A Note On Yellow Plums

I forgot to mention this when I first discovered it, but I find it so interesting that I will share it with you now: yellow plums go fantastically well with champagne. I should mention that I am very interested in the way that alcohol pairs with food. I love that drinking a certain wine with a specific dinner can actually emphasize the flavors of what you are eating. While I have certainly heard about this, I can't say I've ever had a chance to really taste it for myself since I generally can't afford to go to a restaurant and ask for the wine pairings to go with all of my courses. Sad! However, I did get to experience this totally by accident one evening last year.

It was last fall and cold and rainy. I got back home from class and decided that I really wanted a grilled-cheese-and-tomato sandwich. I only recently discovered how wonderful grilled-cheese-and-tomato can be (the key is great bread and fabulous cheese), thanks to Vault, and decided to attempt to recreate it. I prefer sourdough bread for grilled-cheeses and I butter one side of each and stick it in the pan, add the cheese and tomato, and flip the sandwich when the cheese starts melting and the bread is crunchy. Easy, easy, I know. Here is my point: Trader Joe's caramelized onion cheddar cheese. Man oh man that stuff is amazing. It's fantastic no matter what, but it's especially great with tomatoes. To make things even better, I happened to have grabbed a 6-pack of Drop Top Amber. GUESS WHAT?! It goes perfectly with that grilled-cheese. It was awesome. I took a bite of my sandwich and washed it down with a sip of beer. Everything suddenly tasted better! Anyway this was pretty exciting, but I digress:

As I was eating that plum cake I made a while ago, I decided to have a slice for dessert. I happen to love champagne, and, in order to avoid drinking a whole bottle in a night or risk it going flat, I buy those mini bottles of cooks every once in a while. The same thing happened as it did with the beer and grilled-cheese! Everything suddenly tasted better! That was my exciting discovery.

I should also point out that champagne really doesn't go with strawberries and chocolate (sadly), because the strawberries and chocolate are just too sweet and they bring out the tartness in the champagne too much. If you want strawberries in champagne, try putting sliced strawberries into mimosas. That's ideal.