Late Night Snacks ideas to go with wine/scotch?

DH and I like to catch up on our DVRed shows and movies at night after the kids go to bed. Many nights, we’ll have a glass of wine (or two) or some good scotch. Of course, we need some nibbles to go with our drinks. :smile: :wine_glass:

Besides our usual cheese and crackers or spiced nuts, what are some other ideas for things to munch with our drinks? I’m not looking at turning the oven on at 10pm to bake something, or something that will take me 30 minutes to assemble right before eating. I’m looking for easy things I can throw together in a few minutes, or something I can make over the weekend and store in an airtight container for a few days.

TIA!

Cohiba

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Requires some pre-work, but how about using store bought puff pastry and baking some cheese straws?
You can vary the ingredients and seasonings to create different flavors.

I prefer an Ashton VSG or Liga Privada #9.

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Wine
I tend to keep it simple with a casual glass of wine or bubbly: cheeses like manchego, some marcona almonds, prosciutto di parma, crackers, and some duck rillettes to smear. Really, it depends on the wine - though I usually veer white (champagne, riesling, chablis, etc.). Sometimes, I’ll do some castelveltrano olives and pour over some nice olive oil and sprinkle a little maldon salt. I like my local charcuterie/butchery’s piccolo diavolo sausages, too, which are like concentrated versions of finocchiona (Tuscan salami with fennel). The fennel seed goes pretty nicely with a pinot noir.

Right about now what I’m doing for lazy weekend nights in is a ribeye steak and some root vegetables for dinner, paired with a glass of cabernet franc. Then turn on a movie while ending the meal with a salad of arugula, grilled figs, and balsamic and drinking the remainder of the cabernet franc. Straightforward and easy pairing.

Scotch
For scotch, I like to experiment with chocolate pairings. Sometimes more confectionary stuff like chocolate covered honeycomb or some nice burnt sugar caramels work well with more potent and heavy peat scotches (especially Islay ones - I’m thinking Ardbeg Uigeadail). I also like some milk chocolate almonds with very sherry-oak like scotches (e.g. Glendronach 17 cask strength). For Irish whisky (I know, it’s not scotch), I usually try to go for single-origin bean-to-bar types of dark chocolate bars ~70%, so I can learn more about the bean. Green Spot w/ Amadei chuao sounds like a good match to me.

I also like my trusted and easy Rusty Nail (I do 2:1 Dewer’s scotch to Drambuie, then a dash or two of Peychaud’s bitters stirred in an Old Fashioned glass) with some chocolate-covered candied orange peels.

+1 for the cigar per @J_L_

But for the non-smokers, Beluga caviar on Melba toasts.

I once had chocolate covered wasabi peas of all things with some Yamazaki (18), and the sweet spicy flavors of the crunchy peas were a nice accompaniment to the rather smooth and fruity Japanese whiskey.

Two questions:

Aside from establishing diplomatic channels with Iran, where are you getting your beluga caviar from?

and

Why melba toast and not blini?

TSA agents get lazy sometimes. Well, most of the time. Good prices in the UK.

I like a bit of crunch and the neutral base of Melba toast.

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Microwaved bacon works. Or bake and glaze it. They serve that at ten pound with aged Gouda and nuts. Perhaps some Scottish ale on the side too

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Interesting. Yamazaki 12 has some cedar notes that I thought might be difficult to pair with. The 18 yr is smoother so I can see the wasabi doing the trick. For Yamazaki 12 price-range, I prefer Hibiki or Nikka Taketsuru. Yamazaki has gotten more and more expensive in recent years :cry: and I find Hibiki a little more crowd friendly / versatile.

Scotch and gravlax (not w peaty Islay stuff, I paired w Hibiki12) or smoked salmon atop Ikea’s rye crispybread this morning was a wonderful pairing.

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Yes, indeed.

I blame the Gen X’ers.

Madmen certainly didn’t help with the whole scotch pricing thing, too (Suntory drinking like a scotch)…

Nice breakfast.

I blame Bill Murray.

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Just open a bottle of Champagne and name some popcorn . . .

Dark chocolate and sherried malts are always a good match; though something like the Clynelish 14 also goes very well with chocolate. But it’s cheese that provides the most complementary pairings, in my view. Blue cheeses and Islay peat, nuttier sheep’s milk cheeses and more austere Highland malts etc. etc.

Also, try oysters with the Ardbeg 10, Laphroaig 10 or Caol Ila 12.

Interesting point about the oysters. Laphroaig is quite peaty, but its iodine notes might be an interesting way to pair with oysters. What kind of oysters do you recommend? Laphraoig 10 is a mainstay at my place, but I generally find it quite attention-grabbing and I’d be worried about overwhelming an oyster, particularly ones with those delicate lettuce finishes.

We are not big champagne/sparkling wine drinkers in our house, preferring non-sparkling wine, whiskey and scotch.

Last night we ended up having some leftover mushroom/spinach flat bread with our Cab/Sangiovese wine (Mount Palomar Shorty’s Bistro Red). Tonight we’ll probably open up a Yamakazi 18yr we have (although I don’t like the bitterness of it so I may drink something else).