A few years back now I used to enjoy stopping over at at Canadian friend's tiny run-down apartment in Yokohama. We'd stop off at the su-pa- to get some beers and a bottle or two of French wine and drink until the small hours of the morning, listening to North Korean organ music on the radio, and getting through a few topics like the Russian language and four wheel drifting on ice. My getting my greasy fried chicken hands all over one of his immaculate copies of Car Magazine sparked a discussion on all food being good if fried. This led to the laughable idea of fried wine. My regular blog reads have been abuzz with things about food and health so I've been inspired to turn a 2am dream into reality
Theory
If deep fried ice-cream can work, then so can this. I'd turn wine into jelly (the gelatinous jesus) and then cover it with batter and fry it. It was wine with beer batter, then it was beer with beer batter (which made more sense but wasn't "the dream"), and then I thought that instead of beer for fizziness, I could use champagne.
Jelly
I'd made jellied treats before but never with Agar-Agar . Agar Agar is used in Asian food and,as it's a seaweed, by vegetarians.
Used two cups of dry red wine, 6 tablespons of Agar Agar
Brought the wine to a boil, and then put in the agar agar and let it simmer for 20 minutes and then strained (clean the strainer quickly as it sets). Put the wine in the fridge to chill. It's incredibly strong, I remember waiting for jelly to set as a kid, but this was set as soon as it reached fridge temperatures.
Intermission
Went off to Chuntney Mary's Indian Restaurant on the corner of Hay and Rokeby. We were actually on the corner, outside – Subiaco was heaving, it seemed to be half price drinks night for jailbait. Food was great again – go the goat. Brought friends back to share in the experiment.
Batter
Just one egg, SR flour and a half bottle of champagne lightly beaten.
Cooking
Used corn oil for frying and brought it up to 180c. Process was quite simple, a teaspoon of wine jelly dipped in the batter and the fried until golden. Well recommended to have a lid handy, any contact by the jelly with the oil sets of a shower of hot oil.
Practice
Disappointing but promising, the batter was great but the dry red was just too harsh. Under the guidance of a Doctor and an Engineer, I reduced the quantity of jelly, and added two or three tablespoon of caster sugar to the batter. This helped a little but the wine was still the problem – something gentler perhaps.
Possibilities
I've heard dusting helps the batter stick, I could dust with icing sugar to increase the sweetness. Breadcrumbs might bulk up the batter and make it a greater proportion of the flavour. I could add sugar to the wine but that'd make it more like a wine gum. Bitter chocolate sauce?
Daniel McNeil – thumbprints sorry.