This was an off week being that Passover is fast approaching.  As is the tradition with Passover, one is meant to burn his/her chametz, prior to Passover commencing.  So, one of the aspects of cleaning is, cleaning out the freezer of food that is not packaged in a complete and untouched manner.  In other words, we need to empty our lives of fresh or frozen food that came into contact with bread, while the dry or non-perishable foods can be stored away till after Passover.  One of the things we found in one of our most recent freezer dives was some boneless chicken breasts that were out of their original housing.  So, it was time to consume it.  That said, we are not big fans of boneless chicken breast, as we have never done a great job with it.  So, I went looking around for a fool proof recipe, and found one that looked good to me.  I loved the intense aromas and flavors that emanate from the Asian five spice.  I marinated the sliced up chicken breast in the mix and soy sauce for 20 or so minutes, and then proceeded to brown them.  I did cook them for longer than 5 minutes, but they were a bit pink inside still, which was fine as I was going to eat it the next night, after a reheating.

To pair with this fun recipe and some fresh green salad, I chose a wine that could handle the heat.  I went for the 2006 Yarden Gewurztraminer, which turned out not be an overly complex wine, but one that had lots of nice components and characteristics that worked great with the spicy and hot Asian dish.

The wine note follows below:

2006 Yarden Gewurztraminer – Score: B++
The nose on the gold colored wine starts off dead and almost like kerosene.  Thankfully, that blew rather quickly, and came alive with peach, grapefruit, heat, apricots, jasmine and other floral notes, and spice.  The mouth on this medium to full bodied not overly sweet wine has peach, lychee, grapefruit, along with a rich perfumed mouth.  This may not be an overly complex, concentrated, or structured wine, but what it is, is a fun and enjoyable wine that matched up well against our Asian Chicken Stir-Fry dish.  The mid palate was balanced with acid, jasmine, and honey.  The finish was long and luscious, with spice, a bed of jasmine, a jug of honey, and a basket of grapefruit and lychee.