Local Nose foodies took the Ayam Buah Keluak pairing challenge - trying to find a suitable wine pairing for this delicious local dish.
White meat goes with white wine, and red meat with red wine. Yes…right…got it…But what about a white meat cooked in a richly spiced, black sauce? How does that work?
TLN foodies tackled this challenge and paired the celebrated Peranakan dish – Ayam Buah Keluak – with a range of wine styles. This classic dish contains just about everything but the kitchen sink; a myriad of spices, coconut, peanut, and of course the chicken. It’s got tang, spicy zing, creaminess, roughness, bitterness – it’s got it all! All Peranakans agree that the best Ayam Keluak is the one that their grandmothers made. While true, each grandmother also has her own special recipe.
No grandmother we knew made the dish TLN tasted , but ours was definitely filled buah keluak sauce. Quite evident was that the hard keluak fruit was cracked open, the black paste mixed with pounded candlenuts, dried shrimp, tamarind, lemongrass, and stuffed back into the shell. The result? Very rich and complex flavours!
This time TLN food pairers truly had no pre-conception on what would work. We lined up the whole spectrum of wine styles from all corners of the earth; a yeasty, grape-fruity English Sparkling wine, an off-dry German Riesling; a fruity NZ Pinot Gris; a Central Otago Pinot Noir; a Tuscan Chianti with a bouquet of violets; a beautifully deep aubergine-hued Cabernet Sauvignon from Stellenbosch with blackcurrant and cocoa palate; and a powerful Barossa Shiraz with coffee and blackberries. All good wines on their own but how would they fare next to this full-on, complex dish? Plus, where is the consensus in a room of six people, six bottles of wine, and a dish displaying a multitude of flavours? You guessed it…an infinite combination of possibilities PLUS a plethora of opinions!
Local Nose Jason Lau and TLN factotum Jessica Tan took the analytical approach, closely examining each components of the dish. With the meat, Jason favoured the Pinot Gris. The ripe, sweet pear palate brought out the chicken flavour, but he did not think much of its combination with the sauce.
Jess thought the Chianti worked well with the chicken skin, but don’t go near the Pinot Gris - it made the sauce tasted like – excuse me - rancid coconuts! With the dish in its entirety, both Jason an Jess leaned towards the Riesling. “It enhances the sauce – both the rough texture and flavours,” Jess observed. Jason agreed but put the Pinot Noir as a second choice Newbie Nose Marcus Lai looked at it from the keluak point of view. “The keluak needs big fruit to bring out its own fruitiness,” he remarked. He chose blackcurrant and cocoa flavours of the 2005 Dembeya Samara Cab Sauv and big, black-berried 2007 Rocland Estate Shiraz as optimal pairing – both juicy with full-bodied black fruits characters, matching the weight of the keluak.
Barney Teo took the wines point of view, commending the fresh 2007 Josef Chromy Riesling, as the keluak sauce makes the wine taste even fruitier and fresher! TLN’s resident food-and wine-pairing specialist Morgun Parthi took his time in contemplation, and thoughtfully declared, ”This works more as bitter-bitter pairing.” Morgun added, “The keluak spans the flavour dimension of bitterness and chocolatey-ness.”
But Morgun was quick to concede that a big red like the Cabernet Sauvignon could better match the dish body-to-body. “The wine’s tannic bitter overtones enhance the rustic texture from the grated coconut and crushed candlenuts in the sauce works,” he said. “Pinot Noir is no good; the heavy sauce dulls the fruit and heightens the alcohol.” But because of the spice-focus and intensity of the food, Morgun prefers an off-dry wine with this dish. “Although the sparkling could work as well” he added,”it is still enjoyable after the food.” As for me, (the author) I preferred the South African Cab. It brought out the juicy assam tang in the sauce (yum!), and a sharpness of both food and wine, making it interesting. The Barossa Shiraz blended in better, but it was nowhere near as exciting.
Alamak! So how? What can we conclude from all these? As always, each taster has different tastes and preferences, especially when it comes to a dish with such multi-dimensional spectrum of taste and texture. Some of the aspects would “speak to” our taste buds more than others. The keluak brings full-bodied richness and bitterness into the equation. These flavours warrant the body-to-body match of a weighty red, as Morgun and Marcus pointed out – maybe something from the New World like the Dembeya Cab Sauv or Rocland Shiraz.
This zingy mélange of spices calls for a sweetish wine, such as the Josef Chromy Riesling, which was favoured by four out of six TLN foodies. This would be particularly suitable for a lighter version of Ayam Buah Keluak in a slightly soupier gravy. But the keluak sauce makes the wine even more refreshing – what a bonus!
The moral of the story? A dish so saporific (e.g. loaded with flavour) is easy, not hard, to pair because it offers multiple possibilities! Get to know your taste buds and match to the flavour you savour most – but with 6 palates to choose from, try some of the wine choices we had – they won’t disappoint!Dembeya Samara Cabernet Sauvignon and Josef Chromy Riesling are available from Singapore Straits Wine Company.
Rocland Shiraz is available from Le Vigne.
The Ayam Buah Keluak used for the TLN tasting was da bao from Spice Peranakan Restaurant, Biopolis.
For TLN Biz Dev Wiz Jessica Tan – calling her a fac totum literally means she can “do everything” (Latin)… and she CAN!
Contributed by Lucia SantosoLucia is TLN's Database Manager
