Sparklers (2021) s01e03 Episode Script

1
(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, explosive.
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)