Baklava and Moroccan mint tea

Although sweet wines like Samos muscat pair well with baklava sometimes you might not have a bottle or have decided you don’t want a further glass of wine and Moroccan mint tea is just as good.

It’s actually not just mint and hot water.

If you’re making it for one you put a green tea bag and a good sprig of mint and half to one teaspoon of sugar in a mug, top up with just under boiling water and leave for a couple of minutes to infuse. Even if you don’t normally take sugar in your tea, as I don’t, it works, the sugar reducing the slight bitterness of the tea and the mint.

And it’s marvellous with those honey-drenched pastries that they have all through north Africa and the middle east.

Last weekend we served some ready-made ones from Waitrose’s Levantine Table range along with a refreshing orange fruit salad with orange flower water but you can pick them up from any middle-eastern shop.

A simple and refreshing way to end a meal.

Photo by Lottie Griffiths on Unsplash

Gambas pil pil and albariño

Albariño is a well-established pairing for seafood but in fact it was the seasoning rather than the prawns that made this combination sing.

I enjoyed it, admittedly, in the idyllic setting of the Chiringuito Tropicana restaurant overlooking the beach at Malaga which puts you in the mood to like practically anything in your glass but the Mar de Frades is a reliable brand that I knew my friends would enjoy.

The 2023 - a little fruitier than I remember - sailed right through the meal but was stood up particularly well to the gambas pil pil, the Spanish name for prawns cooked with olive oil, chilli and garlic. It was a really punchy version but didn’t throw the wine in the least. Albarino can carry strong flavours.

You can buy it from Tesco currently for £17 - not cheap for Tesco but a good price for the wine which generally sells for over £20 elsewhere.

And - whisper it - Aldi has just introduced an albarino in a cheekily similar blue bottle in their Baron Amarillo range for just £8.99 which is definitely worth a whirl if you’re an albarino fan.

For other albariño pairings see The best pairings for albariño (and alvarinho)

For other prawn and shrimp pairings see The best pairings for prawns or shrimp

Eccles cakes and medium-sweet sherry

It’s a bit early to be thinking about mince pies though I’m sure there are some in the shops somewhere but Booths showed off their very tasty festive eccles cakes with a mince pie filling at their autumn tasting the other day.

What to drink with it though? Sauternes proved too light, port too strong and sweet and 15 year old amontillado too dry, in my opinion at least

I found myself yearning for a sweeter sherry - not as sweet as cream though that would work but a rich medium-sweet sherry which I recalled I had at home in the form of William & Humbert’s As You Like It. As its classified as a VORS (Very Old Rare Sherry) the constituent sherries are no less than 30 years old which you might think make it a bit grand for an eccles cake or a mince pie but if it’s a great match, why not?

You could always drink it with a basic off-dry amontillado instead, which I believe Booths stocks in its own label range, or even a cream sherry.

You can buy the As You Like It from Sandhams for £29.99 a 50cl bottle or The Wine Society for £31 - one of the rare occasions when TWS is more expensive than the competition.

For more suggestions as to what to drink with mince pies click here 

And for other amontillado sherry pairings here.

Apricot sorbet and moscato di Pantelleria

There were lots of interesting food and wine matches during my trip to Pantelleria and Etna last week with the Sicilian winery Donnafugata but the most surprising one to me was this pairing of an apricot sorbet and a light moscato, the 2022 Kabir.

Surprising because ice-creams and sorbets are hard to match. In the past I’ve found richer more liquorous wines and even liqueurs work best as you can see from this post.

What wine - if any - goes with ice-cream?

Like their famous Ben Ryé passito di Pantelleria, the Kabir is made from zibibbo but unlike Ben Rye the grapes are not sun-dried resulting in a lighter, more fragrant wine that was just 11.5% but one which worked really well with the sorbet.

What would you pair Ben Ryé with then? Depends a bit on its age. When it’s younger it’s rich and orangey, almost marmaladey so you can pair it with relatively light creamy pastries like cannoli or this ‘bacio Pantesco’, a deep-fried pastry filled with ricotta.

More mature ones develop rich treacley notes that work particularly well with a dark chocolate dessert or dried fruits such as raisins and figs, 

You can buy the Kabir in the UK for £32.95 from Vinum and £39.06 from Shelved Wine. 

(Apologies for the photo but I was a couple of spoonfuls in before I realised what a brilliant match it was!)