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CURRIED TURKEY ON THE GRILL

1 lb turkey breasts                         ¼ vegetable oil

4 tbsp lime juice or ½ tsp               2 tbsp minced onion

grated lime rind                              2 tsp curry powder

1 tsp minced garlic                         ¼ tsp ground cumin

1/8 tsp ground cinnamon                ½ tsp pepper

In a medium size bowl, combine all ingredients except turkey and mix well.  Place turkey breasts on large platter and marinade with curried mixture. Refrigerate 2 hours turning breasts once or twice.

Grill on high heat 7-8 minutes per side. 

Comment:

I am not a big curry fan.  My first reaction to picking a wine to go with this dish was that a nice cold beer would go well.  But I got over that and started trying to figure out what might work here.

Some things were obvious.  This isn't the meal you pour that delicate, exquisite wine you've been carefully saving for just the right time.  The tastes of a curry like this will overpower all those taste nuances and you will miss what makes that wine fine.

Moving on past that, the tastes in a curry just aren't going to well with the the tastes of certain types of wine.  One of those will be the taste of tannins, so forget the big, bold California Cabernet Sauvignon, the French Bordeaux, the claret.  Tannins are what help those red wines age so well, but they won't help here.

Another potential problem will come from heavily oaked wines.  Many wines are aged in oak barrels for different  periods, but what I am really referring to here is that big mouth-filling, buttery toasted-oak taste that became so popular in California Chardonnays.  The more of that there is in a white wine, the less it will work with the curry.

So, what to have? If you prefer a white, I'd select something a bit spicy.  California has a number of Gewurtztraminers, and I have often found Fetzer's Echo Ridge Gewurtztraminer to my liking.

If you prefer a red, I would think of lighter, fruitier reds like beaujolais-style wines.  That said, I think that our Wine of the Month, the Tomasello Winery 2001 Chambourcin, would be an excellent choice.

 Last modified: August 07, 2007