Pork chops and perry

Sometimes you forget the most obvious food matches like the pairing of pork and perry we enjoyed over the weekend.

I cooked some pork chops with a dish of roast onions, apple, fennel and potatoes and served it with black pudding and cabbage. A quickly flung together family dinner but none the worse for that.

I would normally have used - and drunk - cider but what I had to hand was a bottle of 2009 Priggles Herefordshire perry from Dragon Orchard made from Blakeney Red pears. It was medium dry which I think worked better with pork than a totally dry perry would have done - and 7% which obviously helped to carry the other flavours on the plate. Simple, homely and delicious.

Good to know that Herefordshire now has a PGI (protected geographical indication) for its perry.

Leeks vinaigrette and Vermentino

There were leeks everywhere you looked in the Languedoc last week so I decided to make a classic dish of leeks vinaigrette (and finely sliced serrano ham) as a starter for Sunday lunch with friends. Despite the vinegar and mustard in the dressing it’s not a sharp dish - the dominant note is the delicate, sweet, oniony taste of the leeks so I was looking for a light, unoaked white which wouldn’t mask that flavour.

I found it in a bottle of Domaine de Coujan’s Rolle - the Languedoc’s name for Vermentino. It’s a wine we loved when we first visited the region 20 odd years ago and has had its ups and downs but is emphatically on form at the moment judging by this bottle.

I discovered to my surprise that the 2009 vintage is stocked by Great Western Wine (and others - see wine-searcher.com) at what appears to be the reduced price of £7.50 though I’d be looking to find the fresher 2010 if I could. In the Languedoc it’s available at Intermarch.

You could obviously substitute an Italian Vermentino (some good ones come from Sardinia) or one from Provence or Corsica where it is also known as Rolle. It would be good with other cold vegetable dishes, salads and seafood too.

Provençal-style fish soup and Picpoul de Pinet

We’re down in the Languedoc for a few days and ended up at one of our favourite fish restaurant Le Glacier at Marseillan.

It’s not that the cooking is amazing but the local oysters are the best I’ve eaten, the portions are generous and the prices - 25€ for the basic set menu - more than reasonable.

It’s been so incredibly cold down here I decided to go for the fish soup which came in a huge steaming tureen along with croutons, rouille (a spicy garlicky mayonnaise-type sauce) and grated cheese. I could have made a meal of that alone.

We were drinking - as we always seem to end up doing down here - the local Picpoul de Pinet, a versatile crisp dry white that seems to go with everything you throw at it. And it was perfect - the right wine for the place and the occasion.

Dark savoury French fish soups like this can take slightly stronger earthier whites and even dry rosés but what you don’t want is a wine that’s too oaky or too fruity so I’d steer clear of wines such as rich chardonnays and New Zealand-style Sauvignon Blancs.

Beetroot-cured salmon and Godello

Despite the razmatazz surrounding the launch of Dom Perignon 2003 and a serious amount of wine and truffle action to which I’ll devote more space shortly I’m picking a more modest match from last week - the delicious beetroot-cured salmon, capers and egg yolk and 2010 Godelia Godello I had at José Pizarro’s new London restaurant Pizarro.

This is the kind of dish you could easily pull off at home. Beetroot gives a nice note of earthiness and sweetness which counteracts the slight oiliness and smokiness of the salmon. The crisp citrussy Godello, the newly fashionable Spanish white, adds the equivalent of a squeeze of lemon. You’d think the egg would have an impact on the pairing but it simply adds an extra layer of richness.

The Godello would obviously go with other fish and shellfish dishes too such as crab - see the link below.