Charcuterie and Beaujolais

With the unseasonally warm weather showing no signs of a let-up it’s time to revisit the classic combination of French charcuterie and Beaujolais - perfect for picnics and other outdoor eating.

Beaujolais has had a poor press in recent years but at its best - and the recent 2005 vintage is a great year - it’s a charming and seductively summery wine. I recently bought a bottle of 2005 Georges Duboeuf Chiroubles which Waitrose has been selling at the knock down price of £5.99 and it was quite simply delicious - full of vivid red cherry fruit. Many Pinot Noirs have followed the trend of red wines becoming increasingly full-bodied but this was beautifully balanced.

If you don’t pick a ‘cru’ Beaujolais like Chiroubles (there are 10, named after the individual villages in the region), make sure you buy a Beaujolais-Villages, a step-up in quality from basic Beaujolais.

Charcuterie, for those of you who are not familiar with the term, is a catch-all description for processed meat products, mainly based on pork. It includes pâtés, terrines (such as the Terrine Beaujolais featured today), rillettes, all kinds of preserved sausages (saucisson sec) and air-dried ham. A good selection with some cornichons (small pickled cucumbers) and a crusty baguette makes a fine meal.

Pork pie and pale ale

Today, being St George’s Day, what other pairing could I offer you but a classic British dish with a classic British beer?

Pork pies, for those of you who are unfamiliar with them are quintessential British pub grub, coarsely chopped or minced pork encased in crisp pastry. At least it should be crisp. Many pork pies suffer from spending days on a supermarket - or garage forecourt - chill counter so that the pastry become leaden and soggy.

A freshly baked pie, on the other hand is an irresistible treat. Just warm, oozing with savoury jelly, the meat sweet and flavoursome. The best come from the Leicestershire town of Melton Mowbray though I’ve had some wonderful pies from butchers in Yorkshire too. You can buy them online from Dickinson & Morris on www.porkpie.co.uk

The pale ale I would choose - and not simply because Madonna claims that it is her favourite beer - is Timothy Taylor's Landlord from Keighley in Yorkshire, a multi-award-winning, intensely hoppy brew that has four times been CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) Supreme Champion. Pale ale is the bottled version of the bitter you find in pubs so a best bitter would of course do equally well.

The match is so great because it contains two ingredients that pair brilliantly with traditional British ales, pork and pastry. Home made sausage rolls would be equally good.

Image by Elena Zajchikova at shutterstock.com

Salade Niçoise and Rosé

The weather has been so unseasonally hot over the last couple of days - well into the 20s (or the late 70s for those of you who prefer to think in Fahrenheit) - that I’m suddenly fast-forwarding to summer and one of my favourite meals, Salade Niçoise.

It’s one of those classic dishes over which strong views rage - over the presence or absence of tuna, anchovies or, more controversially still, green beans and potatoes. Jacques Médecin in his Cuisine Niçoise claims that the original was made predominantly of tomatoes and consists exclusively of raw ingredients (apart from hard-boiled eggs) and would not have been dressed with a vinaigrette, merely with olive oil. Seared tuna, a popular replacement for tinned tuna nowadays, is a totally new-fangled invention.

Personally I like to gild the lily so I break all the rules. I blanch some fine green beans and refresh them with cold water. I lay them on a plate and scatter them with small, sweet cherry tomatoes, some torn fresh basil leaves and some generous chunks of tuna (I like the Spanish tuna which comes in jars rather than in tins. Ortiz is a good brand). I drizzle all that with a little vinaigrette, top it with some halved or quartered hard boiled eggs over each of which I sometimes (unforgiveably) dollop a teaspoon of mayo. I drape anchovies over the top than scatter the salad with a handful of black olives. I serve warm, buttered new potatoes with it. And a glass of rosé, of course.

You can drink any rosé you like but I personally find the fruitier styles from Chile and elsewhere in the New World just a bit too sweet for this dish. I also find many Provencal rosés a touch wimpy. What you need is a bold, dry southern French rosé from the Rhône or the Languedoc. The rosés from Costières de Nîmes are particularly good. Or a Spanish rosado from Rioja or Navarra. But that would probably break the rules too.

Photo © Ivan Mateev @fotolia.com

Rabbit (or chicken) with spring vegetables and Viognier

On Saturday I was in London’s Borough Market which was full of the most wonderful spring vegetables - artichokes, broad beans, peas and asparagus. It reminded me of a dish I normally make this time of year when we’re at our house in the Languedoc in southern France which is rabbit braised with spring vegetables and Viognier.

It was one of those serendipitous dishes that just came together from the ingredients to hand: Rabbit, as those of you who have been to a French butcher will know, is hugely popular in France (no sentimentality about the Easter Bunny among the frogs . . . ) but you could just as well use chicken.

What you can buy at this time of year is baby artichokes which require less extensive preparation than the full-size ones, just removing the outer leaves and cutting them in half to remove the hairy choke. I always start off the dish frying off a few cubes of bacon (lardons) then sweat off a couple of sliced cloves of wet (new season’s) garlic and some sliced sweet white onions (the local ones in France come from Lzignan which is famous for the quality of its onions).

I pour in a glass of Viognier and let it bubble up then add the artichokes and a strip of lemon peel. I lightly brown the rabbit pieces and add them to the pot together with a pinch of herbes de Provence, chuck in another glass of wine and a little water, cover the pan and let the whole thing burble away very slowly for 45 minutes to an hour until the rabbit is almost cooked. I blanch a few fresh broad beans and peas and some chopped, peeled asparagus stalks (leaving the spears for another recipe) then add them to the pot and continue to cook until the vegetables are tender. (I add the veg at the end so they stay a nice bright green rather than turning to khaki sludge). Finally I stir in a handful of fresh soft herbs - parsley and a bit of chervil and tarragon if I’ve got it.

Well, this wasn’t intended to be a recipe but a wine match but once I’d started I thought I’d better finish in case you fancied trying it out yourself. The point about the story is the Viognier which is what I had to hand. (Domaine du Météore, if I remember rightly, which comes from just up the road.) And it worked really perfectly, adding a richness and lusciousness to the dish you wouldn’t have got from chardonnay. We drank the same wine with the dish too.

Another possibility, as a food writer friend I met in the market reminded me, would be Arneis the gently aromatic white wine, originally from Piedmont but now being increasingly produced in Australia and California. It might also work with a Pinot Gris if it didn't have too much residual sugar (i.e. didn't taste too sweet)