Cinnamon beignets with peach jam, Nutella and a black Americano coffee

Those of you who follow my Twitter feed will be aware I’ve been away at the Vegas Uncork’d festival so it might seem a touch perverse to pick out a non-wine pairing as my match of the week - and one from a meal outside the festival programme.

Fear not - I’ll be writing a longer post about the great food and wine I came across in a few days time but this was just the perfect start to the day at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in The Venetian.

Incredibly light warm beignets dusted with fine sugar and cinnamon, served with separate pots of peach jam and Nutella to slather over them and a good strong cup of black Americano coffee.

As I’ve mentioned before I don’t have a particularly sweet tooth so it seemed to be the perfect counterbalance to the beignets - though by American standards they weren't particularly sweet - but you could equally well wash them down with a flat white or other milky white or indeed an espresso.

Incidentally this is a good way to handle breakfast in an expensive place like Vegas. Most cooked breakfast dishes - even at less swanky places - are about 15$ plus with tax and service on top. This brought my bill to an affordable $10.

Toasted hay tart with coffee and walnuts with 1981 madeira

Toasted hay tart might not sound particularly appealing but you’ll have to trust me, it was delicious! It was the spectacular finale to a meal to celebrate 36 years of the iconic Bristol restaurant Bell’s Diner at the Eat, Drink Bristol Fashion festival in Bristol last week. The current chef Chris Wicks who cooked the meal has been in place for the last 12 or so.

The tart which was delicately, creamily sweet had, I think, been made with toasted hay infused milk and was accompanied (I think - end of a long evening!) with a coffee granita, a rubble of walnuts and some slightly malty ice cream which is probably where the beer came in. Or maybe it was the other way round - beer granita and milky coffee ice cream. Whatever . . .

And it was perfectly set off with a glass of very old rare madeira - a 1981 Pereira d'Olivera Colheita Verdelho from one of Chris’s regular suppliers R S Wines which provided another layer of dark, treacle toffee and grilled nut flavours. Madeira is such an underrated drink.

You can actually buy the wine from R S Wines for £61 a bottle. Making the dessert might be slightly less straightforward, I suspect . . .

Goat biryani and natural wine

I subjected myself to a somewhat daunting experience last Thursday trying to persuade a largely sceptical audience of journalists and bloggers of the virtues of natural wine. I think/hope I made some modest headway, helped by the fantastic feast laid on by chef Stevie Parle and his team at Dock Kitchen.

The highlight was a superb goat biryani topped with a salt crust and served with pomegramate seeds and coriander. It was subtly fragrant rather than spicy and seemed really well suited to the eclectic selection of bottles we had on the table which ranged from a Loire Chenin Blanc (La Pointe 1920, Les Vignes Herbels) to a cloudy but delicious Australian Pinot Noir (Domaine Lucci Wildman Pinot) the likes of which you’ve probably never tasted. More about these and the other wines on my natural wine blog shortly.

It underlined that natural wines need air and food to show at their best. Most were better a couple of hours after being opened. A couple benefited from decanting. Detractors might - and almost certainly would - say that that proves how impractical they are but you used to have to open most conventional reds such as Bordeaux well in advance.

I must say I like the quirky offbeat flavours the natural wine world offers - in the same way as I like the world of unpasteurised cheese. And the fact that all these wines were refreshingly dry rather than cloyingly heavy and sweet as so many modern reds are.

If you’re interested in natural wine there are two major events coming up in London next month: the RAW fair on May 20th and 21st and the Real Wine Fair from May 20th-22nd.

And if you feel inspired to make a biryani there’s a similar recipe (with rabbit) in Stevie’s excellent new Dock Kitchen Cookbook. And that would go with Pinot too.

Root vegetables in dashi with junmai sake

A terrific pairing which was part of a fascinating tasting I went to last week of sakes from the Tohoku region of Japan, the area most affected by last year's earthquake and tsumani. It was organised jointly by the British Sake Association and events company Tengu Sake (@tengusake on Twitter) and took place at Tombo, a Japanese cafe in South Kensington which laid on some particularly delicious food.

The usual pairings of sashimi and sushi with different sakes were excellent but the one that intrigued me most was an umami-rich dish of root vegetables including turnip and mooli cooked in dashi with a side dish of green beans and broccoli with a sesame dressing. It went brilliantly well with a Tokubetsu junmai sake which had a lovely sweetness combined with an earthy character that reflected the same flavours in the vegetables. Truly delicious.

It would be worth checking out Tombo for a full meal I'd have said.

I attended the tasting as a guest of the British Sake Associaton.