It’s a great time for salmon if you have access to copper river, it has the fat content to stand up to Cab or Merlot based wines and stand up to the acidity. Great with a side of mixed sauteed mushrooms or a portabella mushroom cap, that acts like a steak for meatiness.
I eat primarily plant-based meals, with some occasional fish, and I love red wine.
There are some great suggestions above, but to add another if you are someone who feels you really need to have meat with a meal, and you want to please a plant-based friend: the new meat substitutes from Beyond Meat are pretty amazing.
The burgers and sausages are nearly (I said nearly) indistinguishable from real meat (I have seen taste tests on morning TV shows where the hosts can’t tell them apart). This week, Beyond is also coming out with a “ground beef” product, which would work very well in a shepherds pie, or other ground-meat based recipe. (This is not the hockey-puck veggie burgers of the past.)
Only once have I had fish which really worked with red wine. Other times, it has been a compromise, but last year, I had a smoked sable with a reduced wine sauce that went unbelievably well with a pair of Burgundies.
If the one I used in the beginning had been useful, I’d include it here. Alas…
I never write, and rarely use, recipes, but let me give this a shot. It’s vague and assumes a lot of cooking skill, but it should give you an idea.
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Cook the beans to 65-75% doneness and then recook to infuse them with flavor (e.g. garlic, especially roasted — a 1/1 ratio with the beans isn’t a terrible idea — plus the usual aromatics) and fat (in this case it’s going to have to be butter in lieu of the more traditional animal fats). Rosemary and thyme need to play a very, very heavy role in this flavor-infusion step. Flavoring the beans, rather than just adding stuff to them in the aftermath, is the key to great cassoulet, and the step that most versions get wrong. Smoked chiles work here, but you don’t want them in the finished dish.
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Set aside, cool, skim off the unwanteds.
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If you can smoke/grill ingredients, do it while the beans are cooking. Being able to making a smoky vegetarian stock (grilled corn/cobs/leeks/etc.) helps. Being able to grill or smoke other things — potatoes, corn, peeled eggplant, carrots, mushrooms — is also a benefit. The vegetarian stock has to have an incredible amount of flavor to it, but it can’t be sweet. Sweetness is the downfall of vegetarian stock, and it’s all too easy to achieve. Carrots and most non-potato roots cause sweetness. Be careful using them.
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Add even more garlic to the beans…more aromatics in general…and then start to add your ingredients. Unlike regular cassoulet, there’s a good reason to add in stages and stir; no mushroom in the world will stand up to hours upon hours of cooking without getting mushy. Texture is actually important here; regular cassoulet has built-in textural counterpoints, but vegetarian doesn’t. The beans shouldn’t be mushy, but they’re going to be mushy-adjacent. They can’t be paired with vegetables, roots, and fungi that are similarly mushy. So make full use of pre-cooking, searing, and adding in stages. As for what to add? I think cubed potatoes (crisped but not fully cooked before they hit the beans), sturdy mushrooms both with a strong identity and without (though this is no place for expensive wild-foraged stuff…if you want those, add them as a garnish at the end), caramelized carrots, grilled eggplant, measurable chunks of leek whites, and unpeeled or unpeeled/roasted bell peppers. Keep the latter large. It sounds odd, I know, but think: the pyrazines in peppers are perfect for Bordeaux, especially if it’s not goopy and modern. This is also where you gradually add all your flavor-cheaters, like smoked salt or soy or whatever else. Keep tasting.
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Bake (covered and then uncovered) in a stock bath until everything’s done, adding/stirring in stages as necessary. You don’t want to dry it out, but you don’t want soup, either.
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Breadcrumbs on the top, which a million cassoulet recipes will show you how to do.
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Because you’ve now created an ugly brown glop without the contrapuntal beauty of duck meat inching off the bone, garnish. Parsley, other herbs, better mushrooms, etc.
I was thinking the same (though I usually pair salmon with pinot) - particularly a couple or preparations that I’ve had that serve the salmon on a bed of lentils. That makes for a very earthy dish which I like with aged bords.
This is deviation, as this won’t go well with nice Bordeaux. But one can make killer veggie tacos with the fake meat. Take the crumbles, add in some black beans and mash them in, a little cheese (for texture more than flavor), tomato paste, sauteed onions, finely mined jalapeno, and taco seasoning… it will look, smell and taste like seasoned ground beef. My mother-in-law is strict vegan and she refused to eat it! “looks and smells like meat” she said! ![[rofl.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7452fcd8e675af869f8da01174474a545b03944.gif "rofl"){kind=small}
But now that I think about it, it should be possible to make truffled mushroom/fake meat shepherds pie or something today. If you have something to ‘cut’ the fake meat with, and its surrounded by other items (the tacos obviously have pico, crunchy shells, lettuce, guacamole, salsas as well)… I think a few folks can get fooled. Why not even spaghetti bolognese this way? or beef wellington with ground ‘beef’?
When fake meat crumbles come out that are gluten free (I think beyonds will be?), I will experiment more.
Lots of great responses so far. We make a fisherman’s stew in a red broth with fish, clams scallops etc. Has a sort of Portuguese influence I suppose, and it is smashing with reds
If you don’t mind a few carbs, a spectacular match is acorn squash stuffed with a wild mushroom (we use crimini and shiitake), breadcrumb, parmigiano (not much) filling. Include a few pats of butter so it’s rich, moist and delicious.
Regards,
Peter
Living in the PNW we get some unusually fatty salmon, in a good way, many times the fish crushes Pinot, but the fat works well with more tannic wines like Cab and especially ones with acidity like BDX.
Wow thanks! This gives me more than enough to go on! Though I think I might use more garlic. 
I find that many/most red wine and fish pairings produce a metallic taste. Anyone else experience this?
That’s gonna be a very effective recipe for death by starvation.
Where the hell are you gonna get your calories from?
Guacamole?
Yup, and it really brings out the fishiness of the fish as well (if you get what I mean)
Sounds delicious! Can you share the recipe?
Tuna crusted with mushroom dust and a mildly oriental red wine reduction (hoisin black bean etc but keep a light touch) (Terrific Pinot match but would be ok with aged Bdx, not immature)
Monkfish with simple red wine reduction.
Why am I thinking of wild strawberries?
Exactly. The people suggesting seafood must be quite insensitive to that effect, but for many of us, it is just not a good pairing. Plus there are so many great vegetarian options.
That too. Both the wine and the food taste worse, which is really unusual.