Pear and chai cake and green jasmine tea

I’ve been rediscovering tea pairing with food lately and this was a standout match at my local self-styled modern tearoom Lahloo Pantry in Bristol. It was a simple pound cake topped with spicy pears* cooked in chai syrup with the company's own green jasmine tea.

I keep struggling with green tea which I feel I ought to like more (so healthy!) and have up to now found jasmine tea just a little too cloyingly scented but this particular combination of the two is brilliant. The green tea balances the sometimes overwhelming aroma and taste of the jasmine. The sweetness of the jasmine offsets the slight bitterness of the tea though if you brew it at the correct temperature (around 70° I seem to recall) it shouldn’t be bitter anyway.

Brewing at that temperature makes it a warm rather than a hot drink which actually suits food better. The reason this pairing worked was that the cake wasn't too sweet and the touch of spice in the pears made a lovely contrast. I can imagine drinking it with a mildly spiced chicken salad and other gently spiced savoury Asian dishes too.

* Kate Gover who runs Lahloo says they might blog the recipe soon. I'll link to it if they do!

Tandoori salmon and fino sherry

One of the more successful pairings from the otherwise rather challenging sherry lunch I attended at the Cinnamon Club last week was a dish of tandoori salmon with a Valdespino Innocente fino. I tend to overlook fino in favour of manzanilla but I’m not sure it’s not a more flexible match with food.

The salmon itself was quite delicate but it came with some mango purée and a fiery wasabi-like green pea relish which didn’t dent the flavour of the Inocente at all.

Another fino, the Lustau La Ina also went well with a dish of Norwegian king crab with tamarind and burnt chilli dressing and a (totally delicious) chilled lentil and coriander soup.

I wouldn’t have thought of fino as an automatic go to for spicy food but this lunch certainly suggested it has potential. Maybe with a selection of Indian snacks at the beginning of a meal? Indian tapas - now there’s a new trend!

Hot dogs and champagne

One of the under-appreciated qualities of champagne is how well it goes with fast food. Like fish and chips, fried chicken, popcorn and . . . er . . . hot dogs. Or so the clever founders of Bubbledogs discovered and found themselves with a smash hit on their hands.

I must admit I was sceptical. Beer goes, sure, and there is a logic to combining bread with bubbles but some of the fillings sounded pretty challenging for £50+ bottles of champagne.

I chose a ‘breakie dog’, a sausage wrapped in bacon, topped with a fried egg and a scattering of black pudding which paired very well with a glass of rich, golden, almost honeyed Christophe Mignon brut nature (that’s without any added sugar or ‘dosage’ as they call it). It also went well with my daughter’s BLT dog with truffle mayo (champagne and truffles being a classic combo).

Curious to see how stronger flavours would impact I tried a kimchee dog but this time chose a glass of (I think, but didn’t note it down) the R H Coutier grand cru rosé which was sweeter and fruitier. (I’m sure the kimchee would have obliterated the Mignon). Other ‘dogs’ like the Sloppy Joe might have clobbered even that but hey, it’s not about perfect pairings, more about having a bit of fun. (Though not the cheapest fun in town.)

If you fancy the notion but can’t get to Bubbledogs check out my my ideas for a hot dog party.

Prawn raviole and white Bordeaux

Having spent 3 days in Bordeaux last week I’m spoilt for choice about my match of the week but I’m going for one of the less obvious pairings (so not Pauillac and lamb!).

This was at a rather glorious outdoor lunch with Chateau Faugères in Saint-Emilion - the best of the trip from a food point of view cooked by a freelance chef called (I think from a hastily scrawled note) Matthieu Detchart.

The dish was rather grandiosely called raviole de crevettes aux légumes fondants, bouillon de carcasse à a citronelle et curcuma and was basically a giant Asian-style raviole filled with prawns and shredded, stir-fried vegetables (mainly carrots) with a light broth flavoured with lemongrass and turmeric.

It wasn’t really spicy at all just delicately aromatic and a brilliant match with the Chåteau Faugères Bordeaux Blanc 2011, a three-way blend of Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Sauvignon Gris which was also very light, elegant and citrussy (more grapefruit than lemon). Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be available in the UK but you could subsitute a similar young white Bordeaux without too much obvious oak influence.

I do think white Bordeaux is hugely underrated.