Hake with cream and anchovy sauce and cava

It’s a pretty safe bet that if you have a wine-based sauce that an accompanying glass of the same type of wine will pair well with it so I was confident of ordering a glass of cava to go with a hake dish cooked with a cream, cava and anchovy sauce last week.

The restaurant was Rambla, a small Catalan restaurant in Dean Street in Soho which has been attracting a lot of favourable comment lately. Weirdly the dish was billed as ‘velveted’ hake which I suppose is an accurate description of the rich opulent texture of the sauce. It didn’t look much as you can see but the flavour was amazing - if you like anchovies which I most certainly do. The accompanying morel mushrooms were an extra bonus.

The cava which was made by Mirame wasn’t an exceptional one - no reason to expect more at £6.50 a glass - but it would interesting to try the dish with one of the new high quality caves de paraje - a new classification for top quality wines from the region. They do have Gramona by the bottle if you're in the mood for something a little flashier.

It would be well worth trying something similar at home to show off a good cava - or a bottle of champagne for that matter.

Flying fish cutters and Banks beer

A week without wine might sound like hell for wine lovers but to be honest in Barbados why would you drink anything else? Wine is expensive and there’s not much choice whereas beer is cheap and ubiquitous.

Even though we tried some craft beers we kept coming back to the island’s national beer Banks, a full-flavoured lager of 4.7% which invariably hit the spot. (You can read more about on the Beers of Europe website and buy it from them too if you’ve been to Barbados and are getting withdrawal symptoms)

It goes brilliantly with the flying fish ‘cutters’ - a fried fish sandwich or bun that you find on practically every menu and with the equally popular Bajan fishcakes which are actually more like fish balls and should always be freshly fried.

Of course you *could* also quaff a rum punch but I find most a tad too sweet though my mate Fiona Sims* (pictured above) makes an excellent one deviating slightly from the classic formula (one of sour, 1 1/2 (rather than two) of sweet (sugar syrup in her case), 3 of strong (we used Mount Gay rum) and 4 of weak (water rather than fruit juice). Mix, pour over ice-filled tumblers, then top with a good drizzle of Angostura bitters and a sprinkle of freshly grated nutmeg. Hits the spot every time!

*Author of The Boat Drinks Book if you want other cocktail inspiration!

Middle eastern-style lamb with grilled vegetables and a natural red wine

We all know that roast lamb is a great pairing with red wines but the assumption is often that it’s prepared in a classic French way so it was interesting to note over the weekend that if you give it a middle-eastern spin exactly the same applies

The dish was a fantastic plateful of food cooked by a chef friend of mine Chris Wicks: rare-roasted rack of lamb with a herby couscous salad, grilled vegetables and a yoghurt and tahini dip - all generously scattered with pomegranate seeds.

We drank a couple of reds with it - one of my favourite natural reds, the 2013 La Poudre d’Escampette, a vibrant blend of grenache and carignan from Alain Castex formerly of Le Casot de Mailloles in the Roussillon which I remember buying at a wine fair in France for about €16 or €17, The 2015 which is now sold under the Les Vins de Cabanon label is selling for roughly double that (it’s currently on offer at Buonvino for £28.80 although a company called Gourmet Hunters appears to be selling the 2016 for £19.10. (I’m not sure he has access to the same fruit though since his Casot de Mailloles days but the point is not so much the specific wine but the fact that this vibrant natural style of red really suits this kind of food, picking up in particular on the bright crunchiness of the pomegranate seeds.)

We also drank a magnum of 2005 rioja which paired well with the dish as rioja pretty well always does with lamb but I preferred the lighter wine.

See also

Wine & lamb: my 5 favourite pairings

Courgette, seed and curry leaf cake and dry German riesling

The more I taste authentic Indian food the less I think it causes problems for wine. A group of us cooked up a whole load of recipes on Saturday night including this savoury cake called handvo from Anjum Anand’s I love India.

It was based on semolina and gram flour and was flavoured with courgette, peas, curry leaves and pumpkin seeds. Despite also containing ginger and green chilli it was fragrant rather than hot and the most brilliant match for a lovely dry German riesling

The wine came from a producer I very much admire - Peter Jakob Kuhn from the Rheingau who works biodynamically. The wine is beautifully pure and fruity but not the slightest bit affected by the spice. In fact I think it was even enhanced by it. It makes the perfect aperitif.

You can buy the wine from Tanners shops and online and find the recipe - if you feel inspired to make it - on the Australian SBS site or, of course in Anjum's book.