Brunch is a surprisingly great time to try out new food and wine pairings.  The old reliable for us is champagne or cava or a tasty northwest sparkling wine, but a lot of different crisp wines would do the trick with the usual breakfast egg, potatoe, bacon, sausage, and caserole type dishes.

Last month, Nick covered the benifits of pairing bivalves with sparkling wine with some amazing background on why sparkling wine goes with just about everything.  I agree.

A couple weeks ago, Liz and I, surprisingly found ourselves with a half bottle of left over sparkling wine following a celebratory dinner at home.  We have a favorite recipe for latkes that we like to make on weekend mornings at home (see below). I recommend poaching an egg, frying your favorite pork breakfast product, and dialing up a bottle of sparkling wine for the perfect weekend morning.

Latkes are essentially potatoe pancakes, and this recipe is inspired by one from Kurt Dammeier’s Pure Flavor cookbook.

Take a couple pounds of your favorite pototoes and grate them.  Mix the potatoes with a pinch of salt and a couple squeezes of fresh lime.  Allow this to sit for five minutes before wringing out as much liquid from the potatoes as possible.  I’ve also used a lettuce spinner to remove the excess water from the potatoes.

Combine the slighly dried potatoes grates with two eggs, a diced green onion, a diced shallot, a handful of chopped italian parsley, a sprinkle of smoked paprika, and a generous amount of freshly ground pepper. Shake into patties and pan fry in an even mixture of olive oil and butter for 3-4 minutes per side until golden brown.

Some additional sparkling wine recommendations:

• Argyle Winery makes a broad selection of nonvintage and vintage sparkling wines from the Williamette Valley. All are very good.
• Karma Vineyards Methode Champenoise is excellent and the best Washington State sparkling wine we have enjoyed.
• Mark’s favorite up and coming champagne, Henriot, is excellent.