Warm fig and almond pudding with Château Coutet Barsac 1996

I think I’m a bit fixated with figs at the moment. Last week’s match of the week involved them and so does this week’s but it’s a totally different affair.

This is a dessert I had at Bordeaux Quay in Bristol on Friday on the eve of the annual Organic Food Festival. It was a bit like an Eve’s pudding - cooked fruit with a sponge topping - with a modern twist. The ‘sponge’ I think included semolina and I suspect the figs were cooked with red wine.

It was paired on the menu with a glass of Vidal Ice wine from Canada but our host, BQ's chef Barny Haughton, treated the table to a bottle of Château Coutet Barsac 1996 which was quite perfect, with that distinctive, sensual, slightly musky taste of noble rot and faint whiff of grilled hazelnuts. It would, of course, have tasted wonderful with all kinds of dishes - a classic apple or pear tart, poached peaches or nectarines, foie gras or Roquefort but this was a really glorious pairing.

Figs, blue cheese and Maury

We’ve been feasting on figs from our neighbours' fig tree in Grau d’Agde down in the Languedoc this weekend - all the more satisfying as I gather that back home Waitrose is currently selling them at 99p each.

Mostly we’ve just been eating them as they are: freshly pulled off the tree they need little adornment but I did try them with some thinly sliced bread and a decadently gooey cream cheese I discovered called Cancoillotte which was pretty good.

The dream combination though I think would be a ‘tartine’ or crostino smothered with some soft blue cheese - maybe Fourme d’Ambert, maybe Gorgonzola dolce - topped with a sliced or quartered fresh fig, a trickle of pomegranate molasses and a small chilled glass of Maury, the port-like sweet red wine from the Roussillon. Late summer bliss.

Boiled Ballycotton lobster and premier cru Chablis

One of things I enjoyed most on our recent trip to Ireland* was the seafood. The fish shop in Midleton, Co. Cork had a fantastic array of locally caught lobster, crab and prawns at very reasonable prices. They tasted great too - really fresh and sweet.

The other day we snapped up a couple of boiled lobsters at about 9 euros each and enjoyed them with some home-made mayonnaise, freshly baked soda bread and a bottle of Daniel Defaix Côte de Lechet 2000 we’d bought in Chablis earlier this year and had fortunately (given the price of wine in Ireland) taken with us. It had that wonderfully creamy texture that Chablis acquires with age but was still fabulously fresh.

I prefer a richer Chardonnay such as a Meursault with grilled or sauced lobster but Chablis - and other cool climate Chardonnays - hit the spot perfectly when it’s cold.

* apologies to those of you who are used to more regular updates for the reduction in postings over the past 10 days ! We were without a broadband connection for much of the time and the signal on my mobile connect device was too faint to upload material successfully. (Made for a thorough rest though!)

Smoked trout and artichoke linguini with a dry Pfalz Riesling

The other day I found myself at a meeting just round the corner from the newly opened Princess Victoria in Shepherds Bush in West London and popped in for lunch. It’s a splendid old building with a wonderfully baroque ceiling, one of the best I’ve ever seen in a pub.

It’s been taken over by Matt Wilkin who used to preside over the wine list at the two-starred Capital in Knightsbridge where he became one of the best sommeliers in London. Now he’s branched out on his own but has taken his two star list with him.

Well not the exact bottles, obviously but this is a wildly ambitious list for a pub - even a gastropub - with wines to suit every taste and pocket. There’s a regular list and a very well-priced fine wine list with mark-ups considerably more modest than those he used to impose at his former employer’s.

I took his advice on which wine to drink with the smoked trout and artichoke linguini with wild rocket and tarragon I had ordered and very much enjoyed the glass of 2007 Bassermann-Jordan, dry Riesling from the Pfalz he recommended. The crisp fruitiness of the wine worked perfectly with the smokiness of the trout, the creaminess of the sauce and the slight bitterness of the artichoke and rocket. It would have been easy to be carried away by the fact that this was pasta but the ingredients it was dressed with made the match. (Smoked fish and Riesling is always a reliable pairing.)

Even though The Princess Victoria is a bit of a trek from Central London and the Central Line is not currently stopping at Shepherds Bush station (though you can use the Hammersmith branch of the Metropolitan Line) I strongly recommend a visit.

The Princess Victoria is at 217 Uxbridge Road, London W12 9DH.
www.princessvictoria.co.uk