Paired Up: Syrah and Double Plum Chicken

In our Paired Up posts, we review a wine and the food we wisely (or foolishly) paired it with. 

The Wine

2007 Tapteil Syrah Spilya Vineyard

On our way to Walla Walla Spring Release last year, we stopped at Red Mountain to visit Hightower Cellars. They recommended we stop at Tapteil Estate, and we were very pleased with the range of varietal wines we tasted that day. For this meal we wanted something to mesh with the plum, and this Syrah fit the bill. We decanted the wine for a half hour before tasting, and it really came together about an hour after that.

The Food

Hunter got back out of the kitchen for this one. In the chef's words:

A Brief Note:

This dish was an eye-opening, palate blossoming endeavor. While the recipe itself is relatively simple, the presentation that it creates is seriously, impressively, stunning, if I must say so myself! Yet another awesome find from the pages of Cooking Light (January/February 2012). OK, onto to the meat of the matter (pun most certainly intended):

The Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/3 cup shallot (sliced vertically, semi-thin)
• 2 tsp minced peeled fresh ginger
• 1/2 cup tawny port wine (the recipe calls for plum wine, which we did not find, so we went with a bottle of fortified wine we had been given a while ago)
• 3/4 cup fat-free, low sodium chicken broth
• 1 tsp chili sauce
• 1 tsp Chinese mustard
• 1/2 cup dried plums (about 10, each cut in half)
• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
• salt
• pepper
• fresh sliced green onions, for garnish

The Work:

Seriously, simple. About 30 minutes total... just make sure to get all your ingredients and cut up vegetables gathered up around you, as once you start moving, there's no time to dilly-dally around searching for things!

OK, heat the oven to 425. Get a medium sauce pan over med-high, with a bit of olive oil drizzled and swirled to coat the bottom. Add shallots and ginger and saute 1 minute. Add wine and bring to a boil, allowing 1 minute. Add broth, chili sauce, and mustard; bring back to boil. Cook until it reduces down to about 3/4 of a cup (around 8 min), remove from heat, and stir in dried plums.

Heat an ovenproof skillet, large enough to comfortably fit all the chicken breasts, with olive oil on med-high heat. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper (I also threw on some garlic salt), and add the chicken to the pan, cooking for about 3 minutes. Turn the pieces over, pour the plum sauce over, and bake in the oven for about 6 minutes (of course, always check to make sure that your chicken is cooked through... bake longer if needed). Let stand for about 5 minutes... plate up and garnish with fresh chopped green onions on top.

I also added some basic cooked quinoa to the side, as a grain, and to help sop up some of the delicious plum sauce.

See? Easy-peasy... but it looks fancy-schmancy. (serves 4, around 313 calories each, not including quinoa) 

Hunter's Gatherings

The color is a deep-dark ruby. The nose is a touch harsh at first with some alcohol burn, but mellows out and gets very earthy, displaying barnyard funk, cherry, dirty leather, and cherry cola. On tasting, it becomes a very complete experience from attack to finish, coating the mouth with an oily leathery feel. Loads of chocolate flavor is balanced with plum, cherry cola, and earthy pepper. Dry tannins round out the finish. Again, great balance from start to finish and a fine evolution over the course of the evening. 91

The chicken toned down the drying effect of the wine, making the fruit in the Syrah shine through. The wine really kicked up the mustard flavor in the dish, and the pepper, from both the wine and the chicken, came bursting out through the nose. In the mid-palate, the chili sauce came out to play and gave a perfect spice transition from the attacking mustard to the finishing pepper.

Katy's Take

The Wine:

The pour was deep, dark, and coated the glass with an alluring oily sheen. The nose held lots of chocolate, slightly smokey with a prominent chalky undertone. An overall fragrant bouquet of peppery and aged black fruits. The taste was medium-sweet with a very well rounded, powerfully smooth, full body. The initial attack was coating velvet, with punchy moments of a smokey black pepper, rounding out to a juicy black fruit crescendo. Overall, very well structured and balanced, a great wine with food, or on its own. 91 

The Pair:

This pairing was up there! SPICE! It all melted together on the tongue to create this smokey, amazing Asian experience. The Chinese mustard flavor was really brought to the forefront with the aid of the wine, and that's exactly where it needed to be. The wine helped to take this dish and allow you to taste it all the way down your throat, while the food sort of punched up all the taste attacks, creating a well engineered roller coaster on the tongue. All in all, I would call this a perfect pairing!

The Conclusion

Fantastic! The wine and the food were each great on their own (in fact, Katy made this again less than a week later), but the pairing was amazing. The structure of the wine and the substance of the chicken made a perfect playing field for the spices and fruit that were prevalent in both. We kind of knew going in that Washington Syrah, with its plummy characteristics, would be a good match for the meal, but it went above and beyond expectations, creating a brilliant dinner.