Lambrusco Spritz and Food Styling Tips

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Something to Try

If you love Aperol Spritzes and red wine Sangria, the Lambrusco Spritz is basically what would happen if the two had a child. I love it around this time of year – the weather is typically still pretty hot so the spritz aspect is refreshing, but the red wine feels a little more autumnal than you would get out of a typical prosecco-based spritz. 

Lambrusco is a lightly sparkling red wine from Italy. Served chilled, it’s juicy and berry-forward and delicious on its own, but its flavors lend themselves perfectly to a spritz. Try it as an aperitivo before a dinner party or as an after-work cocktail alongside a spread of salty snacks.

Recipe

Ice

1 1/2 oz Aperol or Campari

1/2 oz fresh orange juice

3 oz Lambrusco

1 oz sparkling water, to top

1 orange wedge, green olives, and a drizzle of olive oil to garnish

Add the Aperol and orange juice to an ice-filled glass. Pour the Lambrusco and sparkling water to top. Stir gently, then garnish with an orange slice, some green olives, and a tiny drizzle of good olive oil if you’re up to it.

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Something to Know

Whether you are a frequent hostess or just feeding your family, I think practicing your food plating and presentation is such a fun way to get creative in the kitchen. Our approach to cooking and eating can quite literally change the way we live. You can treat it like a chore, something that must be done to keep you alive, or you can treat it like an art, something beautiful and passionate that brings people together. Presenting your food beautifully turns it into an art, and incorporating this idea into your daily meals will truly take them from nothing special to something to get excited about.

1. Play with texture. This tip is the most simple but makes the biggest difference. Whatever the dish is, add garnishes with opposing textures to compliment the flavors and add contrast. These garnishes can be ingredients leftover from the recipe (like fresh jalapeños and cilantro on top of tortilla soup) or unrelated toppings you think might pair nicely (like toasted pistachios and a drizzle of honey on top of whipped feta). Try adding something crunchy to soups, a creamy sauce with your poultry, something raw to something cooked, you get the idea.
2. Get creative with your dishes and serveware. The best tablescapes and buffet tables mix old and new, big and small, understated and embellished. Try to collect a variety of dishes over time and mix and match to create visually interesting plating combinations. A boring table of matching plates can be livened up with a tiny bowl of olives, a basket of bread lined with a napkin, and a pretty pinch pot of salt. I like to mix china dinner plates with silver serving platters, my wooden salad bowl, and crystal wine glasses.
3. Pair contrasting colors. Some of the best tasting foods are not terribly attractive on their own. Boeuf bourguignon, French onion soup, mashed potatoes, and chili come to mind – they’re brown or beige, mushy, and shapeless. Use garnishes with bright pops of color to add visual interest and appeal. A dollop of sour cream and chives, torn parsley, some pickled red onions, or a handful of shredded cheese can go a long way to make plain-looking food a lot more pretty. The hummus below is a great example, piled high with cucumbers, tomatoes, and feta and drizzled with olive oil to brighten up the beige.
4. Use negative space. I love the look of an overcrowded plate on Thanksgiving, with 7 or 8 different foods piled on top of each other spreading to the edges of the dish. But for elegant plating every other day of the year, I like to make use of the negative space around the food to really help it pop. Try twisting your spaghetti around some tongs into a tall pile in the middle of the plate, or serve sides like rice or mashed potatoes in a separate mini cocotte to leave room on the plate for the main dish to stand out.
5. Keep it simple. Edible flowers, sauces in squeeze bottles, and cucumber roses have their place in plating at high-end contemporary restaurants, but they aren’t necessary to incorporate at home unless you really want to. I think the best approach to plating dishes beautifully is the most simple – let the textures, colors, and ingredients of the dish really shine. There’s really no right or wrong here, it’s about using what you have on hand to bring out the best features of your food.

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Three Good Things

First and foremost, The Sophisticate is not in the business of trying to sell you things you don’t want or need. This section is meant to share three things that have improved my life, and a little bit about why you might like them too. 

These will occasionally contain affiliate links. If you click one and ultimately decide to make a purchase, I may earn a small commission of roughly 5-10%. If you want to shop using my links, great! Easy for you, teeny tiny paycheck for me. 

However, it’s very important to me that you trust that I’m not just pushing links to make money, so if you’d rather purchase outside of my affiliate link, I completely get it! To do so, just be sure to shop from an incognito browser and type the product name into search rather than copy and paste my link. 

That said, I hope you’ll find that some of these recommendations may be the solution to a problem you’ve been having, or are simply a fun little luxury to add to your daily life.

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Recipe of the Day

If you’re hosting or attending a Labor Day event this long weekend, consider throwing together some homemade pimento cheese, one of my favorite All-American party snacks. Joanna Gaines’s recipe is the best one I’ve ever tasted. Sometimes I add a dash of hot sauce or some diced jalapeños for a slightly spicy version, and I serve it with pretzels or Ritz crackers. Heads up: this recipe makes a massive batch, but the one time I halved it, it was gone in ten minutes!

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Tasteful Living, As Told by You

One of the things that inspired me to create The Sophisticate was reading what other women online had to say about taste, style, and living well. This section is dedicated to tips and advice submitted by you, The Sophisticate subscribers! 

Send us a message on Instagram @sophisticate.newsletter to share your favorite little luxuries, healthy habits, or other tasteful tips with us and we may include you in a future newsletter.

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