New recipe, May 22, 2011

This evening, we started again with the Black Pepper Shrimp with Watermelon and Lime Salad from Floyd Cardoz. I added more pepper and chat masala to the watermelon, and it was even better than the first day. We still had some of the Guigal 2007 White Côtes du Rhone, so we had them together again. Yum!

Our main course was a Coconut Red Lentil Curry, from Epicurious.com. As we were reading about what wine might be good with this, several different options came up, so we decided to taste it with a variety of wines. We had the Pesquie 2007 Viognier, a 2006 Alamos Torrontes , and the Glass Mountain 2008 Chardonnay. We also opened a Chenin Blanc, but it was corked so we didn't taste it at all.

They were all good. The Vigonier is a lovely fruity wine, but seemed a bit too light for this curry, which had a little spiciness to it. The Torrontes has great fruit, but didn't have quite enough in common with the dish to really work with it. The Chardonnay has a nice fruitiness, and the butteriness blended well with the coconut flavor. It isn't highly oaked, so the spiciness wasn't a problem--in fact, the vanilla flavor also did well with the coconut. A fun experiment.