I love seafood, but I don't particulalry like white wines, which are typically recommended for pairing with seafood dishes. Several years ago, I discovered that grilled salmon pairs well with Pinot Noir, and that my penchant for big reds makes bigger Pinot Noirs, such as Irony, nicely complement grilled salmon with a spice rub. I've discovered what may be my favorite pairing yet between a seafood dish and a big red wine: sesame seed encrusted seared Ahi Tuna and Mourvedre. The peppery, spicy flavor of a 2008 Chateau Ste. Michele Mourvedre turned out to be the perfect complement to the peppery, spicy flavor of the meal. Here is what the tasting notes from CSM winemaker Bob Bertheau say about the wine:
“Mourvèdre is traditionally blended with Rhone-origin varietals, but it’s the shining star of this wine with just a touch of Syrah for additional layers. This is a round and elegant wine that exhibits flavors and aromas of Herbes de Provence with white pepper spice. There is an underlying meat and earthiness that is beautifully complex all on its own, with an interesting juxtaposition of very soft tannins.”
For Christmas Eve dinner each year, we've taken to experimenting with non-traditional meals. This year, we found some good looking Ahi tuna steaks at Costco for $12.99 / pound, and decided to grill these up using a tasty recipe for sesame seed encrusted Ahi Tuna that I found at GrillingAddiction.com. Following the directions thre, I rubbed the tuna steaks with olive oil, toasted up some sesame seeds and rubbed them in, along with some coarsely ground black peppercorns. I gently laid them on the rack of our Weber Genesis Silver gas grill and because they were about 1.5" thick, I seared them on high heat for 3 minutes per side vs. the recommended 2 minutes per side for 1" thick steaks. I forgot to add a dash of sesame oil, but they turned out fine (the photo above is from Grilling Addiction, as I also forgot to take a photo of the tuna steaks before we ate them).
To accompany the tuna, I turned to another online recipe - Seared Ahi Tuna with Baby Boc Choy and Seasoned Rice - found at cbsop.com (cbsop = Cooking By the Seat of Our Pants). The sauce for the baby boc choy called for soy sauce and oyster flavored sauce, but I substituted a variant of the "3-2-1" sauce from Grilling Addiction: 3 parts soy sauce (I used tamari), 2 parts hoisin sauce and 1 part hot Thai sauce (the recipe called for Sriracha Thai Hot Sauce but I substituted Thai Kitchen Roasted Red Chili Paste). Unfortunately, I didn't notice the "baby" part of the ingredients while at the store, so I picked up a regular bok choy, and cut it down to size. Evan stir fried it in vegetable oil for a few minutes to soften it up and we drizzled in some of the 3-2-1 sauce near the end. The recipe called for seasoning with Nori Komi Furikake (a rice seasoning blend containing contains sesame seeds, seaweed flakes, salt and sugar), but we we just sprinkled on some of the leftover toasted sesame seeds. We found mixing some rice, bok choy and the tuna in each forkful was most flavorful way of eating it. [The photo above is from cbsop.com].
I had originally planned to pair the tuna with Grenache, which has become my most recent favorite wine pairing with rubbed salmon, but Chateau Ste. Michelle was sold out of their most recent release of the wine, and I couldn't find any other wineries or stores in Woodinville that had Grenache. I also bought a bottle of the CSM 2008 Austral - a blend of Mourvedre, Grenache and Syrah - at the winery, which we opened to taste side-by-side with the Mourvedre to accompany the tuna. The Austral was another worthy candidate, but I think the single varietal Mourvedre was the better of the two. Next time we grill up some salmon, I may try a similar side-by-side tasting, although it would be nice to find some Grenache as well ... and I find myself wondering about Carignan (though that can be even more challenging to find than Grenache).
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