Everything’s coming up roses for Project Awesome

Posted by winesleuth in Food and Wine, Spain | 1 comment

Rosé! Olé!

That was my mission as part of Project Awesome. Some of you may not be familiar with Project Awesome but in a nutshell, The Wineyard & Deli in Morecombe contacted 6 of us bloggers to match their wines with our recipes. While some bloggers got a bit carried away with the whole clandestine operation and posted frequently, I, on the other hand, chose to take the dark horse route (read: didn’t have time to get around to blogging about it til now) but I finally cooked up something for this project.

I was sent a bottle of 2008 Raimat Abadia rosé. Rosés are some of my favourite wines and I am on a tireless campaign to remind people that not all rosés are sickly sweet concoctions from California. The Spanish Raimat is an offshoot of the well known cava producer Codorniu. The Raimat vineyards produce still table wines and are also dedicated to producing wines sustainably. While they are not officially certified organic or biodynamic, they try to use minimal agrochemicals, reduce waste and optimize all available local resources.

The Raimat rosé is a  blend of cabernet and tempranillo. A lively rosé, it was fresh, crisp and dry with plenty of red cherry and strawberry notes. Not surprisingly, it was bright cherry red, this was certainly no delicate rosé but rather a robust Spanish wine to stand up to the heat that comes from the plains of Spain.  Now, I just want to remind everyone that I am a wine blogger but I seem to be doing more and more with food so, what to pair with this rosé?

I had a load of chicken wings and a friend suggested a honey soy marinade so…. that’s what we had for lunch. The recipe is so easy and the chicken wings came out fabulously. A simple spinach, tomato cucumber salad garnished with sunflower seeds and dressed with aged balsalmic vinegar and virgin olive oil and voila! Lunch was served.

What I like about rosés, they are so versatile. The Raimat was perfect with the honey soy as the sauce wasn’t too salty or sweet and the wine just washed it all down. It’s often difficult to pair wine with Asian dishes but on this occasion, it worked a charm. I tweaked the recipe a bit. I like to use recipes as guides rather then follow them exactly so I threw in a couple of extra things I had laying around the kitchen but I think it only improved the recipe.

Honey Soy Marinade Chicken wings

2 lbs of chicken wings

160 ml soy sauce

6 tbs honey

5 tbs sesame oil

3 garlic cloves, minced

1-inch of ginger, finely grated

juice of one medium sized lemon

Whisk all ingredients together and then pour over chicken wings in a marinade pan. I let them marinade for a couple of hours but the longer they sit in the marinade, the yummier they are. Bake in oven at 180 C for about 35-40 minutes, turning often. And that’s it! So simple yet so good.

Ben Hodgkinson over at The Wineyard was the mastermind behind Project Awesome and will soon be putting together all our recipes along with the wine matches. They will be available soon, so watch this space and join in for the cook-along, which will be in the very near future.