Roast turbot with wild mushrooms and white Minervois

I spent last week in the Languedoc where we visit quite regularly so there weren’t many new food and wine discoveries to be made but I think the most thought-provoking match was a main course dish of roast turbot with girolles and a bottle of Château Cabezac 'Alice' 2008 from the Minervois I had at a restaurant in Agde called Le Bistrot d’Hervé.

Turbot is a fine fish and this was by no means a major wine but it was in the right register. It was an unoaked blend of Grenache Blanc, Muscat and Bourboulenc - earthy rather than fruity - which suited the slightly meaty texture of the fish and richness of the accompanying mushrooms. A better match would have been a fine white Rhône such as a Hermitage or Châteauneuf-du-Pâpe, a white burgundy (or similar cool climate Chardonnay), a traditional oak-aged white Rioja or a bottle of Champagne which, by coincidence, was what the table next door were drinking with their turbot (Pol Roger, to be precise).

I bet they paid a fair bit for it. I like the food at this restaurant but the mark-ups are excessive, even allowing for the exchange rate. The Cabezac ‘Alice’ sells at €5.50 from the domaine and they’re selling it for 21€, almost four times as much.

Starters are pricey too for a bistro - between 12€ and 16€ and there’s no set menu on a weekend evening. It seems that bistrots, spelt with a ‘t’ are as little related to bistros as gastropubs are to pubs these days. Even in a small town in France.

Game terrine and sweet oloroso sherry

Last week I was given a couple of slices of gorgeous game terrine by Stephen Markwick of Culinaria with whom I’ve been writing a book (of which more news soon). We had it for lunch and the only wine I had open wasn’t up to the intensity of the spicing (which was dominated by allspice) and the accompanying damson chutney.

It occurred to me to try a sherry though I wasn’t sure if it would work given that it was a sweet oloroso (a Taste the Difference Cream Sherry from Sainsbury’s) but it was spot on.

I don’t think that means you should always go for cream sherry - a more anglicised style such as Harvey’s Bristol Cream for example would be too sweet but the Taste The Difference range which is made by Lustau always has great balancing acidity) You could also try a glass of Madeira.

Faggots with onion gravy and Mas Belles Eaux Vieux Carignan

Faggots, which are basically a rather gamey British meatball made with pork belly and offal, are a bit of an acquired taste along the lines of the French sausage andouillette but well made, as they are when supplied by our local butcher, they can be very tasty. They need to be accompanied by onion gravy which normally leads one in the direction of a robust ale but the other night we had them with a bottle of Mas Belles Eaux Vieux Carignan 2006 which actually worked very well.

Carignan, as I’ve mentioned before, is not my favourite grape variety but well-crafted examples like this do have an appeal especially with robust gastropub dishes (braised lamb shanks and steak and kidney pie would be other apt examples).

Mas Belles Eaux is a Languedoc estate just north of Pezenas that was taken over a while ago by insurance giant AXA Millsimes who also own Quinta do Noval and Chateau Pichon-Baron.

The agency is now handled by Gonzalez Byass in the UK (+44 1707 273188) though the wine is currently in limited distribution*. At a retail price of £18-20 it may strike you as a an extravagant partner for offal of any kind but oddly it’s often the simplest dishes that show off good wines to best advantage. And there are of course less expensive Carignans and Carignan blends around to test the combination.

FromVineyardsDirect sells the less expensive Mas Belles Eaux Les Coteaux.

Image © Igor Klimov - Fotolia

Fresh walnut tart and Jurançon

With two spectacularly high profile meals last week (see my last two posts) it was hard to choose a match this week. Should it be the Crozes-Hermitage and Herdwick mutton, kidney and oyster pie I had at Hix, or the perfect pairing of Sebastian Bobinet’s 2006 Saumur Champigny 'Amateus Bobi' and pig’s trotter at Pierre Koffman’s pop-up restaurant at Selfridges? (There - I’ve told you anyway!)

In the end I’ve gone for my friend's dessert at Koffman - a fresh walnut tart and a Jurançon, Clos Uroulat 2007 from Charles Hours simply because it fulfilled the main ambition of food and wine matching, that the whole should be better than the sum of the parts.

Walnuts, you might think, are nothing to write home about but fresh walnuts are another matter as chef Skye Gyngell pointed out in her column in the Independent on Sunday this weekend. The tart was delicately nutty and crumbly, not bitter as walnuts often are but not oversweet like a pecan pie, despite the accompanying scoop of chestnut honey ice cream. It was a perfect foil for the lush, sweet Jurançon (not to be confused with the dry version, Jurançon Sec), accentuating its apricot fruit and making it open up like a peacock's tail. If you’ve got a booking at the restaurant before it closes on October 31st look out for it. Especially as it's only £5 a glass!

Image © Africa Studio - Fotolia.com