At the Table, Germano Selvatico and Asparagus

Today I want to present a recipe I designed and prepared for a demonstration of
flambé cooking.

As a pairing I proposed a red wine by Podere Sapaio produced
in Tuscany in the Bolgheri area at the Lo Scopaio estate.

Germano selvatico con essenze di Sicilia e asparagi verdi

Ingredients:

• Germano selvatico
• A bunch of green asparagus
• Some white stock
• Olive oil

• A basket of red currants
• A few juniper berries
• A few sage leaves
• White grappa for flambéing
• Half a glass of dry white wine
• One orange
• 40 gr. of butter
• Whole peppercorns
• Salt to taste

Preparation:
Heat the pan and crush the juniper berries with the pepper, butter, sage and a drizzle of oil, sauté everything until foamy.
Place the breasts obtained from the Germano selvatico skin-side down in the pan and cook over medium heat until golden, then turn them and cook for a few more minutes, then remove the breasts from the pan.
Then place everything on a plate, covering to prevent cooling.

Now pour the washed, dried and destemmed red currants into the pan, add the white stock, the orange juice and the wine over the currants and reduce the sauce by half. Now put the breasts back in the pan, raise the heat and after a moment add a shot of grappa, flambé and finish the sauce.
Serve by slicing the breasts diagonally and arranging them in a fan on a plate, then drizzle with the cooking sauce and the remaining currants.

It is a DOC red - 70% Cabernet Sauvignon - 15% Merlot - 15% Petit Verdot. From hand-harvested grapes, aged 14 months in French oak barriques and a further 10 months of bottle aging. It presents a beautiful ruby red color; on the nose it expresses notes of blackberry and wild berries in jam, sweet spices, dark chocolate and balsamic hints; on the palate it is soft and fresh with tannins well balanced by the alcohol content.

It is a full-bodied wine, interesting for its persistence and a final finish reminiscent of leather, wild blackberries and quinine notes.

It should be served at a temperature of 18/20°C in a long-stemmed, wide-bodied glass that best allows appreciation of this elegant oak-aged wine, which pairs very well with red meat dishes and feathered and furred game, roasts and meat sauces.

Two More Facts Worth Mentioning

Bolgheri is located on the central coast of Tuscany, among gentle cypress-covered hills with Mediterranean fragrances, a refuge for migratory birds and forests that extend to the sea. Here lies this natural garden of delights, rich in grapevines, olive trees and fruit trees that intoxicate taste, smell and sight; many consider it the Italian Bordeaux, certainly a territory of excellence for Italian winemaking that is creating extraordinary red wines to present to the world among the finest, giving rise to a style called Supertuscan.

It was here that in 1999, after graduating, Massimo Piccin decided to purchase an estate in Castagneto Carducci and begin this fascinating adventure of Podere Sapaio.
His philosophy of innovation and experimentation aims to seek new expressions of Bordeaux grape varieties in the Bolgheri territory in order to obtain elegant, long-lived and powerful wines
.