Match of the week
Wine pairing: burrata, beetroot and Albarino
This week I was at Heathcotes Brasserie in Preston, Lancashire for a wine dinner for which I’d had to devise the wine matches. Paul Heathcote, the chef, is an old sparring partner and obviously thought he’d put me on the spot by coming up with some challenging dishes.
This actually sounded more difficult than it was - a starter salad of beetroot with burrata (a richer version of mozzarella) and pea-shoots dressed with rapeseed oil and - the killer ingredient - fiery horseradish which was incorporated into a whipped cream.
Now sometimes beetroot dominates a dish and tends to suggest a fruity red (like Dolcetto or Pinot Noir) rather than a white but here it was the accompanying cheese and spicy horseradish I was concerned with. And it was the start of a five course meal which needed to feature different wines so the first one couldn’t be too dominant.
I picked a crisp, clean 2011 Orballo Albarino from Bodegas la Val in Rias Baixas in northern Spain which Ironically I later found (for £8.79) at local wine merchants D. Byrne of Clitheroe* which I’ll be writing about in due course. Although it was only 12.5% it had the intensity to handle the beetroot and the horseradish and made a refreshing contrast to both.
Incidentally I love getting involved in wine events like this so if you’d like me to come and host one with you - or simply help devise the pairings - contact me about rates at fiona AT matchingfoodandwine DOT com
* Also available, at the time of writing, for £9.39 at Rannoch Scott, £9.99 at Booths and - rather cheekily - for £10.99 from Virgin Wines. Not sure how they justify that.
Pulled pork roll and a smoked Belgian-style pale ale
As those of you who follow our Facebook page may have spotted I was in France last week so you might expect a pairing with a wine from Languedoc. But no: the outstanding match, as with the previous week, was with a beer - and a rather unusual one at that . . .
It was a limited edition cloudy Belgian smoked pale ale from Arbor Ales called De Rokerij which was served at one of their two Bristol pubs, The Three Tuns.
I’d been meaning to go there for a while as they have an in-house street food kitchen called Meat & Bread which, as the name suggests, serves mahoosive meaty sandwiches.
This was actually my husband’s choice, a pulled pork roll with stout BBQ sauce for which I guess the natural pairing would have been a stout but he was intrigued by the beer which was fruity, malty with just a touch of smokiness - not nearly as smoky as a rauchbier. And comparatively modest in alcohol by craft beer standards at 4.9% ABV.
It was a brilliant match, not least when we added our neighbour on the next table’s homemade barbecue sauce which he generously allowed us to try. (Thanks, Steve)
I had the hot dog - a classic, but generous version which paired really well with the Kernel table beer I was drinking.
So I can recommend the Three Tuns both for their beer and their food. Take note they might stop serving earlier than you expect - last orders are taken at 2pm and at 9pm in the evening.
Guacamole, salsa and a citrussy pale ale
Last Friday night Helen, our designer, and I had a bit of a works outing to our colleague Monica Shaw's who works on the nuts and bolts of the website. She cooked up an amazing Mexican feast of which this was just one element but it was striking how much better the whole meal went with beer than with wine.
It wasn’t that the wine was bad. We had a deliciously limey Peter Lehmann Wigan riesling which went extremely well with the guacamole too - as did a Sauvignon Blanc and a new English rosé from Dunleavy vineyards just outside Bristol.
But the beers we had - a selection from Helen’s other clients Wild Beer Co, Arbor Ales and the Bristol Beer Factory - were just so easy with the widely varied ingredients and dishes we threw at them.
I’m singling out the guacamole (which was properly chunky) with our first and second beers, Wild Beer Co’s intensely hopped Fresh and Madness IPA because they both had a citrussy edge that went brilliantly with the lime and coriander in the dip.
We also had roast squash-stuffed tamales with mole poblano, a big roast corn and avocado salad, refried beans, stuffed jalapenos, tomato salad and homemade pickles a punchy/spicy combination which went really well with an Arbor Yakima Valley American-style IPA. (A red wine big enough to handle all those powerful flavours wouldn’t have been as refreshing)
I can’t pretend we found a beer to go with the chilli-spiked mango fruit salad and ice-creams and sorbets but we finished with a flourish with some intensely chocolatey truffles with candied chillies and the Bristol Beer Factory’s raspberry stout - an unlikely but knockout combination.
It was the big flavours in the beers that carried the day too. Light lagers and more traditional ales wouldn't have worked as well.
Roasted asparagus and Jersey royal salad with herb mayonnaise and a 2012 Saumur Champigny
Asparagus, it’s often said, is tough to match with wine, let alone a red, but this combination with a light, chilled Saumur Champigny at the re-opened Bell’s Diner in Bristol was a perfect pairing.
The reason? The asparagus was roasted which offset its grassiness with a touch of caramelisation and accompanied by mealy Jersey Royal new potatoes which also acted as a buffer. But it was the mayo, flavoured with ‘sweet herbs’, most notably tarragon which clinched the deal, the anise-like aromatic notes of the herb chiming in perfectly with the herbal notes of the young Cabernet Franc.
The 2012 isn’t the best vintage I’ve tasted of Thierry Germain’s Domaine des Roches Neuves - it's quite a bit lighter than the gorgeous 2011 - but it’s a consistent favourite that we often order from a wine list because of its versatility with food*
It also went well - for similar reasons - with a light springlike dish of poached rabbit with peas and morcilla (Spanish black pudding) - the hint of mint with the peas again combining with fragrant wine.
The essence of early summer.
* For other suggestions look at the recommendations for the 2011 vintage on Germain’s website
Croissants à la dinde fumée et au cheddar (smoked turkey and cheddar croissants)
Pain roulé à la tapenade et au thon (stuffed - literally rolled - bread with olive paste and tuna)
Briks à la viande hachée (minced beef filo pastries)
Ballotin de poulet et au poivre concassé (a moulded paté of chicken and crushed pepper)
Pain de viande à la carotte et aux olives vertes (meatloaf with carrots and green olives)
Tajine de boulette de Kefta aux raisins secs (meatball tagine with raisins)
Salt cod with ciambotta di peperoni and 2004 Argentiera, Bolgheri Superiore
Another interesting insight on pairing red wine and fish in Tuscany this week. We were served lightly salted cod with a rich tomato and pepper stew called ciambotta at Tenuta Argentiera which proved a perfect match for the mature 2004 vintage.
Like other wines in Bolgheri, the wine is a Bordeaux blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc but quite different in character from similar blends in the Bordeaux region which I’m not sure I’d pair with a tomato sauce at all. Much warmer, richer and sweetly mellow.
The dish was part of a buffet during which five different Argentiera wines were served with a wide range of dishes from crudo di pesce (raw seafood salad) to grilled ribeye to cheese.
As I’ve remarked before, Tuscans consider it perfectly normal to drink red wine right through the meal even though many producers now make some attractive whites and rosés.
We had a similar pairing in a trattoria called Cibreo in Florence - a dark, dense dish of squid cooked in red wine with a 2006 Stielle supertuscan (a younger vintage than is currently available on the UK market)
After a couple of days in Tuscany drinking rich full-bodied reds with fish seems quite normal.
*Here are the details of the current 2008 Argentiera
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