Japchae and a Happy Ending cocktail

I really think there are some cuisines that work better with cocktails than wine and Korean is one of them as I was reminded at the opening of celebrity chef Judy Joo’s JinJuu last week

The cocktail was a saucily named Happy Ending (if you don’t know why that's dodgy check here), a refreshing, orangey blend of Absolut Mandrin, Cranberry Juice and club soda.

It went brilliantly well with the food at the launch including crab cakes and mini bulgogi-style burgers but particularly with a spicy noodle dish called Japchae which consists of sweet potato noodles with stir-fried vegetables and a punchy soy and sesame sauce.

You could try a wine like a torrontes or gewurztraminer with it but the sweet orange flavour of the cocktail works so well.

Poached salt pollock and cauliflower with Julien Meyer's 'Nature' Sylvaner/Pinot Gris

Like half the world it seems at the moment I’m a bit obsessed with cauliflower so was drawn to this dish at Birch in Bristol on Friday like a moth to a flame

It was a brilliant assembly of different tastes and textures - very lightly salted, flaky fish (who knew pollock could taste so good?), some deeply savoury sautéed cauliflower - and a few finely sliced florets - the crunch of slender shavings of radish and the richness of almond butter - so perfect with the cauliflower. It was satisfying at so many levels.

With it - and most of the rest of the meal - we drank a bottle of biodynamic producer Julien Meyer’s 2012 Nature from Alsace, an unusual and fragrant blend of pinot gris and sylvaner - and only 11.8% incidentally. I love sylvaner - it’s so fresh and fragrant - and actually applied a lovely lift to the whole dish.

You could have drunk any number of wines with it: almost any crisp not overly flavourful white such as a verdicchio or grüner veltliner would have worked well too but this was spot on.

Tortilla chips, salsa fresca and a virgin mojito

My first meal of the new year was a Mexican which might sound unusual in London but not much is open on New Year’s Day. We went to Wahaca which has a number of restaurants around the capital with some good non-alcoholic drinks options.

I ordered a virgin mojito which hit the spot perfectly with a bowl of tortilla chips and salsa though - tch, tch Wahaca - the salsa didn't taste quite as 'freshly made' as the menu claims - at least the previous day, I’m guessing, given that New Year’s Day is a public holiday. It also paired well with the fish taco I ordered though less well with my daughter’s burrito. A light drink like this needs bright flavours.

I’m assuming it was made roughly like this recipe in the Difford’s Guide. Anyway it was super-refreshing and proves yet again that soft drinks can be just as interesting a pairing for food as alcoholic ones*.

*There’s obviously an appetite for them. There's a whole Pinterest board devoted to them and very pretty they look too!

My 12 best drink pairings of 2014

In my annual round-up of the best matches of the year I usually end up listing around a third of my matches of the week so I thought this year I’d set myself the the challenge of picking one from each calendar month.

Of course that suffers from the drawback that some months have more than their fair share of good pairings but you can always trawl through the rest if you feel inspired.

Looking back through 2014 I see that as usual I’ve picked a lot of seafood pairings - maybe because meat matches are more obvious. And - unusually for me - a fair number of desserts. But although a lot of my drinking comes from France - only two make the final 12.

January - Grilled tuna tart and Camus Ile de Ré double matured cognac.
The standout pairing from a cognac lunch that was part of the 2014 International Cognac Summit. The cognac, which had a slightly salty edge, was served frozen (i.e. ice cold rather than solid). A real show-stopping start to the meal. (You can also find the cognac and cheese pairings our group came up with here.)

February - Chocolate marmalade slump cake and tokaji
A dessert I made for friends inspired by a new batch of homemade marmalade. The Tokaji was a 2002 Kiralyudvar 6 Puttonyos and the recipe came from Lucas Hollweg’s marvellous Good Things to Eat. Dark chocolate and orange - what's not to like?

March - Sweetbreads morels and madeira
Served as a small plate by one of my favourite local restaurants Bell’s Diner which is a good plan as sweetbreads are incredibly rich. The madeira - a chiled 5 y.o. Barbeito rainwater - handled the dish perfectly

April - Fruit and flower tart with German auslese riesling
This dessert at the Ledbury was certainly the prettiest of the year but the match with a Keller Dalsheimer Hubacker Riesling Auslese 2004 from the Rheinhessen was as spectacular

May - 40 day aged fillet of black angus beef with Henschke’s 2010 Mount Edelstone Shiraz
No, not rocket science but sometimes you can’t beat the classics - and a welcome reminder (at a wine dinner at Allium in Bath) just what a good buy the Mount Edelstone Shiraz is.

June - Crème brûlée and carthagène
You don’t expect to find a great wine and food pairing (or even anything edible) at a trade show but Foncalieu had the inspiration to show a selection of their wines with canapés devised by Cyrus Todiwala of which these saffron and cardamom tarts and carthagène - a sweet liqueur - was the standout combo. I also managed to twist his arm to give me the recipe which you can make without the pastry cases if you prefer

July - Cherry and pistachio cake and Sweet Agnes riesling
Yet another dessert from the wonderful Honey & Co cookbook which I paired with a Seifried Late Harvest riesling from New Zealand. (There’ll be lots more New Zealand pairings coming up as I’m heading there next month for the first time since 2000. Whoo hoo!)

August - Veal chops and Eben Sadie Sequillo red
August is a bit of an odd month unless you’re on holiday but I had a great lunch with the guys at Bordeaux Index at Hix Oyster and Chop House in Farringdon. I was expecting them to order Bordeaux but they picked this cracking 2011 vintage from one of my favourite South African producers Eben Sadie. Again, classic.

September - Salmon uri with spicy ginger beer
I’m always pleased to find an inspiring alcohol-free pairing and this one - at the newly opened Palomar in Soho - proved you don’t necessarily need wine to hit the heights. A reminder that it’s time I went back there

October - Currywurst and pils
THE pairing, obviously, if you go to Berlin as we did for the first time this year but why knock it? What else would you drink with currywurst? Ace!

November - Scallop and mango ceviche and Montes cherub rosé
I admit the location had something to do with this. Nothing beats tasting a wine in the vineyard the grapes come from. Especially at sunset. But the combination of the sharp/sweet ceviche and strong fruity rosé was terrific anyway you look at it.

December - Smoking Goat fish sauce wings and Peter Lauer ‘Fass 16’ dry riesling The third riesling pairing of the line-up. Sublime spicy wings from one of the hippest restaurants in town and a glass of classy German riesling. Can’t beat it.

The best match? Has to be the tuna tart and cognac. I wrote back in January “If I come across a more clever or imaginative pairing this year I’ll be lucky” and, indeed, nothing beat it.

And my wine of the year? Gotta be riesling which has to be one of the most food-friendly wines on the planet. See other pairings here and here.