Sweet red wine is the foundation for a classic dish of poached pears.
Though the word "sweet" doesn't mean quite the same thing in reference to wine that it does elsewhere in cooking, sweet wine is most commonly used to enrich sweet sauces or to make sauces for sweet dishes, such as those with fruit. Sweet wine, and especially sweet red wine, is also used to punch up the flavor sauces for proteins with more subtle flavors, such as fish and eggs.
Poaching Liquid for Fruit
Combine a light, sweet red wine with juice from a fruit such as pears, season with sweet spices such as cinnamon and vanilla, and heat to simmering. Add peeled whole fruits and poach for 10 minutes or until just tender. Remove the fruit and raise the heat to reduce the poaching liquid to a sauce, which you may also want to thicken with arrowroot or cornstarch. Bring both sauce and fruit to room temperature to serve them.
Sweeter Meats
Meats that pair well with fruits, such as duck breast, will also go well with sauces reduced from sweet red wine and a light meat stock. In 2007, Epicurious.com published an elaborate recipe from a spa in India in which the duck is dry-marinated in herbs and spices and smoked in Darjeeling tea and fresh cilantro, and finally topped off with a jus that starts off with savory vegetables, continues with sweet cinnamon and cardamom and finishes with fresh blueberries.
Bring Richness to Other Sweets
Sweet foods, whether naturally sweet like fruit or made of pure sugar, can have a pretty thin taste. You can make a rich caramel sauce for berries by melting sugar, thinning it with sweet red wine and simmering out most of the wine's water content. Glaze brownies with a sauce made of sweet red wine, cocoa and butter.
Enrich a Savory Sauce for a Subtle Protein
Oeufs en meurette---eggs poached in a red wine sauce---is one of the classics of French cuisine, according to Anne Willan in Epicurious.com. Willan recommends combining a fruity wine with stock made from veal or chicken and boiling it to poach the eggs. While the eggs rest, you further flavor the sauce with aromatic vegetables, reduce it and thicken it with butter kneaded with flour, then strain it before covering the eggs to serve them.
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