Indian veggie food and sauvignon blanc

After a lively discussion about what to drink with curry on my #weekendwinematching slot it was good to discover a new angle on pairing wine with Indian food.

I was making a couple of dishes (with friends on Zoom) from Roopa Gulati’s excellent new India: The World Vegetarian which included paneer with spinach and Punjabi cauliflower with ginger. These are much lighter and fresher than the kind of heavily sauced Indian recipes you would find in the average curry house and I was thinking they might go with a dry rosé but in fact they absolutely sang with a bottle of 2018 Chateau Bauduc sauvignon blanc I had open after an online tasting earlier that day.

Makes sense when you think about it. You could have easily have added a squeeze of lemon to either dish and the refreshingly citrussy sauvignon had a similar effect.

The following night I tried three other dishes from the book - bhel puri, aubergines with a very garlicky tomato masala and a lime dal which went brilliantly well with a juicy, smashable Beaujolais that my local wine bar Kask is selling on tap which proves you can drink light dry wines with spicy food - although neither meal was that hot.

I still like aromatic wines (and beer, of course) with Indian food but it’s good to know they’re not the only option.

What wine to pair with curry: my top 5 picks

* weekendwinematching is a fortnightly live discussion on my @winematcher Twitter feed. Follow me to keep track of when the next one is!

Stir-fried pork with Thai basil and Australian riesling

This week’s match of the week doesn’t come as a big surprise but it’s sometimes good to be reminded of tried and tested pairings rather than ones that come totally out of the blue.

The dish - Pad Krapow Moo - was from Kay Plunkett-Hogge’s Baan which I can strongly recommend for first-timers to Thai cooking, the recipes being both authentic and relatively simple.

Wimpily I scaled down the bird’s eye chillies to two - along with a large red chilli - rather than Kay’s 4-6 and think it could probably have done with another one and also added a good dash of fish sauce which was suggested in the alternative version. It also included a good handful of fragrantThai basil which you can now conveniently find in Waitrose.

The riesling was a 2016 Pacha Mama riesling from the state of Victoria which wasn’t quite as limey as the ones from the Clare and Eden Valleys but still with a strong citrus character that went with both the pork and the accompanying green mango salad. Given the wine is Australian it is somewhat bizarrely named after an Inca earth goddess so they also jocularly recommend it on the back label with llama cheese and barbecued guinea pig “or, for the less adventurous, pan-seared barramundi.”

Majestic used to stock it in the UK but I can’t now find it there on-line but it is still available Down Under. Similarly citrussy rieslings would obviously work too.

For other suggestions as to what to pair with Thai food see Which Drinks Pair Best with Thai Food

Mrs Kirkham’s Lancashire cheese and Casillero del Diablo Merlot

Those of you who visit the site regularly will know that I’m a great advocate of drinking white wine with cheese and a bit of a sceptic about how well red wine pairs with it.

So I admit I was surprised - as many of you might not have been - just how well an intensely fruity 2018 Casillero del Diablo Merlot went with this famous British territorial cheese.

I have to confess I’m not a massive fan of the wine, well regarded though it is. For me, it’s just too full on with too much sweet, lush plummy fruit and a slightly weird smokey edge, presumably from the (well-charred, I imagine) American oak barrels in which it is apparently aged.

The Lancashire - from Mrs Kirkham- has a gorgeous rich buttery, clotted cream character which made the combination like topping a scone with a dollop of jam. The cheese rounded out the wine’s rougher edges and made it taste gorgeously velvety and smooth. It was pretty good with a Lincolnshire Poacher the following night too.

By the way Mrs Kirkham’s is one of the artisanal cheeses that has been recently highlighted as under threat from the temporary closure of restaurants and many specialist cheese shops but you can - and really should - buy it online. Mine came from the excellent Courtyard Dairy.

The Casillero del Diablo merlot is widely available for £8 though frequently discounted.

Koftas with tahini and orange wine

I’ve been enthusiastically cooking from Sami Tamimi’s and Tara Wigley's new book Falastin this past couple of weeks and made their recipe for koftas with tahini, potato and onion over the weekend during a Zoom cooking session with a couple of pals in Bristol.

I picked an orange wine, Bulgarian Heritage from a producer called Via Vinera to pair with it on the basis that middle-eastern lamb dishes generally go well with orange wine but in fact it was the very rich tahini sauce which was spiked with lemon juice and garlic that really made the wine sing.

Sami, as you may or may not know, is Yotam Ottolenghi’s business partner and collaborated with him on the wonderful Jerusalem and Ottolenghi Simple but this is a tribute to his home country of Palestine.

The wine which comes from the 2018 vintage is made from a Bulgarian grape called dimyat and is quite aromatic with a pronounced flavour of dried apricots, quince, and yes, orange. Not at all scary so quite a good bottle to try if you’ve never had orange wine before. Particularly if you’re eating lamb although the Via Vinera website also charmingly suggests it as ‘demanded company’ for seafood salads, gnocchi and pesto, salmon trout baked in salt, grilled pork chops and soft cheeses.

You can buy it from the Wine Society if you’re a member for £51 a case of six (the equivalent of £8.50 a bottle but they’re only doing unsplit cases at the moment) but I’m confident that other orange wines would work too.