1. Green salad with orange dressing.
- It has lettuce, onion and apple and the dressing has orange (of course), soy sauce, garlic.
You want something nice and crisp which will cut through the sweet and salt, but not go to war. An expensive wine will be wasted. Pinot Gris or pinot grigio.
2. Spinach salad with honey mustard dressing.
- Spinach, fetta cheese, tomato, onion
Almost any decent white will do. That said, this salad will play nicely with oak and serve as a good backdrop for a big white. Now's the time to open a bottle of a good, not too inexpensive, California Chardonnay.
3. Spring rolls with shrimp.
- Shrimp, basil, coriander, carrot and a "thai sweet and spicy sauce"
Something that has it's own sweet and spice. The classic pairing for this sort of thing is a good dry Traminer or dry Riesling. The Washington (state) wines are quite good. A good lager, pilsner or IPA beer would work as well as wine, so would an "Oktoberfest," but you wouldn't want to go heavier. Victoria, a Mexican beer, would be very nice. So would MGD.
4. Banana Wonton.
- Banana, almond, cinnamon.
Pairing wine with sweets is always problematic. Really good sweet wines are desserts in themselves, and work best as stand alones. However, this dessert would do well with raisins, so you might want to try a good but not great quality Muscat. A Kir Royale made with a "sec," could work too. Frankly, coffee and a complex, aged rum (e.g., Appleton 12 year old, Pampero) would be a better choice than just about any wine.
BDL