A glass of wine with your meal sounds like an enjoyable, even civilised move to make. But the real secret of the presence of alcohol in our kitchen lies not in what it does on the table, but what it can prepare in the kitchen.
Quite like spices, alcohol can bring flavour into food. Whether you’re cooking with wine, beer, or liquor, the alcohol in these beverages can add taste to your meal. Food preparations like stew, sauces, risotto, pasta, or even toddy that’s used to make appam; the list is endless, and the tipple has become a crucial part in our kitchen space. Taste can be improved when alcohol is added in two important ways — by evaporation, and by molecular bonding.
Open a 16-year-old Lagavulin single malt, and you smell the scotch right off the bat. The alcohol molecules swiftly carry subtle caramel aromas, and soft peaty smoke to your olfactory sensors, possible only because they evaporate rapidly. Adding a splash of kirsch to a fruit salad or macerating peaches in Pinot Noir helps convey the fruits’ aroma to our nostrils, enhancing the overall enjoyment of food.
It also bonds with both fat and water molecules, allowing it to carry the aroma and flavours. In a marinade, alcohol helps season the meat too. It functions similarly in cooked sauces, making your food smell and taste better. Darker alcohol like stout, or whiskey, pair best with white meats or seafood. Soaking an overripe fruit in wine is also a great way to save it. The fruit could also salvage the wine if it’s a bit too sugary for drinking, making it like a much-needed cocktail after a long day.
Then there’s deglazing, a great way to free all the stuck, caramelised bits in the pan after meat haws been cooked. Pour some wine or beer into the pan, and start scraping the bottom until it turns into a thick, flavourful sauce. Again, white wine or light beer works best for chicken and fish, while red wine and darker beers are best for red meat. You can deglaze your favorite meat with your preferred alcohol like port or nice bourbon.
Adding a moderate amount of alcohol to desserts is just right. Spike your fruit in a classier way by making a rum caramel sauce that you can drizzle on top of oranges. If you’re going for a delicacy, add a few tablespoons of liqueur to your cake batter, like in Maple Bourbon Banana Bread. The alcohol will just add a little depth without tasting too intense. If you’re looking for something stronger, you can soak your sweets in booze. Baba au rhum, tres leches cake, and bourbon balls are all very smart choices.
Alcohol aids in fiery desserts as well as frozen. Like flambé banana (or a slice of your favorite seasonal fruit). I would suggest darker, richer spirits such as brandy or rum. Add rum to your tiramisu, beer stout cake, beer float. Try getting your favorite pint of beer and intensify it by adding vanilla ice cream, you can’t go wrong.
Adding alcohol to your frozen desserts has two benefits; one, it makes frozen desserts about twice as much fun, and two, it gives them a much smoother texture. Alcohol doesn’t crystallise at 32°F (think of vodka bottle you keep in your freezer), and will help lift your dessert from unclearly fruity ice chunks to a smooth-textured treat.
A handful of high-end chocolatiers have confections with top quality booze as part of their collections. Some chocolates are filled with a creamy liquor such as creme de menthe and coconut rum. Many top confectioneries in countries like Italy, Belgium, France and US add different spirits as per their clients’ taste — like fine champagne, cognac chocolate, vodka, Cointreau, Macallan, Glenfidich and so on. Government guidelines insist that these bonbons carry a cautionary message about their alcohol content on their packaging. Hence be careful to read the ingredients before you buy for your young guns.
Ketan Swami is the food and beverage manager at Mars Hospitality
