Matter Of Taste [Hardcover]

When delicious food and wine make a passionate connection, the combination can offer one of life's supernal pleasures. In A Matter of Taste, Lucy Waverman provides the recipes while James Chatto tutors readers in choosing wines and spirits that make those pairings sublime. Grouping her dishes by seasons and themes, Waverman offers more than 170 recipes--and that's just the food. Throughout the book, Chatto offers his own advice on blending classic cocktails and teaches readers how to consider a food's weight, acidity, saltiness, sweetness, flavour, and aroma when pairing it with a wine: "There's a sober, joyless young Bordeaux swathed in a dark cloak of tannins. Drink it with lamb and you suddenly taste ripe black currents." So, for New Year's Eve, there's Scallop Ravioli with Blood Orange Sauce, which Chatto likes with an elegant, cool-climate Pinot Noir. In spring, "A Dinner of Lemons" starts with Sorrel Soup (try it with an Alsatian Riesling) and finishes with Lemon Ginger Yogurt Cake (a medium-sweet Apricot wine from Ontario). When the book club comes over, the suggested menu includes Braised Chicken with Olive and Figs and an everyday Dolcetto that won't distract from the conversation. The lentil salad vibrates with taste, while Coconut Shrimp Curry is sensational. Readers who have tried Waverman's dishes from her Globe and Mail column and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario's Food and Drink magazine will know that her recipes are full of flavour, easy-to-follow, and pretty close to foolproof. Chatto's writing is lively and informative. Together the two are like well-matched food and wine: better than the sum of the parts. --Carolyn Leitch

Lucy Waverman and James Chatto have been at or near the top of the food chain in Ontario-or at least those parts of Ontario that are visible from the wealthy areas of downtown Toronto-for a long time now. They know what they’re doing, they know what they’re about, and what they’re about is Rosedale Fusion cuisine. A Matter of Taste is, therefore, pretty much as advertised-a matter of taste.
The book itself is a coffee-table whopper, beautifully produced and professionally executed-and not something you’d want to drop on your foot while you’re cooking from it. The authors don’t say this, but it’s actually a dinner party cookbook, and the food it features is the kind that takes all day-or several days-to prepare and all evening to consume.
The book’s menus are organized around the four seasons of the year, beginning with spring, and each setting takes you from appetizers to after-dinner aperitifs. Some of the featured menus will tip amateur chefs on limited budgets and less-than-fully equipped kitchens over the edge of a nervous breakdown trying to run with these guys. I found myself growing slightly irritable with the degree of supervision, particularly when it comes to directions for the wines I ought to be drinking. This may have something to do with my habit of drinking wine while I’m preparing food, and realizing that with the amount of kitchen time their regime requires, I’d rarely make it to the dinner table.
That’s not entirely fair, because high-end menus are what Chatto and Waverman do, and they’re unapologetic about it. I imagine that many readers will find their micro-managing rather soothing. The good news is that I also found myself pilfering bits and pieces of both their menus and recipes alike, so the book is adaptable.
Brian Fawcett (Books in Canada)
-- Books in Canada

THERE IS A SYNERGY to food and wine matching that makes food taste marvellous and wine scale new heights. The right choices can make the difference between a good dinner and a great one. Two of Canada's top food and wine authorities-Lucy Waverman and James Chatto-successfully capture this trend in their new book, A Matter of Taste: Inspired Seasonal Menus with Wines and Spirits to Match. This elegant, lively cookbook, with more than 200 delectable recipes, is a unique and exciting collaboration that serves as a primer in the art of matching food and drink.
        A Matter of Taste highlights the seasons, with themed menus, time-saving fast-and-fresh dinners and fascinating sidebars about ingredients and cooking techniques. Suggested aperitifs, wines and cocktails complement each menu and its occasion with the whys and wherefores explored in irreverent prose. For example, in the menu for "Dinner for Food-Loving Friends," Lucy cooks slow-roasted lamb shoulder and rack as a main course, and James explains why Italian cult red Sagrantino would be an ideal wine to choose. For dessert, he proposes LBV port or frozen Dalwhinnie single malt whisky to go with Lucy's wondrous, raspberry-studded Chocolate Passion.
        Much more than a cookbook, A Matter of Taste is meant to be read and savoured, preferably with a cocktail or glass of wine in hand. Photographer Rob Fiocca, whose work is regularly featured in Gourmet magazine, beautifully interprets the authors' elegant, effortless style with his striking colour and black-and-white photography. The result is a gorgeous gourmet cookbook with a difference, the perfect marriage of superb menus and fine writing-the season's best offering.

 

 

LUCY WAVERMAN is the author of seven popular cookbooks, including Dinner Tonight and the award-winning Home for Dinner. She is a food columnist for The Globe and Mail, the food editor of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) magazine Food & Drink, and appears frequently on television and radio. She was the food expert for City TV’s CityLine for 12 years. She lives in Toronto.

JAMES CHATTO is the author of four books about food, including the award-winning The Man Who Ate Toronto and The Chef’s Table (with Lucy Waverman and Tony Aspler). He is the restaurant columnist and food writer for Toronto Life magazine, as well as senior editor and wine and spirits columnist for the LCBO's Food & Drink. He lives in Toronto.

LUCY WAVERMAN is the author of seven popular cookbooks, including Dinner Tonight and the award-winning Home for Dinner. She is a food columnist for The Globe and Mail, the food editor of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) magazine Food & Drink, and appears frequently on television and radio. She was the food expert for City TV’s CityLine for 12 years. She lives in Toronto.