01x03 - The Caviar Dish

[bunniefuu]

(bright music)

(soft upbeat music)

- [Narrator] Welcome to "Sparklers".

Part cooking competition and travel show,

featuring some of the

world's best sparkling wines.

- [Woman] Each week the contestants

have specific ingredients they must use

to pair with a sparkling wine.

- [Man] There are

Challenges for each wine,

a perfect bite and a main dish.

Last week, Maryam won the

perfect bite challenge

and as judge declared

George and I the winner

of the main dish challenge.

- George and Kaner you are the winners.

- [All] Wow.

(all laughing)

- What?

- Dude I'm shocked.

- [Man] This week everyone

is on their own again,

pairing a perfect caviar bite

with Italian Franciacorta

from Ca' Del Bosco.

(upbeat music)

- [Man] The judge for today's

perfect by challenges,

Greg Bybee who's a wine

curator for Vivino,

the most used wine app in the world.

- Hey guys.

- [All] Hey.

- What's up man?

- Welcome to sparklers.

(all clapping)

Ca' Del Bosco episode.

My name is Greg Bybee, I

am Vivino's wine curator,

with over 50 million users and

trying to find wine for them.

So I drink a ton of wine

and I absolutely love Ca' Del Bosco,

so this challenge means a ton to me

and I also love caviar which

is the challenge today.

Your choices are smelt,

paddlefish, salmon row,

and up to five ingredients.

You're gonna prepare

a perfect bite for me,

and it has to pair

perfectly with this wine.

The winner of the perfect bite challenge,

not only gets to be the

judge, but also wins this.

- Oh, oh.

- A six liter of Ca' Del Bosco.

(woman laughing)

- Let's go.

- It's mine, it's mine.

- Comes in this beautiful

leather Italian bag,

and there's literally only a few

of these six liters in the world.

- [Man] Oh my God that's.

- I need that bag in my life.

- You can just give this to me now.

- Yeah, hands-off, hands-off.

It's still mine until one of you guys win.

(all laughing)

- Hey.

- All right who wants to open the wine

we're gonna be drinking and cooking today.

- Oh, I got that one.

- Let's do it.

- Oh yeah.

- So this one's been produced since 1989.

The property itself though was established

by Annamaria Clementi in the 60's, 1964.

Right?

- '64, fantastic.

- So this is a homage to the current owner

who got the property going

and pass it down as a legacy.

Really special, they've got the staple,

which you don't tend to see

unless you're in Franciacorta.

- Franciacorta State.

- So they've made their own opener called

a (speaking in foreign

language) staple opener.

(George laughing)

- [Maryam] That's really helpful.

- It's also not the

easiest thing, but ding.

- It comes right off.

And then you just, oh, and

then you just keep twisting.

- And then you go boop.

(soft music)

- [Narrator] Franciacorta is

the premium sparkling wine

coming out of Italy.

This is made using the traditional method

and Ca' Del Bosco is one

of the premium producers

of Franciacorta.

A lot of people think

if this is sparkling

wine coming out of Italy,

it's gonna be Prosecco.

Prosecco is very different

than Franciacorta

because it's using the

tank or charmat method.

- Ca' del Bosco is a dream

starting a lot of years ago,

I had the opportunity

to have a trip to France

when I was 16 to visit the best winery

in Burgundy and Champagne.

And this was there's more fire

that gave me the opportunity

to imagine what can be the

entire wine in another direction.

(soft music)

My lucky was also to be one of

the pioneers in Franciacorta

and starting in a

terroir that was unknown.

And these, there are unique characteristic

that is done by the fact

that we are so close

with the high mountains

and give us the opportunity

to have grapes that are fantastic

in order to do fermentation

and ferment twice.

One to get from juice to wine.

The second, wine to Franciacorta .

- [Narrator] This is a place

that's going to become the

premier sparkling wine region

of the world not just of Italy.

(all laughing)

- Let's do it, let's do it.

- Drink time.

That works.

- [Man] That's good.

- It's a special wine,

there's not a lot of this

brought to the United States.

So pinot noir, pinot

bianco and chardonnay so.

I think most is chardonnay about 50%.

- Yeah you can smell that really nice-

- Really, and I'm just like all right,

just like coming down.

- Can we cheers to our group of winners?

(champagne glasses clanking)

Hello?

(indistinct)

Oh, lots of cream on the nose.

- Lots of cream.

Yeah.

- Dude.

- What I love so much

about this, it's like an asset honestly.

- It's ripping and it's,

but it's still rich,

you know what I mean,

like they on the pallet.

- Yeah that texture-

- It's lifted

and it's precise.

- Right.

- But it does have

that nice kind of sexy

voluptuousness underneath.

- Yes, I feel like this

wine is really easily paired

with a lot of different things.

So you have your work cut out for you.

(woman laughing)

- What don't you like?

- What don't I like.

(all laughing)

I like everything really, except olives,

which anybody that would

pair olives with caviar?

(all laughing)

I don't think it's a challenge anyways so-

- You're fired.

- I'll leave you guys

to talk about the wine

and then figure out who's gonna go first.

- All right.

- I'll see you later.

- Bye-bye.

- [Man] Hey, who's going first.

- I'll do it, I'm down, I'm confident.

- [Woman] Kaner.

- I can make it happen.

- (laughs) Of course.

- I can jump on the story.

- Let's go, let's go, let's go.

- Later, see you.

- See you.

- No peeking.

(all laughing)

- Good luck.

- Good luck.

(champagne glasses clanking)

(soft music)

- I'm first to go today.

Now, I love caviar.

When I'm at home eating caviar,

though, it's pretty simple.

It's chips, creme fresh,

it's things you see here,

I'm gonna go a little different today.

I'm gonna start a simple on

chive, kind of dressed lettuce,

I'm gonna do a little bit

of celery on top for crunch,

and then I'm just gonna be really simple

and let the caviar speak for itself.

But I'm going because the wine

is so creamy and textured,

it's got great acid.

I want the wine itself to speak,

I don't want to mask it,

I don't wanna go spicy.

So for me right now, it's

all about having simplicity,

delicacy and let the wine shine.

Start with the paddlefish,

beautiful color.

Wow, salty.

Lingers, that's beautiful.

Salmon, bitter, expl*sive.

So lastly, I'm gonna taste the smelts,

this one's much more

fine grained, lighter,

crunchy, interesting.

All right, game time.

Let's do this.

So I'm gonna make this

lovely little dressing,

keep the acid from the

tomato, acid from the lemon,

a little bit of aromatic

lifts for my dressing,

for the endive or endive

however you want to say that.

And this is gonna be the base of my bites,

the crunches is what I really

want here, I want texture.

This bites all about texture for me.

I'm going to cook pretty

non-technical here,

I'm just gonna squeeze this tomato,

and then I'm just gonna

get as much of the juice

out of there as I can.

The acid in lemon is aggressive,

shows itself, and I want

this to show itself.

Now I'm just gently

gonna dress each of these

bottom layer of my bite.

Celery I'm gonna leave as is.

All right, time for caviar.

I like them all, it's hard to pick,

I'm gonna do all three.

(soft music)

Salmon row in the middle for the pop.

Lastly, for the crunch smelt.

First thing I want is texture.

For ingredients now, I'm

gonna get some smoked paprika

as my last ingredients.

Just a dollop on the

sides for a little smoke.

(dramatic music)

Judge.

- Hey man.

- How you doing Greg?

- I'm looking forward to this.

- Oh man, this is going to be awesome.

So I wanted to give you something

that would give a simplicity,

but also a kind of crunch to this wine.

You know, you get the

texture, you get aromatics,

you get salinity, you get acid.

- That's all right.

- Please enjoy.

- Thank you.

- Pleasure.

- Cheers.

- Cheers.

That is interesting.

(bright music)

Very good.

- Well.

- Cheers to you, once again, good luck.

- During the next four bites.

- Thank you I will.

- So I feel great about my pairing,

I wanted something simple

that could really complement the wine.

Hopefully the judge thought

the same, we'll see.

(soft upbeat music)

- All right, so, here's the thing.

At home I don't like

complicated, I like flavor.

And I earlier heard Greg say

he likes the acid in the wine,

so I really want to play up the acid

because I really wanna win.

You've got a lot here to work with,

luckily for me I don't have to

make the creme fresh by hand,

I'm probably gonna use a

little bit of creme fresh

because like I said, if I

want to play up the acid,

I actually want it to

dance really beautifully

with the dish, so I want

a little bit of cream.

The classic, you know,

caviar appearing with chips.

I do see something that I really like,

which is the lox, that

fattiness as well as the salt

could really play up the

acid and texture in the wine.

So I know I could use all

three of the caviar today

and I'm gonna have to taste through them.

And then I know I get up to

five additional ingredients,

so I'm gonna build as I go,

this is how I cook it home,

and this is how I want to cook for Greg,

this is how I wanna cook for the win.

So I'm actually going to start

with the paddlefish caviar.

Looks a lot like sturgeon

it's got really nice undertones as fish.

There's not a lot of pop in the texture,

so I already instinctually

think that I'm gonna go

and go with a little bit of that smelt

because I want that crunch later.

Other thing really quick

is I have two different

kinds of potato chips.

Traditionally though, we would

serve it on top of the chip.

I realized the chip is a beautiful

vessel for eating caviar,

but I don't want to go traditional,

I do want to use the chips though.

All right, here we go.

I made some decisions,

I need a sip of this to remind myself.

And so creme fraiche,

this is way more than

I'm planning on using.

We're gonna use these chips here.

And the application for

these chips is actually,

I'm gonna crunch them up

and create a little layer

of surprise crunch for Greg

so that when he takes a bite of it,

he is like, oh man, she uses the chips,

where'd she use the chips,

I can't find the chips,

but it tastes delicious.

That's my goal, cool.

For the sake of green and crunch,

I'm gonna use a tiny bit

of endive just to balance.

I don't need much, just like

a little vessel basically.

Next what I'm gonna do,

the lox on the bottom.

I could choose to put this in whole,

but I actually think what I want

is almost like a little composed

brunch style looking bite.

So I'm going for little strips,

and then I'm actually

probably gonna go back over

and make these really small cubes.

I can just hear George

in my ear right now,

that's what's happening.

George is actually standing over me,

in my right ear telling

me, come on, come on,

you've gotta go faster.

These are some really nice spring chives.

Again, I want this color

in the creme fraiche

So I'm not even gonna start too much.

We're gonna get that bite.

I'm actually just gonna

crush up the potato chip

and we're gonna use it

as basically the salt,

as well as the crunch of the dish.

She's starting to look real pretty though,

and I'm gonna do just a bit of this.

I love that it can look pretty,

but I'm not gonna sweat

over if it looks pretty

because if Greg tastes it and he's like,

oh my God, this is amazing,

he might not even remember

what it looked like

before he tried it so.

And then caviar doesn't

count as an ingredient,

I don't want the salmon caviar today,

I'm gonna use a little

bit of that paddlefish,

but I want to maintain

that really vibrant color

that I've built up, I want to use enough,

but we've got a lot of

fish component already,

and this paddlefish has a

fair amount of fish flavor.

So I'm really gonna go pretty light here,

all right, and now for

the creme de la creme,

I want that crunch, I think this wine,

it's just such a beautiful creamy acid

driven wine that it can

stand up to this crunch.

You guys, I want this leather bag so bad

I can't even tell you.

(dramatic music)

- Hey Maryam, how are you?

- Hey Greg, good.

- How did it go?

- Can I get you some more

wine before you taste?

- Yes, I do need even more.

- Okay.

- Great, I'm excited to

try some more caviar.

- Do you mind if I pour myself a splash?

- Yeah, go ahead.

- Kind of calm the nerves?

- I think you're gonna like this.

- It looks very

Presentation is quiet nice.

- Thank you, thank you.

- A lot of color here?

- Yeah, you eat with your eyes, you know?

- Yeah, that's true.

- Yeah.

And I'll let you taste it

before I tell you why I think, you know.

I just want your honest opinion.

- All right, let's do that.

- That was my favorite bite,

so I'm glad you chose that one.

That's a good sign.

- Oh, thank you, yeah.

(dramatic music)

- Got a head nod (indistinct).

- Very interesting.

- Okay, tell me your

notes, give me your notes.

- Not until later.

- Oh man.

- We'll see what happens, but good luck.

- Thanks Greg.

- [Both] Cheers.

- That guy plays a mean poker game,

he should definitely sit at the tables.

(soft music)

- So in Franciacorta

they use pinot bianco.

So I'm gonna try to do a play off

of the kind of citrusy and floral notes

in the pinot bianco,

see if that works out.

I just want a little bit of the aroma,

I don't necessarily want the flavor.

I also think it kind of sets

the spoon off from the plate,

if you add a little color behind it,

they do say you eat with your eyes,

so I'm hoping this actually works out.

So chives are a classic

pairing with caviar.

My big thing is caviar

is a perfect pairing

with sparkling wine.

So I don't want to cover any

of the flavors of the caviar.

I just wanna complement them.

So I'm gonna try to do

a couple of little notes

that enhance the caviar and pair well

with the sparkling wine,

but don't cover up any of the flavors.

I'm trying not to with

this nice sharp knife.

Everyone loves chips and caviar,

the saltiness and the

creaminess of the caviar

go so out with a sparkling wine

plus that makes for a nice clean bite.

I was like, just think about

first dates for first bites.

The last thing you want is

for it to be on your face

when you're trying to take one nice bite

and I love creme fraiche for this.

So I just like the

visual of the curly cues.

I think it's kind of fun.

It's just the shaking

that's slowing me down.

I don't, it's just my hands (laughs).

I'm not nervous, my hands are nervous.

I think it'd be fun to

have a little pop of spice,

also I still like playing

off the idea of the citrus

and the floral that's in the pinot bianco.

And I think it'll look really pretty.

All right, so I'm gonna go

with the paddlefish caviar,

I really liked the salt in this one.

I feel good.

Okay.

- [Greg] Hey Meg.

- Hi Greg, how are you?

- Wonderful, I'm having a great day.

- Do you mind

- I do.

- Okay.

- Just a little bit there.

Between you and Maryam

there's quite a presentation.

- Oh.

- Competition aside,

side competition going here.

- Note to self (laughs).

- Let's do it.

- Okay.

(dramatic music)

- That's a nice touch with the citrus.

Awesome, cheers.

- Cheers.

- That was phenomenal, that was good.

- Hope you liked it.

- I did, I did.

Well, good luck.

- Thank you (laughs).

- All right cheers (laughs).

- As a poker player (laughs).

(soft music)

- I'm gonna do something pretty simple.

Croissant, crisp it up a little bit,

do a little beurre blanc.

First, let's do a little

bit of Vino 'cause why not.

In French, beurre blanc

is literally white butter.

But beurre blanc sauce

is typically has butter,

a little bit of wine.

So you reduce the wine just a little bit,

and then do you want to add

a touch of some butter at the end?

So technically this is three

ingredients out of five

and then probably a little

bit of chive at the end.

Paddlefish is what I'm gonna use,

and it's already salty honestly.

So I don't think I'll

need to add any salt,

a little bit of butter, nothing crazy.

Just enough to get like

a really nice toast

on the croissant.

There it is, oh yeah.

That's pretty hot (laughs).

Exactly where I want it.

Yeah.

Nice, just put a Little bit

of butter in there, I'm crazy.

Stir around, there you go, Oh yeah.

This is really happy right now.

Oh, it's perfect color,

let's go, let's go,

that's it, the color.

(dramatic music)

So you know what,

I'm trying to think if there's anything

that I might, ah, you know what,

there is something that I did forget.

I was gonna use the lemon, but you know,

there's a lot of acid,

which I really like in this as wine.

That's absolutely

brilliant, really nice acid,

so I don't think that I'll

actually need the lemon.

Beurre blanc is looking nice,

and I know what I'm gonna put in it

to a slight little touch of creme fraiche.

(soft upbeat music)

As long as I beat Maryam

I'll be fine (laughs).

I think that's it.

(dramatic music)

- Hey George.

- Hey, how are you man?

- How's it going?

- Good.

- Good, good.

What do we have here?

- You know, I tried to do

something very simple, honestly.

- All right.

So just the paddlefish, right?

Correct, correct, yeah.

- Let's see what we got

here, sweet, thank you.

(dramatic music)

Well done, for real.

- Wow.

- Brings out the wine and-

- Wow.

- Interesting use of the

croissant that's cool.

Let's see how it plays out a little later.

- Thank you man, I hope so.

- All right good luck.

- Cheers.

- Cheers man.

- Thank you (laughs).

I think that I was able

to do what I had in mind

and what I envisioned

and I hope that Greg

likes it a lot (laughs).

(soft music)

- Alrighty, we saved the best for last.

I am going to do something that

I think is a pretty simple,

pretty classic.

I love this beautiful,

beautiful Franciacorta,

it is elegant, it is sexy,

and I think it deserves a little bite

that's similar to that.

I don't really want to do this now

because they're delicious,

but they're these tiny little like pops

and they get stuck your

teeth ad I don't know,

that annoys me.

So I'm gonna do, I'm going

to put this on a potato chip

with some creme fresh chive.

And I might actually

use this mustard flower

because they're so pretty

and I'll just give it this

little pop of sweetness.

So now I have to decide on my chip.

I don't want to do Fritos

because there are a lot,

that's a lot of flavor going on

and it's gonna overpower everything.

It's a nice classic chip (laughs.)

Dissecting the different

kinds of potato chips

are there potato chips sommeliers?

'cause I feel like I could do that.

So I'm gonna do this potato chip,

I also like that it's a little cleaner,

a little more elegant.

We'll do the creme fraiche next.

So we take a nice dollop of this guy.

I don't love this chip,

can I have like the perfect

chip please brought in.

When something so simple like this,

the presentation is everything people.

You know do that make a nice

little base for my caviar

that's gonna go on there.

Now we're gonna do the

beautiful paddlefish caviar.

Again, I don't want to do too much

'cause I don't want this to just be like

a blast of salt for Greg.

I'm gonna use a different finger

than the one I licked as well.

So don't you worry, Greg?

We're not gonna get to know each other.

I'm going very straight forward,

I just, I like classic,

especially with a classic Franciacorta.

So let's do that guy and

then it's gonna be like that.

And then give it that

little kiss of sweetness,

just can place the guy right there.

I mean, how pretty is that?

I think it looks great,

I think it tastes classic

and I'm really, really hoping

that Greg loves this enough

to give me that fancy bag

with the beautiful six liter

of Ca' Del Bosco, we'll see.

- Hey Claire.

- Hi Greg (laughs)

- How did we do here?

- I think, well, but you were the judge.

- That's true.

- Yeah.

- Looks very pretty.

- Thank you, I think when you

have beautiful luxury items,

if you will such as caviar,

you want them to shine.

So I think simple is best,

as long as you have really

fresh, beautiful ingredients,

I hope you like it.

- Yes right.

Which one?

Any

- Whichever one you want-

- Right, (crosstalk).

- Yeah.

- Take from chip.

- Perfect.

- Cheers, enjoy.

- Cheers.

(champagne glasses clanking)

- He's got a really good poker face.

- Simple with caviar is always

the best route in my opinion.

So, it was good, well done.

- Thanks Greg.

- See you a little bit

later and good luck.

- Okay, thank you, I

appreciate it (laughs).

- I think it came together nicely,

like what I had in my head

is pretty much what's in front of me.

So yeah, I stand by it.

(soft music)

- Oh, they put it on the table.

- Oh my God.

- Oh there they are.

- This is it.

(crosstalk)

- They all look so pretty..

- Which ones mine?

(crosstalk)

- [Woman] You don't

know which one is yours?

- That looks really good.

- Thanks.

- Can I eat it?

Can I eat it right now?

- So wait, let's go

No.

- No, yeah.

- Actually I don't know.

- Someone's hungry.

- I really am.

Oh my God, you are absolutely amazing.

- Enjoy, I hope you like it.

- [Woman] Bon appetite.

- Oh my God.

(woman laughing)

- It's just it's classic,

like it's not like I know

I think you guys are much more creative

with your dishes, but-

- That's so good.

- I was not really-

- There he is, oh God.

(all clapping)

- Hello everyone?

- Hey.

- Well that was delight

from top to bottom.

There were definitely two

dishes that rose to the top,

you all worked so hard on this.

So I'm just gonna run

through some things here,

starting from the top.

Matthew, I love the dish,

it was bold, very bold.

Okay, that was creative.

- [Matthew] Thank you.

- The celery kind of putting

There was too much celery

where I push it over the top.

- Sure.

- But I love the last minute

out of the smoked paprika.

- Maryam, outstanding dish,

it was very well done.

You know, as a caviar lover though,

you know, I want more caviar.

Meg also just a touch more citrus,

a wonderful dish as well, very pretty.

And George, you had this moment

where you're considering adding

a little lemon zest, right?

I think that would have

really helped that dish

really creative with the

beurre blanc and the croissant,

and it was absolutely delicious.

And then Claire.

- [Claire] Yeah.

- [Greg] Also a beautiful dish,

just a little bit too much creme fraiche.

- Damn it.

- Otherwise we'd be-

- [Man] Too fraiche.

- [Greg] Yeah, too fraiche, too clean.

So with that, second place goes to..

(dramatic music)

Maryam

(all clapping)

This really was

Your dish really paired

well with the Franciacorta

and the Ca' Del Bosco

but really well done,

and I wrote in here, I wish, you know,

if you can make it into

a sandwich or something,

it would be crazy.

(George laughing)

- You should think about it.

- All right.

- Like do like a sandwich food

cart of like caviar sandwich,

I don't know how it work but-

- Okay.

- I'll leave that to you.

So the winner and to

all the glory goes to

Meg

(all clapping)

- That's very exciting (laughs).

- [George] Awesome, congrats.

- Oh my goodness.

- What really got me on

this dish and elevated

was the precise use of the caviar,

and took it up an extra notch

where the caviar actually pushed

the finish of the wine

out like 30 seconds.

I was sitting here, you

know, writing my notes,

I'm like, holy crap.

The caviar is punching this wine

through a much longer elongated finish.

Really well done, I was

actually shocked by that,

At that end of that so-

- Thank you so much,

I appreciate it, thank you.

Everyone has to come to my house.

- Yes.

(all laughing)

- We will open this together.

- We will definitely be

there for sure (laughs).

- Yeah.

- Cheers.

(champagne glasses clanking)

- Congratulations.

- Well deserved.

- Very fun.

- Thank you.

Thank you Greg (laughs).

- Good luck on the rest

of your endeavor here

and I hope to see you guys again soon.

- Okay.

- All right.

- Awesome.

- [All] Thank you Greg.

- Greg bye-bye.

- All right, now can I eat it?

(George laughing)

- (laughing) I'm really excited,

I was definitely not

expecting to win this.

This is fricking awesome, I'm

going to have a massive party,

everyone get your vaccines (laughing).

So because I'm the judge,

Maryam I'm pretty sure

that means you have to pick

who you're gonna cook with.

- I think I gotta go with

my buddy Kaner on this one.

- Let's do this.

- And let's do this.

(crosstalk)

- Goodluck.

- So now I have to be the judge.

Both teams have tons of energy

and they both like competition.

So it's going to be really

fun to see what they pull off.

I think it's gonna be close,

it's gonna be hard to judge.

(soft music)

I know there's a rivalry

going on between teams,

- Y'all find me a crew, we're ground crew.

- The components of this classic dish

can be very challenging

to pair wines with.

I think that little zing of acidity

will just kind of like

cut through all that fat.

In this dish, the egg is the

most challenging component.

There's so much feathered

egg white in those.

- Very nervous about that.

- I'ma go and circle around.

- The winner of the Ca'

Del Bosco episode is.

(upbeat music)