? And what are the virtues of each? By spending just five minutes with this book (and perhaps jotting down some notes) you will be able to help your guests order a Shiraz, Barbaresco, Barolo, or good old Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon based on the elements of the sauce and cut of meat they choose.
In a similar fashion, let's say you want to dazzle your friends and show off your new kitchen with a fabulous dinner party. Spend a few moments with this book and you will be able to pair every element of your menu with an exciting, unusual wine. No need to consult a professional wine expert, as you have this knowledge at your fingertips.
Sommeliers interviewed for this book are mostly young and more free-thinking than sommeliers of years past. They are enthusiastic about wine, regardless of it's an exciting, new world find of exceptional value, or a fine-aged Bordeaux worth hundreds of dollars. As a group, they see their mission as helping you find a good wine to accessorize your meal within your price range. And the individual quotes from sommeliers are what makes this book so fresh and appealing.
For example, Steve Beckta of Beckta Dining & Wine in Ottawa believes that as a sommelier, it is almost more important to match a wine to a person than to match the wine to the food. Curious thought! "The most important part of being a sommelier is not your ability to taste, but your ability to empathize with the person who is in front of you," he explains in the book.
How very true. In one instance, Beckta recalls three `big businessmen' sitting at a table. One wants lamb, one wants halibut, and the other guy wants scallops. They tell him they want the "perfect" wine that matches all three, dissimilar dishes. By carefully listening to the subtext of what they are telling him, Beckta realizes they are after a wine that fits into their comfort zone, not necessarily the best match. To him, that means a "big red" from Australia and as it turns out, the businessmen love it.
Sommelier Alpana Singh, formerly of Everest in Chicago (now with the Lettuce Entertainment Group) agrees that comfort is important. She likes to serve California wines on big holidays like New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day, because people who dine out only a few `special nights' a year want something they can recognize and appreciate.
If you entertain or dine out frequently, What To Drink with What You Eat is a dynamic desktop resource and wine and food pairing primer that will stimulate you to learn more about wine by further reading or classes. If you like oaky Chardonnay, for example, this book will also motivate you to try unoaked Chardonnay wines and realize the difference, especially when paired with food. Yet what works best about this book is the way you can take advantage of the authors' extensive research and with just a few minutes of skimming, come across as a credible wine expert in front of clients, colleagues, family and friends.
Amazing/Luxurious Resource For Palate Expansion September 27, 2006
17 out of 23 found this review helpful
This is truly spectacular aid to matching food with drink. We all are creatures of the tried and liked comfort zone of doing this. Found something, stay with it. Don't change a winning game.
Tough to venture out when don't know the lay of the land. But here in this rich, well done, nearly 350 page compendium are the helps to move us into new food/drink heavenly combos. In the similar style as their classics: Becoming Chef and Culinary Artistry, authors talk with famous chefs and drink experts and then combine all this into workable format for such expansion to happen among us. There are many sections to this, but one that takes off on same tangent as Culinary Artistry is alphabetically by various subjects listing of what goes well with what, e.g. Crayfish = especial winners as New World Chardonnarys, chablis, and white burgundy, with some other suggestions as well. Or one can go the other route of what goes with Chardonnay and we find crayfish, but super special combos recommended include: Crab and cream sauces, chicken in cream sauce, lobster and veal. There are minute details here, which is superb value of this. Reminds me of my first exposure to wine/food pairings. I would go to this wine store where this expert would make recommendations. He would ask what's the food to match: I would say lasagna. He would ask, what are the herbs and how much garlic, tomato sauce, etc. Never forget when he recommeded a French rose for a steak with complex butter. Hated rose till made that combo. THIS BOOK GIVES THAT KIND OF ADVICE AND DETAIL.
The writing is superb, e.g. this overall desription of its objective which it easily meets: "Sampling new beverages is typically a low-risk proposition--with a high potential payoff."
The richness of the paperstock, photos and printing are perfect stylistic choices to this wonderful, useful resource. Not only for wine and food pairings, but also waters, beers, teas, etc. Their are tips on how to taste, how to start with something you like and move on to others one probably will enjoy discovering, etc.
Renown chefs and sommeliers provide their pairing favorites along with some recipes. Haven't found it yet, but what I have found so valuable is my dossier that I keep on food/drink pairings, when possible removing label off drinks to put in this diary. Would have been nice to find sample of this. Maybe I'll discover it already included, or maybe for second printing?
You can't go wrong on securing this for yourself or as gift.
A Sommelier says: "Buy this book!" September 21, 2006
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
Wine lovers, from the casual sippers to professional Sommeliers, will find solid, clear advice here, in a well organized format. I worked for many years as a Sommelier and served as Education Director for the Sommelier Society of America, and I can say that no one had done as good a job of making it easy for you to choose a wine that will not only "match" with your meal, but will make your dining (and drinking) experience more enjoyable. This book is bound to become one of the indispensible food and wine books that I keep at hand: a classic in the making. I cannot recommend this book more highly.
Don't Bother Me...I'm choosing a wine.....! April 18, 2007
12 out of 17 found this review helpful
The dust on my furniture is thickening, the phone is ringing, my dog wants a walk...Sorry, I am selecting which beverage to serve tomorrow nite with peel-and-eat shrimp...oh, what fun!! Watch out because once you open this book, it will be awhile before you rejoin the world: It's pure facination and empowerment (!) for an avid foodie who has never been quite certain of what wine to serve without groveling at the local wine shop! And it's not just about wine; there are fabulous suggestions for beer, citrus drinks, tea....
There are already excellent reviews (in my opinion) so I don't want to reinvent the wheel by raving on the photos, the organization, the pure depth of information, the perfection of this book. But if you have stopped on this page, you probably also own a dog-eared, raggedy, finger-smudged copy of "Culinary Artistry" (somewhat like mine is?) and suffice to say that while this is a much more beautiful book and may not necessarily be sitting next to your stove (although there are wonderful recipes...)you will probably refer to it as often.
Suggestion: Read the more in-depth reviews, click to order....and purchase those little anti-static dust cloths. I haven't figured out what to do about the dog yet...
 Great content, sloppy editing April 6, 2007
10 out of 15 found this review helpful
First off, it's very wide ranging and is incredibly easy to use. All of the recommendations in this book have come from top notch chefs and sommeliers, so you know they can be trusted. You'll often find a wealth of options to choose from, due to the democratic group effort behind this. You'll also get more than just wine, which is incredibly refreshing. Some refuse to admit it, but there are dishes that simply work better with other drinks. They go above simply listing "beer" and will put "lager", "wheat beer", etc., which is nice.
The book uses a system of bold print, capital letters, and asterisks to point out which drinks work particularly well. It's also nice to see a section afterwards that does the reverse and is listed by drink and then has food suggestions. Sometimes you want to build the meal around a special bottle of wine instead of vice versa. After that comes specific recommendations from some of the well known contributors to the book. It's an almost flawless book. Except....
....the book is very poorly edited and, in at least two cases, factually inaccurate. Jean-Luc Le Du is either misquoted, misinformed, or simply misspoke. The quote: "Where to find great Cabernet Sauvignon: This would be a toss-up between hillside vineyards in California and Pomerol in France." I had to do a double take...Pomerol? For Cab Sauv? Huh? Not only that, I noticed this statement in two different parts of the book. I'm assuming M. Le Du meant to say Pauillac, as Pomerol is, of course, known for Merlot, which makes up most or all (80-100%, usually) of the wine blend there. Even if there is Cab Sauv in the blend, it's a minimal amount of the wine. I can understand misspeaking and saying Pomerol when you mean Pauillac; it happens. But how this obvious factual error ended up in the final print of the book is beyond me. Anyone that buys a Pomerol expecting a shining example of Cab Sauv will be disappointed (although they may end up with some of the world's best Merlot.)
I've also noticed another factual error concerning the retail price of a certain wine; they mention Sequoia Grove Cabernet Sauvignon as a great value wine at $10 a bottle. It actually retails for around $30-$35 a bottle, not $10.
While I have yet to find any other major errors in the text (not that I'm actively searching for them, but maybe I should), I have noticed a couple grammatical blunders; missing punctuation, spelling errors and such. It's disappointing to see easily correctable errors like this mar an otherwise fantastic book. That being said, don't let these gripes deter you from buying this excellent reference source for food and drink pairings. Clean up the grammar and factual errors and this becomes a 5 star book.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
