Matt Bolus Introduces New Global Flavors To Nashville

What food goes well with bourbon?

You get the pork and rye roasted pork chop, blast of rye whiskey. I always loved the poached pears that we did at Le Cordon Bleu. Old school French dessert, most people don't get excited about. I can understand why, because it's a pear and people are thinking about it, but a good friend of mine, Scott Crawford out of Raleigh, North Carolina, came up and did a dinner with Kavalan whiskey, actually Taiwanese. They had a Sherry cask finish. So, Sherry – pears, okay. Those go together. Smokey – pear, that goes together as well. We took this Manzanilla cask finished Taiwanese whiskey, and added a little bit of butter and some sorghum. And we gently poached these pears. Just mind blowing the flavor that came off of it. It was the perfect marriage of flavors.
I love apples and bourbon in many forms, from apple pie to using apples with roasted butternut squash. It was with a pork Tenderloin on the Big Green Egg. I put this fat cap on Tenderloin on the top rack. And underneath that, I built a little boat of aluminum foil with butternut squash, garlic, herbs and gold rush apples and drizzled bourbon all over it. Buffalo Trace bourbon all over it and just let it slow cook. You get these crispy apples with this bright, oaky, woody, and earthy flavor.