Chocolate and chilli cheesecake and Merlot

You may be unconvinced about the wisdom of incorporating chilli into achocolate cheesecake, let alone accompanying it with Merlot but bear with me!

This off-the-wall pairing is one I experienced last week at a monthly supper club in Topsham near Exeter run by a friend Marc Millon who owns a small Italian wine importing business called Club Vino. The meal was devised to celebrate his son Guy’s six week road-trip round the States this summer and as Guy also happens to be one of the collaborators on my Ultimate Student Cookbook we wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Guy and his girlfriend Claire recreated the cheesecake from one they ate on their travels. Now, I must confess I’m not a normally a huge fan of cheesecake, let alone chocolate ones but I have to say it was a triumph, the spiciness of the chilli and the tanginess of the lime cutting through the richness of the chocolate and cheese.

It also tasted curiously good with the Californian Merlot I was drinking - an inexpensive label called Wandering Bear. Merlot is a grape variety that is often described as having chocolatey notes itself but these would not normally be in evidence when paired with chocolate. But with this particular cheesecake it tasted great - the chilli and lime zest bringing out all its lush fruitiness.

You can try this trick with other soft full-bodied reds and chocolate for adventurous guests though I don’t promise it will always hit the spot. But it stands to reason when you think of it. Chocolate almost always works with red berries so why not with a drink that incorporates those flavours (port being another example)? Just don't try it with a wine with marked acidity or one that is too tannic.

Pot roast pheasant with St-Chinian

Once the game season starts to get into full swing my husband ventures into the kitchen. Pheasant, of course, doesn’t come into season until the 1st of October but our local butcher was obviously clearing out last year’s stocks and we picked one up for a song.

My husband pot roasted it with vegetables, spices and a heady concoction of red wine, brandy and port which as you can imagine created quite a powerful sauce for any wine to contend with so we pulled out a 2007 Thierry Navarre Le Laouzil St-Chinian we’d brought back from France. It’s a blend of Grenache, Syrah and Carignan - the latter not my favourite grape, generally - but it proved the perfect match, the wine standing up to the sauce, the sauce adding real elegance to the wine and bringing out its peppery top notes.

I remember visiting Thierry Navarre when we first went to the Languedoc in the early 1990s but his wines definitely have more finesse now. It’s stocked at £9.95 in the UK by Stone, Vine and Sun. Le Laouzil means ‘schiste’ in Occitan, according to the site.

Image © FOOD-micro - Fotolia.com

Braised Manx Loaghtan mutton and Crozes-Hermitage

Last Friday I attended the Soil Association annual Organic Awards lunch at Bordeaux Quay in Bristol. The menu was based on the winning ingredients which in the case of the main course was Langley Chase organic mutton served with chard and spelt risotto.

The Langley Chase sheep are a rare multi-horned primitve breed, Manx Loaghtan (right) which have a delicate gamey flavour and proved a brilliant match with the award-winning wine, which I helped to judge: a deliciously spicy Crozes-Hermitage 'Contreforts Du Delta' 2007. It's listed by Vinceremos at £12.99 but is currently out of stock which I suppose is gratifying but frustrating if you're inspired by the award and want to try it. Another Crozes - or a St-Joseph - should work as well.

Picture by Luke Potter

Tête de veau and Côtes du Jura rouge

Last week I was travelling back through France again and encountered a number of interesting matches but the one that worked best for me was in a modern bistro by the covered market in Besançon called La Table des Halles.

As we’d already kicked off the evening with quite an extensive tasting of natural wines (about which more later this week) we simply ordered a half bottle of a local red, a Côtes du Jura Rouge Tradition 2002 from Stéphane Tissot.

It’s the kind of wine that doesn’t go down particularly well on the British market, being light and slightly sharp but it was utterly perfect with a decadently fatty dish of tête de veau (calf’s head) served warm on a mound of sliced potato and apple, and pretty good with the equally robust stuffed brioche with mushrooms and saucisse de Morteau that preceded it. A ‘food wine’* if ever there was one.

Incidentally I’d recommend the restaurant, which has recently changed hands, as a good option if you’re ever in Besançon which is a really lovely old town. Not overpriced or stuffy (unlike some of the other restaurants we checked out) and with simple, satisfying food. We stayed in a really splendid modern B & B called La Maison du Verre which was also very good value.

* By a 'food wine' I mean a wine that doesn’t taste particularly exciting on its own but springs to life with food