Hake with pork dumplings and Côtes du Rhône

I suspect most of you know that you can drink red wine with fish these days but you may well stick to lighter reds like pinot noir. But this week’s match of the week proves you can drink a more full-bodied red if the food is robust enough.

The dish was part of fixed price menu at Breaking Bread, a pop-up restaurant on the Downs in Bristol hosted by two local restaurants, The Pony and Trap and a combined effort from Pasta Loco and Pasta Ripiena which have been closed during the Coronavirus pandemic.

As I ate with a friend who was writing a piece on the Bristol food scene we were allowed to dip into both but a dish of hake and pork belly dumpling with roasted hazelnut from The Pony was a definite highlight. Obviously the pork was one red wine-friendly element but there was also a rich deep meaty sauce which made the match with a big generous Côtes du Rhône from an enterprising co-op called Les Vignerons de Esterzargues surprisingly successful. It was the latest vintage of their Terre de Mistral (available from Buon Vino and Joseph Barnes among others in the UK) and full of vibrant fruit but not at all jammy. Just a delicious combination.

For other occasions when you can drink red wine with fish read When to pair red wine with fish

Pheasant terrine with Kings vintage cider

Pubs brewing their own beer has become quite commonplace but few make their own cider. Not that you’d expect anything less of The Crown at Woolhope which was nominated Cider Pub of the Year Pub three times recently at the the Great British Pub Awards in 2015, 2017 and 2018.

Owner Matt Slocombe, also happens to be a chef who used to run cider producer Weston’s restaurant Scrumpy House and has worked a great deal with cider over the years so it’s no surprise either that the food is perfectly attuned to it.

My favourite pairing at dinner at the weekend was this richly flavoured pheasant terrine which was served with gooseberry and sage and a quince and ginger chutney. He suggested we drank their full-bodied (7.3%) Kings Fine Vintage cider with it and it was spot on. It also went really well with my main course of pork belly with caramelised apple and quince as did Tom Oliver’s deeply flavoured Gold Rush no. 7, a collaboration with Ryan Burk of Angry Orchard in New York.

It’s great to be able to drink locally made drinks with locally sourced food like this. You’d be mad to drink anything but cider (and perry) in Herefordshire!

For other cider pairings see Top Food Pairings for Cider

I ate at The Crown as a guest of the restaurant.

Cappellacci with cime di rapa and alvarinho

OK, I know I wrote about dumplings last week and stuffed pasta isn’t *that* different but if they’re both delicious with wine why not?

This week’s match was at a new neighbourhood restaurant in Bristol called Sonny Stores which turns out to have quite a pedigree as the chef Pegs Quinn previously worked at the River Cafe then as head chef at the currently closed Bianchi’s and during the summer at the appropriately named Lockdown Pizza.

Anyway I didn’t know all this when I ordered the cappellaci* which are basically twisted ravioli, stuffed in this case with cime di rapa and bathed in a glorious puddle of melted butter. However I did anticipate they would go with a crisp dry white and so it proved in the case of a Quinta de Gomariz alvarinho (Portugal’s answer to albarino) which was still amazingly fresh for a 2017 vintage.

Not rocket science maybe but the temptation always is to reach for an Italian wine with a pasta dish isn’t it and this is proof that other countries can do the job too. (I also find Portuguese reds often work with Italian food.)

*Thanks to an instagram follower @deborahdalfovo for identifying the pasta shape as I’d forgotten to note it down!

Dumplings and grand cru Chablis

You might think dumplings were humble fare, not best suited to show off a great wine but as last week’s tasting lunch at Bob Bob Ricard proved, that’s not necessarily the case.

They laid on two from their largely Russian-inspired dinner menu - some lobster, crab and shrimp pelmeni which were served with a langoustine bisque and truffle, potato and mushroom vareniki (above) which came with a forest mushroom velouté.

Both were spectacularly good with a mature 2016 grand cru Chablis ‘Les Clos’ from Domaine Christian Moreau which sells for £100 on the list.

Of course it wasn’t the dumplings themselves that were the key to the match but the umami-rich fillings and soups in which they were served - shellfish on the one hand and mushrooms and truffles on the other.

And although the wine itself was expensive, at £10 for the mushroom dumplings and £14 for the loster ones, the dumplings are quite affordable.

Since wine is a feature of the restaurant it’s good to see a menu that’s designed to show it off.

I ate at the restaurant as a guest of Bob Bob Ricard who obligingly supplied the very professional photos given that mine were a bit rubbish and wouldn't have encouraged you to try the combination out at all.