Ceviche and pisco sour

I’ve been in Chile for the past week at the World’s Best Sommelier competition and have plenty to report about that but here’s a great non-wine match in the meantime - and a couple of tips about how to make an authentic Pisco Sour.

Ceviche, as I’m sure you know, is raw fish marinated in citrus and you find it everywhere in Santiago, especially in the Chilean and Peruvian restaurants. I’ve found in the past it works well with Soave and Torrontes (see below) and it’s fantastic with Chile’s Sauvignon Blancs as I’ll be explaining later this week but it’s also really enjoyable with Pisco Sour which is Chile’s - and Peru's - national cocktail.

The classic formula, according to the barman at a Peruvian restaurant I went to called Puerto Peru, is 3 shots of pisco. 1 of lemon or lime juice, 1 of sugar syrup and half an egg white. The restaurant infused their sugar syrup with orange and lemon peel and cinnamon which made it more aromatic and slightly less tart.

Sadly pisco sours are pretty difficult to reproduce outside of Latin America as the flavour depends on the local limon de Pica which are are actually rather more like small lemons than limes (for a more detailed explanation check out this useful article on a website called Rick Cooks. My hunch is that you’d get nearest to it by blending grapefruit, lime and lemon juice together.

You also, of course, need a bottle of Pisco, the Chilean/Peruvian grape-based spirit or brandy but that’s reasonably easy to get hold of.

It's an absolutely delicious drink but as you can see from the quantities above pretty lethal so take care!

Sea urchins, beurre blanc and Ruinart Champagne

When luxury foods are discussed there's always an omission. An ingredient that I personally think is one of the most delicious in the world - sea urchins.

I was lucky enough to have some on Friday night at one of our best local restaurants Bell's Diner - one with a light dressing and one with a sumptuous beurre blanc that went stupendously well with the delicate sweet flavour of the sea urchins and with the glass of Ruinart Champagne we'd indulged in to start the meal.

Hopefully I'll be having some more great seafood this week. I'm off to Chile for the Best Sommelier in the World competition and will be reporting back from there over the next few days.

Image © stockcreations - Fotolia

La Réserve de Léoville Barton with roast lamb and salsa verde

We had a celebration dinner with old friends the other night at my favourite local restaurant Culinaria so cracked open a bottle of La Réserve de Léoville Barton 2004*, a St Julien and the second wine of Léoville Barton. It really was quite lovely - rich, plummy, velvety - at its peak but with a few more years to go. It was everything you want from red Bordeaux (unless you have bottomless pockets)

For once I let the wine dictate my food choice, opting for a classic dish of roast lamb with salsa verde instead of the wild Irish sea trout with hake, langoustine and saffron cream sauce I actually fancied. I guess it would probably have rubbed by but the wine would undoubtedly have overwhelmed the delicacy of the dish. I was a little concerned about the salsa verde too but I needn’t have worried. It worked perfectly adding a herbal note that picked up perfectly on the claret. - much better, I remember thinking at the time, than that British abomination mint sauce.

I think it would probably have been a decent cheese wine if we had stuck to sympathetic cheeses such as not-over-matured cheddar, young washed-rind cheeses and sheeps’ cheese but we couldn’t resist pudding (pannacotta with Yorkshire rhubarb and blood orange)

Stephen Markwick of Culinaria, I can't resist mentioning, is the chef with whom I wrote a book last year: ‘A Very Honest Cook’ which you can buy from the restaurant for the incredibly modest price of £10 + p & p!

*You can buy the 2004 from Vineyards Direct at £22.95 a bottle if you buy by the case - about £5 less a bottle than I paid locally.

Braised brill with truffles and La Rocca Soave

I’ve already mentioned this wine pairing as part of my write-up of the Action Against Hunger pop-up with Rick Stein but it was the outstanding match of last week.

It was an unusual dish which you can just about see from the rather blurry picture to the right. The brill - which was fabulously fresh - was braised rather than grilled and adorned with mushrooms and truffles which gave it a powerful umami hit.

Old white burgundy would have been the obvious choice but they had already run out of the Meursault on the wine list so we opted instead for the 2007 vintage of this highly unusual single vineyard Soave from Pieropan which we were lucky enough to get at the normal retail price.

It was an incredibly lush, voluptuous wine - just perfect with such a rich fish dish. A real treat.