Food and booze pairings for the utterly exhausted
1. Life is hard – even easy lives with running water and fridges filled with salami are just so tiring.
2. I find this is the most difficult time of year – it’s late enough in the year that we are worn down but not yet time to put on a swimming costume and head for the seaside.
3. I don’t know about you but I feel as if I am stuck in a nowhere land for the terminally knackered.
4. All I want to do is sit on the sofa and sulk with junk food and booze.
5. But if you are going to do it, do it right.
6. The pairing of junk food and booze is a much misunderstood practice.
7. You can ruin a packet of Nik Naks with the wrong wine!
8. So what follows are some suggestions as to the perfect junk food and booze pairings to sit on the sofa and sulk with this weekend…
Principles of Pairing: wine snobs are fibbing – it’s not that hard
1. People are easily intimidated by food and booze pairing.
2. It’s because wine snobs have made it seem much harder than it actually is.
3. The good news is that it’s actually not that hard – even tired people can do it.
4. And it is as easy to do with wine as it is with beer, sake, rum etc.
5. Whatever the alcohol, the matching process is ultimately about complementing and contrasting
• weight,
• flavor intensity,
• taste
• smell

Food snobs are fibbing too because they often imply that only fine food deserves a wine match
1. Which is rubbish – it can be done with equal (sometimes better) efficacy with junk food.
2. So, what follows is a frighteningly frank gourmet guide to classic, comforting combinations in a glass, on a plate and sometimes in a styrofoam takeaway box...


JUNK FOOD AND WINE GEM 1: have a Marilyn moment with champagne and potato crisps...
1. All the fancy books will tell you that the full-bodied, bone-dry finish of a Brut Champagne or Cap Classique and the gloriously complex oily, fishy and salty flavors of caviar are divine together.
2. I agree its damn fine.
3. But let’s face it who can afford caviar?
4. If you can La Marina have farmed Beluga 50g is R2702.
5. Even if you can afford it very few of us have it to hand when depression and exhaustion hit.
6. The good news is that the reason that this pairing works is that dry Champagne loves the whole fat and sodium thing. It’s the perfect attraction of opposites. So anything fatty and salty will do!
7. Enter junk food – it’s nearly all fatty and salty! Yay.
8. In the 1955 movie classic “The Seven Year Itch” Marilyn Monroe (who is of course was the itch referred to in the title) asks her ridiculously randy neighbour "Did you ever dunk a potato chip in champagne? It's real crazy.” Crazy, smazy her pairing works perfectly.

JUNK FOOD AND WINE GEM 2: Gewürztraminer and Kentucky Fried Chicken...
1. We all know that Gewürztraminer's spicy, floral, tropical fruit aromas and flavours make it an ideal partner for Chinese, Indian and Thai-style dishes because:
• The wine's light sweetness cuts through the heat of the spice
• while the firm acidity helps to balance the richness of the oil or clarified butter base of many such dishes.
2. But let’s face it real exhaustion calls for Kentucky.
3. Original Recipe Chicken says on the box that the Colonel has mixed up 11 herbs and spices for the crust of his fried fowl.
4. So his Southern, spicy, fatty fowl is ideal match for Gewürztraminer too.
5. The wine works well with the Zinger burger box too.

JUNK FOOD GEM 3: Bunny with a Cane and Coke
1. South Africa's most famous sandwich is just what the doctor ordered when the going has got seriously scary.
2. Durban diaspora style curries are hot, hot, hot. And let’s face it, we are all too tired to recognize subtle right now.
3. As the masala-laden gravy soaks into the plump white bread walls, the wizz bang wallop in your mouth will be just what the doctor ordered.
4. Want to feel truly revitalized?
5. Follow it down the hatch with a tooth-meltingly sweet gulp of cane spirit and Coke.
6. Of course it’s not posh but it is the absolute best food and booze pairing ever.
7. The notes of cumin and cardamom in the curry are enhanced by the vanillay notes in the cane and the sweetness helps to tone down its chili-laden fervour.
8. It is hard to find a real live bunny outside of KZN but those in Gauteng should head for Lugz (Braam Fischer Drive, Canterbury Crossing, Randburg, JHB. 011 781 6244) where the owners Pat and Jacinta Naidu and all their staff are relatively recent imports from Durban.

GEM 4: NOT SO MUCH JUNK FOOD AS COMFORT KOS: Boeremeisies
1. These girls pack the ultimate punch.
2. You need to look in tuis gemark shops for boeremeisies.
3. They are jars of apricots soaked in witblitz.
4. Forget Chardonnay and crayfish these little devils are absolutely the best, most marvelous food and booze combination ever to come out of South Africa.
5. Sit on the sofa and eat a jar with your fingers. If you have any energy you can also do a kind of Eton mess with them.
6. While macerating in the booze the apricots release the almondy notes of their kernel.
7. Truly delicious and utterly intoxicating.
8. After such a sofa session life will feel better or you will feel unconscious.
9. Either would be preferable to where we are now…

If you do want to go out but you are too tired to make conversation: molecular mixology at the Westcliff
1. What you need is somewhere that you can sit in companionable silence with your date and be entertained.
2. There is a brand new, deliciously daft molecular mixology menu at the Polo Bar of the Westcliff Hotel.
3. Molecular Mixology is the term applied to the creation of cocktails using the equipment and techniques of molecular gastronomy.
4. So it’s all that El Bulli stuff - olive oil served as fibrous coils, asparagus magically made into spheres and nitro-scrambled bacon and egg ice cream.
5. But now its cocktails.
6. You sit at the bar and barman Mandla Maseko will entertain you with school science project gone boozy.
7. He makes whisky marshmallows and Mojito mists and vodka panna cottas, Champagne caviar and Kahlua jellies etc, etc...
8. They cost between R45 and R85 each but they are such fun. Like magic but boozier.
9. My husband liked the elderflower Martinis with blueberry and grape caviar. (yes that’s right he turns liquid into little caviar like balls of bliss that float in your drink and burst in your mouth).
10. My personal favourite was his deconstructed Tequila taste sensation with blowtorch-caramelised limes, Vintage Tequila foam and a coarse salt garnish which was whimsically mixed with that primary school space dust/ pop-rock mixture that goes bang-bang, doef-doef in the mouth.