What to do with leftover wine?

Ask 10 cooks what they do with leftover wine and, trust me, at least half will respond, “What’s leftover wine?” Hilarious.

Of course, these jokesters are mostly members of couples, and they have no problem polishing off a bottle of pinot over dinner.

A solo diner faces a higher bar. I’ve ended up drinking the equivalent of a bottle of wine over the course of a night with friends, but at home I’m usually a glass-and-a-half kind of guy. That means it takes me a few days to make it through a bottle.

Like others, I use a vacuum-saving system to buy me a little more time in the refrigerator. But it merely postpones the inevitable choice: Drink, dump or cook? Those who make meals for others can easily splash some here and there into a stew, while I’m left trying not to make enough beef bourguignon for an army.

Anne Willan’s 2001 “Cooking With Wine” has plenty of answers. She writes in the book’s preface, “It has become as natural for me to add wine to the pan as it is for the cooks who were born here [in France].”

Wine gives food “instant complexity,” Willan writes. She cautions that young, fresh, fruity wines usually make better cooking ingredients than fuller-bodied ones, and she says that some of the rules are meant to be broken, such as white wine for fish, eggs and white meat; red for duck, red meats and game.

Here are some options:

> Deglaze pans after roasting meats.

> Poach pears or fish. Use light red wine to cook fish unless you want your cream-colored halibut to turn grayish-purple

> Deepen the flavor of tomato sauces.

> Cook down wine to concentrate it and then add it to vinaigrettes in place of or in addition to vinegar.

> Freeze wine in ice cube trays, or freeze a cup or more in a resealable bag. The alcohol keeps the wine from freezing solid, so it is easy to break and throw it into a pan.