Ox cheek (again) and Jumilla

I know I talked about ox cheek a couple of weeks ago (with nero d’avola) but here it is again in an even better combination with Jumilla at a lunch hosted by wine importers Morgenrot at Bar 44 in Bristol.

Jumilla, for those of you who are not familiar with it, is a full-bodied red from the south-east of Spain based on the monastrell (mourvèdre) grape. This wine was the 2016 Goru 38 Barrels, a blend of monastrell and cabernet sauvignon. You can buy the 2015 version from Ake & Humphris in Harrogate.

What was clever about the match - part of a six course lunch in which all the pairings were really well thought out - was that it involved three elements that played to the rich almost porty sweetness of the wine: the braised ox-cheek which was cooked in red wine, calçots (which are basically young leeks and have a natural touch of sweetness) and an unctuously creamy cauliflower purée. Sipped alongside these rich, sweet and savoury ingredients (there was also a slice of aged sirloin) the Jumilla kicked beautifully into touch.

Given the other good matches which you’ll find on the site, it suggests that ox cheek (or tail for that matter) is the perfect match for the strong sweet reds that are so popular right now. And for other mourvèdres.

Try this delicious José Pizarro recipe for ox cheek

Cherries (and plums) with Central Otago Pinot Noir

One of the standard ways of devising a wine pairing is to pick out flavours in the wine and put them in the accompanying dish. Not too much or it can cancel out the flavour of the wine but done with skill, as it was by chef Des Smith at The Hunting Lodge, it’s pretty impressive.

The dish was an unctuous chicken parfait served with deep red cherries that had been macerated in pinot and a sliced - and I think also lightly pickled - plum. Two fruit notes that chimed in perfectly with their Central Otago pinot. (And also pretty good, it has to be said with their rather delicious Lagrein, a grape variety of which there is a tiny amount in New Zealand.)

The fact that the pairing was about the fruit not the parfait was underlined by the fact that I had a similar dish at Tantalus Estate on Waiheke the day before - this time made with duck liver and accompanied by pear and ginger which went really well with their pinot gris, which like most in New Zealand is made more in the Alsace style.

Often a successful pairing is more about the accents in the dish not the core ingredient. A smooth rich parfait flatters pretty well everything (except perhaps sauvignon blanc and other acidic whites) - it's the fruit you put with it that suggests the match.

Crubeens and Irish stout

I don’t drink beer often enough so I'm particularly pleased when I find a pairing that makes my match of the week slot

This was at Richard Corrigan’s new restaurant Daffodil Mulligan: crubeens, which are deep-fried boned, breaded pigs trotters, are the Irish answer to croquetas. They were served with crushed swede and, the key element in the pairing - Colman’s mustard (there must surely be an Irish equivalent?).

My friends had ordered a glass of Gibney’s stout (from a pub called Gibney’s of Malahide to the north of Dublin), a gorgeous velvety brew which tastes like Guinness used to but almost never does these days* and which was so good I had to order a half of my own.

It would obviously also go brilliantly with oysters. And crubeens would go with champagne - or Cava - if you were so inclined!

(*IMHO it’s served far too cold.)

Ox cheek ragu and nero d’avola

Nero d’avola may not be a grape variety you’re familiar with but in a recent blind tasting of 25,000 consumers carried out by Majestic it proved by far the most popular choice

So maybe it’s no surprise that it worked with a hearty pasta dish like the ox cheek and porcini ragu I had at Bomboloni in Bristol at the weekend.

The wine in question was drier than the appassimento style that proved so popular with Majestic’s customers (when you see appassimento on a label it indicates a sweeter style) but it was a lovely warm, rich wine called Plumbago which sounds like a painful back problem but is in fact a Sicilian flower.

I was chatting so busily to my friend that I failed to notice the vintage we were drinking but you can buy the most recent 2017 vintage from Exel Wines for £13.24 a bottle or £14.50 from winedirect.co.uk (£13.66 if you buy a case)

Here are some other nero d'avolas from an article I wrote for the Guardian a couple of years ago, if you're interested in knowing more.