Layered tomato and egg salad with Verdejo

One of the advantages of BYO is that you can have a stab at matching your wine to the menu. Particularly when you know exactly what each course will be. But sometimes the description is a bit vague as in Saturday’s ‘layered salad’ at the Montpelier Basement supper club in Bristol.*

It turned out to be a delicious French-style ‘verrine’ - a layer of fresh tomato salad, egg mayonnaise and a topping of pea-shoots which perfectly suited the crisp, citrussy 2010 Tresolmos Verdejo we’d brought with us (currently on the 2011 vintage from The Wine Society). A Sauvignon Blanc would have worked equally well - perhaps surprisingly. You wouldn't normally think of Verdejo or Sauvignon with egg.

The Verdejo also sailed through the second course of pan-fried mackerel in oats and piccalilli vegetables - a lightly pickled salad of crunchy veg including cucumber, carrot and cauliflower.

Interestingly the other wine we’d taken along - a really lovely 2008 grand cru riesling from René Muré didn’t match as well with either despite the fact that it was dry by Alsace standards. Though it was unexpectedly good with the warm cheesy biscuits that were served at the beginning of the meal which accentuated its fresh apple notes.

It all goes to show that, just as with cooking, there are always new combinations to be discovered with food and wine pairing.

* Sadly this was the last supper at 'The Basement' as its proprietors Elly and Dan are moving on. But they will be hosting other events in the future.

Cold sesame noodles and weissbier

Thanks to my friend Signe Johansen of Scandilicious I finally got to Koya in Frith Street the other day - London’s food bloggers most popular noodle haunt and the winner of last year’s Observer Food Monthly’s Best Cheap Eats award.

It was a hot day (unusually for this summer) so cold noodles appealed and I had this amazing dish of Zaru Gomadare, thick udon noodles with a sesame sauce, cucumber salad and turnip pickle. That seemed a big ask for any wine to tackle (although a trusty Grüner Veltliner would probably have coped) so I picked the weissbier that was on offer - which embarrassingly I failed to note at the time. No matter - any similar German or German-style beer would be an equally good pairing

Its citrus and banana notes and slight touch of sweetness were perfect with the sesame sauce which I’m still wondering how to amalgamate with the noodles for my next visit. (Unable to dunk the thick slithery noodles in the sauce like any self-respecting Japanese I ended up pouring it over them and making the most ungodly mess.)

They also have a decent sake list so I’m guessing that sake would have been a good pairing too.

Salmon sashimi and dry Languedoc rosé

Not, I admit, the sort of starter you expect to be served on your first night in France - or the wine you’d expect to go with it - but the pairing, at the Château du Port in Marseillan*, worked perfectly.

Rosé, of course, is the most flexible of wines so one shouldn’t be too surprised but the key thing is that the rosé in question - the 2011 Les Amandiers from Château de la Liquière in Faugères, a blend of Cinsault, Mourvèdre, Grenache and Carignan was really crisp and dry - similar to a Provence rosé in style.

The sashimi was served with thinly sliced cucumber and black radish which provided a contrasting touch of freshness and bitterness which assisted the match without adding any competing flavours.

Good though the dish was though I’m not sure that it wasn’t more about the environment in which we found ourselves: the first night of our holiday, a gorgeous sunny evening and a bottle of one of our favourite local wines. It shows matches are sometimes as much about mood as food.

*Incidentally the Château du Port used to be run by the Pourcel brothers who own Le Jardin des Sens in Montpellier but was sold last year. The new owners seem to be doing a good job though.

Oysters and sake

A surprise match from the RAW wine fair last week: some extraordinarily good wild rock oysters and a range of unpasteurised, unfiltered sakes from Yoigokochi Sake.

I’ve always thought of white wine as the natural pairing for oysters but the sake was sensational - mimicking the texture of the oysters more than wine and emphasising their saline character. (I think that was the umami effect.)

The range, which is all of junmaishu quality and has no added alcohol, sugar- or taste-, aroma-, or colour-enhancing elements, is about to be brought in by Raeburn Fine Wines. Most were also unfiltered and unpasteurized - a similar revelation to natural wines.

The oysters were served unseasoned - I’m not sure how a squeeze of lemon would affect the pairing but some kind of soy or sesame dressing would only benefit, I suspect. Delicious anyway.