Smoked eel with crab remoulade and Slovakian Müller-Thurgau

A good obscure pairing to kick off the week from the newly opened Vinoteca wine bar at Seymour Place.

We went on the second day of opening but the kitchen was obviously well into its stride turning out the sort of simple well-priced bistro food that’s a bit thin on the ground in that part of London (just north of Marble Arch). They also pair each dish with a matching wine from their excellent wine list, about 20 of which are available by the glass.

Perversely I actually enjoyed the wine owner Brett Woonton gave us as an aperitif - a really delicious Jagnet Müller-Thurgau from Slovakia - with my first course of smoked eel and crab more than the suggested 2007 Arbois Traminer from Stephane Tissot - though that was delicious too. It (the Jagnet) was fresh and crisp with a slight peppery note that was reminiscent of Grüner Veltliner. It sells at the very good price of £4.20 a 125ml glass and £5.90 a slightly larger one or you can buy it for £10.50 to take away. (There’s also a wine shop on site.)

I also loved my main course pairing of mutton and oyster pie with mash and spinach with a suave elegant Le Pupille 2008 Morellino di Scansano from Tuscany (£6.10 for 125ml, £8.50 for 175ml) whose dark hedgerow fruits perfectly offset the richness of the dish.

Vinoteca is also bottling a couple of their own wines from wines that they buy in bag-in-box and which they sell in returnable bottles. Apparently they last 3 days so are designed for regulars who want to come in for a top up. I tasted the Touraine Sauvignon which was fine but they have such tempting other wines to drink I’d take the opportunity to try something you haven’t tasted before.

I ate at Vinoteca as a guest of the restaurant.

Wild boar with cherry sauce and Karam Corpus Christi

It’s almost impossible to pick out one pairing from last week’s trip to the Lebanon but if I’m forced to it has to be a dish of wild boar with cherry sauce I ate with Habib Karam the owner of Karam winery (and - extraordinarily - the airline pilot who flew us to Beirut)

Habib is as passionate about his food as he is about his wine (and I imagine every other pursuit he engages in) and had devised an amazing meal which we were supposed to have for lunch and ended up eating about 6pm due to various distractions along the way. Lebanese wine visits tend to drift . . .

The boar, which I could imagine him killing with his bare hands, turned out not to have been dispatched by him but had been marinated for two days in Syrah and cloves then brushed with brown sugar and honey, slow roasted and served with a dark, delicious, sour cherry sauce and a selection of boiled vegetables including baby aubergines. It went extraordinarily well with his 2007 Corpus Christi, a dark, plummy blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Syrah and Merlot. It was still a little young to drink but the gamey meat and sharp cherries mellowed its tannins and made for a quite stunning match.

Habib makes his wine from high altitude vineyards just outside Jezzine which is to the south of the Bekaa valley so they all had a fresh acidity that made them particularly good partners for food. Other good pairings from the dinner were his Cloud Nine 2009, a crisp blend of Semillon, Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscat with tabbouleh and Arc-en-Ciel, a Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah-based ros with lobster freekeh - a fabulous paella type dish made with lobster (flown in from Ghana), tomatoes and a touch of chilli. I found the wine a touch bubblegummy but it was terrific with the food.

Of all the winemakers I met last week he was the most focussed on food pairings. “There’s no point in trying to make wine unless it ends up on a table of food” he said, simply.

At the moment Habib doesn’t have a distributor in the UK but if you’re interested in his wines I’m sure he’d find a way of getting them to you. Flying them himself, if need be.

I visited the Lebanon as a guest of Wines of Lebanon.

Manzanilla sherry and smoked dried beef with almonds

Manzanilla sherry never fails to surprise me with its versatility but you don't often come across a combination as good as the one I had last week at Lido restaurant in Bristol.

It was a 'tapa' of cecina which is a Spanish oak smoked air-dried beef, very finely sliced - almost shaved - and served with beetroot, a few salad leaves, a drizzle of almond sauce and some toasted almonds. You often find the flavour of almonds in dry sherries like this so I suppose this was a natural but the combination was just sensational. (Fino would have obviously worked too.)

The manzanilla was a La Goya Delgado Zuleta which you can buy from RS Wines of Bristol (0117 963 6000) for £4.50 (I think) and Corney & Barrow for £5.99 a half bottle. The sort of sherry you - or at least I - want permanently in the fridge.

Image © stockcreations - Fotolia.com

Seared cod with red wine sauce and Premier Cru Santenay

There’s still a bit of resistance to drinking red wine with fish, let alone with a white fish like cod but last week I had the perfect dish to combine with a good red burgundy.

It was prepared for us by Gordon McDermott the head of Waitrose’s very swish new Cookery School when we went for a tasting the other day and I imagine was an easy dish to make. The cod was seared then served on a bed of wilted, shredded leeks with a red wine and butter sauce that was probably made by deglazing the pan with red wine and whisking in soft butter.

It was a perfect match both with the lovely Domaine Lucien Muzard 2008 Santenay Premier Cru La Maladière (£19.99 in 20 selected branches and Waitrose Wine Direct*) which I thought tasted of autumn raspberries and with the truly delicious 2008 Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir from Merrick’s Grove (£23.99 from only 2 branches and Waitrose Wine Direct), one of the best Aussie Pinots I’ve tasted. Great for a romantic dinner for two.

* Neither of these wines seem to be on the site yet. I'll try and find out when they're coming in.