'Simple' matches

Great Tastes Made Simple is full of suggestions for especially good food and wine match-ups. Here are just a few:

• Heirloom tomatoes and fresh goat cheese with Geyser Peak sauvignon blanc or BV Coastal zinfandel.

• Steamed artichokes with Austrian Gruner Veltliner or a French rose.

• Roasted poultry with U.S. sparkling brut wine, such as Domain Chandon, Iron Horse or Domaine Carneros.

• Hot brown sandwich with an Oregon pinot noir, such as Cristom, Ponzi or Adelsheim.

• Salade nicoise with French Beaujolais-Villages or Beaujolais Cru.

• Spanish Manchego cheese with almost anything: champagne, chardonnay, cabernet or sherry.

• Dark chocolate desserts with muscat or Recioto.

Q&A

Question: What's the difference between corned beef and pastrami?

Answer: Corned beef is brined beef, usually a brisket. It's cured by soaking in a salt solution with spices: essentially, it's pickled.

Pastrami is meat that's been dry-cured with salt and seasoning, then smoked, then steamed. It's usually beef, but according to Jewish Cooking in America by Joan Nathan, the original pastrami in this country, brought by Romanian immigrants, was made of goose.

Required reading

It's popular these days to say that there are no more rules about matching food and wine. That may be true, in the sense that you no longer need to fear a terrible faux pas if you simply order the wine you like to drink with the food you like to eat. But there are many principles to matching wine and food that can yield wonderful flavor experiences.

In Great Tastes Made Simple (Broadway Books; $27.50), Andrea Immer emphasizes fundamental tastes - earthy, rich, buttery and sweet - and shows how they work in both food and in wine. She has a number of food-tasting exercises to try (popcorn with chardonnay) to help you understand how the combinations work. She also includes specific suggestions for wines to try with specific dishes and some recipes for especially wine-friendly food.

Immer is a master sommelier, wine columnist for Esquire and former beverage director for Windows on the World in New York, destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

What's for lunch?

Leading up to St. Patrick's Day Monday, you may find yourself eating inferior corned beef, probably boiled with cabbage. Let me recommend a different corned beef experience: Tropicana at Newport on the Levee is open for lunch. The centerpiece of the daytime menu is deli sandwiches, including pastrami on rye, corned beef on rye and a classic Reuben.

The meat comes from the Carnegie Deli in New York, where they still make their own. The corned beef is cut thinly enough to pile up, but thickly enough so it doesn't fall into shreds. It's fatty enough to be moist, with a texture that's both melting and chewy. The bread is a good thick, slightly chewy rye with an almost crisp crust, thick enough to hold up to sauerkraut.

There's not too much sauerkraut, dressing or cheese - it's more like a corned beef sandwich with garnish. It's big but not huge, and comes with a crock of pickles and pickled green tomatoes, also from Carnegie Deli; add thinly shredded cabbage, carrot slaw and mustard as you wish.

The pastrami is equally good, with a slight smoky taste. Just as at the Carnegie, sandwiches are named for people, all figures from Newport's colorful past.

I indulged in the thick, cheesy cheesecake served at the Tristate restaurants owned by Jeff Ruby. It's been awhile since I had enough room after a meal at a Ruby restaurant to have a slice.

Red "The Enforcer" Masterson Reuben: $10.75.

Tropicana serves lunch 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Friday: 1 Levee Way, Newport, (859) 491-8900