Recommendations
Prawns in garlic oil with Delaforce White Port
On the plate are gambas fresh from the pan, glossy with olive oil and scattered with fried garlic and chilli flakes. Set against them, the port is a chilled glass with residual sugar, which softens the salt and lifts the oil from the tongue.
From the shelf
The bottle
Delaforce is a port house from the Douro and this is the white port from the standard range. White port is made like all port in the demarcated Douro region: fermentation of the must is stopped by adding grape spirit, so residual sugar remains and the wine ends up high in alcohol. This bottle is 20 percent alcohol and comes in 75 centilitres. The house makes it mainly from Malvasia Fina and Rabigato, two white Douro grapes. The Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto gives a serving temperature of 6 to 10 degrees for white port.
The combination
Why this works together
Prawns from the garlic oil bring three things: salt, fat and the sharpness of chilli. Sweet and salty are not equal partners in the mouth. In the taste study by Green and colleagues from 2010, sucrose proved the strongest suppressor of the other basic tastes, and the perception of salt in a mixture was rated well over eighty percent lower. In practice, the residual sugar of this white port does the same, so the salt arrives less harshly and the chilli loses some of its sting. In addition, the port is served cold, and a cold sip lifts the olive oil off the tongue, so the next prawn starts clean again. The weight is right too: a small, fatty, salty bite needs a glass beside it that is full enough to stand its ground.
At the table
The dish
- For 4 people
- Ready in 20 minutes
- Type starter
What you need
- 45 ml olive oil
- 4 cloves of garlic, in thin slices
- 450 g raw king prawns, peeled and deveined
- 3 teaspoons chilli flakes
- 1.5 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
- salt
- bread to serve alongside
How to make it
- Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over medium-high to high heat. Add the garlic and fry it for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring occasionally, until golden.
- Add the prawns to the pan and fry them for 3 minutes.
- Turn the prawns over. Season them with the chilli flakes and salt, toss them and fry for another 3 to 4 minutes, until they are firm and pink. Stir in the parsley.
- Spoon the prawns with the pan juices into a dish, sprinkle them with salt and serve bread with them to soak up the oil.
In the glass
Serving
Serve this white port at 6 to 10 degrees; an hour in the fridge is enough, or twenty minutes in a bucket of water and ice. Use a tulip-shaped glass that narrows slightly towards the top and do not fill it beyond a third, so that the aroma stays in the glass. Decanting is not necessary. According to the institute, an opened bottle of white port in the modern, lighter style stays good for eight to ten days; for the traditional, heavier style it is fifteen to twenty days. In between, put the bottle in the fridge with the cork in.
Everything about Delaforce White PortBack to Recommendations from ’t Bockje
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