A Curry, A Chardonnay and a Surprise

Chicken Curry. Heavily spiced, deliciously burning. A dollop of cool, calming plain yoghurt. The creaminess bites through the acid and heat of the curry to give you a moment of peace, just before you go back in for another bite of pure and delicious torture.

I love spicy food. I love heavy, bold flavors and I especially love combining them with dairy products. Usually your typical authentically cooked chicken curry and some plain yoghurt will do the trick. But once in a while I want something different.

Kimchi in an omelet. Coconut milk splashed into a curry. Cholula on my over medium eggs. A dash of red pepper in my heavily mayo'd chicken or tuna salad. The pasta sauce that combines heavy cream with some sort of hot pepper. I even love a good Spicy Bloody Mary. It's truly divine.

I'm constantly looking for flavor and texture pairings like this. On a lesser pairing on this note is something I rarely have had, but have enjoyed the few times I've indulged: Chocolate and Chiles. Spicy chocolate is such a shock to the senses the first time one tries it. The chocolate isn't so much as sweet as it is slightly bitter, with the warmth and slow burn of the chilies more pronounced.

This chocolate would make wonderful hot cocoa, or even great brownies.

Have you ever tried Chipotle Honey? It's enough to make a human melt. I'm not a fan of most 'smoky' flavors, despite loving spicy food. But Chipotle Honey is where I make an exception.

Beautifully golden and perfect for that glaze over a chicken, this flavor combination combines richness of sweet with the smokiness of fire. Squeeze a lime over top and it's like entering another world of food altogether!

Recently I've been taking a dip into pairing my food with wine, something I never cared about and only considered pretentious women and men who labeled themselves as "foodies" did.

But I found that the combination of a wine with a curry could indeed work, and while there was some trial and error-too much acid from the wine left my mouth feeling sour when ineptly paired with your average box wine-, I found a couple pairings that made me feel almost sophisticated.

It's hard to feel that when you're sitting at the coffee table, plate in hand and watching another episode of Community, but hell if I didn't try. I think I succeeded.

My first pairing was, as previously mentioned, a poorly bought boxed wine. I never drank wine socially, let alone purposely with a meal. Halfway through I gave up and brought out a can of seltzer water. It washed the sour of the wine away and allowed me to taste the food. My boyfriend at the time finished the box for me, bless him.

My next attempt we actually shopped for a bottle. We spent perhaps 35 to 40 minutes in the aisle of a Target looking at wines. To say we had no idea what we were doing would have been an understatement. The descriptions of a wine on the back of a bottle truly told us novices of wine nothing.

How am I supposed to know what "rich chocolate overtones, with hints of julep and boysenberry" are supposed to actually taste like? The wine was okay, but I could never detect any of the hints or tones of any of the wines, aside from one, that I've had in my lifetime.

We chose three bottles. Two red, one white. In my younger days I favored reds, but as I've become older I prefer the company of a white or a rose' in my fridge.

We went home that night and I prepared the curry. We actually don't prepare this dish often, as I use a recipe found years ago that requires the searing of chicken, but not cooking through; the toasting of spices until just fragrant enough and the adding of real chopped ginger, a cinnamon stick and some caramelized onions. It's time consuming, slightly expensive for a single dish and truly worth it once made.

We chilled the wines while I was cooking. Boyfriend can't wait for dinner and pops open one of the reds. I immediately didn't like it just from flavor alone. Too acidic, too wet. It coated my tongue and inside of my mouth with a thin layer of acrid sweetness. My boyfriend smiled, and his teeth were stained. I remember laughing at this.

Curry was done and I wanted the white. My spouse continued with the red.

I have to say, I was quite surprised at the slight tone shift in how the curry tasted with the wine. As I said, I've never been one to pair one with any food or give a care about it. In fact, most times that I had others pair it for me, all I could taste was the wine overpowering the food.

This time however, the lightness of the white, some sort of ridiculous Chardonnay, was actually working with my tastebuds! It brought out the creaminess of my dollop of Greek yoghurt, the sharpness of the cilantro and warmth of the cinnamon. I soon found myself taking a small sip before biting into my dish. It was fantastic. I was converted.

We haven't done a dish like this since. We try not to spend money frivolously on alcohol. Even though I enjoyed the wine with the food, I find no reason to drink wine for the sake of drinking it. I'm not a heavy drinker, nor even much of a social one anymore. Nevertheless, we would do this again, but it would have to be a special occasion.

If you don't believe me, try it for yourself. Find your favorite curry recipe-I tend to find chicken or even fish curries work better with some sort of white or rose'-and pair it with couple of wines.

If all else fails, a simple seltzer water will take you right out!