Finding the right food to go with the right wine for my Happy Together column is fun work; but it does take a lot of cooking and taste-testing. Often, it take several tries before I finally find something worth sharing with our readers. Thought you might enjoy seeing behind the scenes of my pairing circus…

Since it’s such a big job to prepare and test, I usually do three wines at a time; sometimes I find matches for all three. Sometimes not.  Last night I cooked up dress-down versions of three dishes I thought might work. The prettiest dish — the wine-poached salmon — wasn’t a win. It just didn’t work with the wine. The wine will have to find a better friend.

The best news is that I found one that did work. Even though my sauce separated (as you can see,) the flavors in this dish were exactly right for the wine. I’ll tweak the recipe and try to get a decent shot… look for the dolled up version of this one in an upcoming Happy Together.