Your go-to snack.

There are times when I want a glass or two (or three) of some red, but the wine needs a little food. I don’t want a meal, just something to nibble on. I always feel cheese is too hit-or-miss with reds, and I also realize it’s really hard to generalize with the entire spectrum of red wines, but is there a snack that you can always default to while having some wine?

Cheese… cheese is good and can be great. I also love to throw together some roasted veggies in olive oil- peppers, tomatoes, asparagus, etc… I also have a place in denver that makes this amazing baba ganouj that goes fantastic with some homemade garlic naan.

Baba ganouj and wine? Hm never even crossed my mind. Sounds interesting.

If you want to stay relatively neutral in flavor to accompany the wine, I would go pretzel chips, no hummus, no salsa, but with labneh. Very flavor neutral. Or a nice steak seasoned with salt and pepper and cut into slices. A nice pate but most charcuterie is going to require more pairing.

harder cheeses without excessively strong flavour such as gruyere can be very good indeed with wine.

I’d definitely recommend making grissini, as it allows you to have a little play with additional ingredients, especially herbs, and is the sort of thing you can chomp through quite easily without getting in the way of the wine, or feeling too guilty afterwards, but perhaps most of all it like being a child again rolling the ‘snakes’ out almost exactly as with the plasticine of my youth. Very therapeutic.

My go to for a quickie is green olives and cheese.
I have pigs in a blanket as well as spinach in phyllo dough ( Spanakopita) in the freezer. Ready in 13 minutes.
Both from Costco.

A little Manchego on Triscuit thins.

This is a fun question.

Olives and charcuterie came to mind first, with olive oil and nice bread to dip.

I look forward to the other answers!

We can pretty quickly Cuisinart some tomatoes with olive oil and rub that on thin toasted baguette with some salt (or anchovies.) 5-6 minutes from “Would you like?” to “Here you are!”

olives, Taleggio, & salami

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My homemade deer sausage

Duck or pork rillettes with crackers. Easy and goes well with just about any red. If I’m inspired I’ll throw in some aged cheese as well.

Popcorn

Think pureed eggplant, in this case a little strong on the eggplant side with some flatbread & garlic. I like it with zin.

I had completely forgotten about frozen snacks… what was I thinking. Good call.

With red, or chardonnay?

If I have no time to pick anything up, I’ll usually go with either marcona almonds or walnuts (depending on the wine), and one of my fruit accompaniments like black cherry, black currant, pinot cherries, or some such. I usually have those on hand i the back of the fridge.

harder cheeses without excessively strong flavour such as gruyere can be very good indeed with wine.

I agree. It’s what I’m having now.

But if I could, I’d go for Kevin’s deer sausage. Perfect!

Thin sliced ciabatta, aged ham and cheddar toasted with hot peppers and savory spices does the trick. Or in a pinch just toasted como with sharp cheddar and pepper. [cheers.gif]

I practically never snack. Dinner or something that goes solo.

Seriously? That’s discipline. Here, most of the time the snack just replaces the dinner.