Book Review: What to Drink with What You Eat

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 by Andrew Dornenburg

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publishers Description (I am abbreviating it as it was a little long)

"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 America’s leading pairing experts...

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 America’s best restaurants, including Alinea, Babbo, Bern’s, Blue Hill, Chanterelle, Daniel, Emeril’s, French Laundry, Frontera Grill, Inn at Little Washington, Jean Georges, Masa’s, The Modern, Per Se, Rubicon, Tru, and Valentino.

You’ll find authoritative recommendations for stocking your cellar and kitchen with must-have beverages, from wines to waters. You’ll 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. "

I really really want to have this book on my bookshelf. It is amazing. It made me feel so much more at ease about pairing food with not only wine but tea, beer and other beverages. It mostly talks about wine though. It is put together in a way that makes it easy to follow - very user friendly. It is an essential reference for serving wine with a meal.

It not only goes in how to pair food and wine but a little bit of history, geography of wine such as what areas produce what types of wine, it gives how to actually taste wine and other expert techniques.

They had 3 simple rules to follow to when starting out...
1 - Think Regionally: If it grows together, it goes together.
2 - Come to your senses: Let your five sense guide your choices
3 - Balance Flavors: Tickle your tongue in more ways then one.

Of course they explain those rules indepth in the book. And make the process as easy as possible for those of us new to pairing beverages with food or foods with beverages. And it does go both ways in this book to make it very easy. Lets say someone gave you a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and you want to make something to go with it. You would look up Cabernet Sauvignon in the book and it has a list of food that go well with it. It has a list of herbs, meats, cheese, veggies, legumes, fruits and just everything you can think of but not only that it also tells you how to cook. Such as it said that Cabernet Sauvignon is good with grilled meats such as hamburgers and beef - braised, grilled, roasted or stewed. It also works the other way if you are serving chicken in cream sauce then it tells you what wine or beverage goes good with it it (Chardonnay - especially a full bodied California). It lists things in general too so if you aren't sure what you are going to do with the chicken yet. I just really loved how easy it was to follow.

As I said above I think this is an essential book for those of us serving wine with a meal.

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