Cracked olives with fennel and Noilly Prat

At this time of year in the Languedoc the markets are full of bowls of every conceivable type of marinated olives - so hard to resist with an ‘aperitif’.

Yesterday at Saint Chinian the queues were so dense we could hardly get near them then spotted a gap in the crowds and took our turn. We went for some cracked olives with fennel, fierce and bitter yet strangely good with local wines such as Picpoul, dry rosé and aperitifs like the famous Noilly Prat which is made just down on the coast at Marseillan.

We had the slightly sweeter ambré in the fridge which was delicious (over ice, with a dash of Fernet Branca, in my husband's case!) but I think the original drier, herbier version would have been even better. Or even a martini had we been so minded.

We'd also bought some msemen, a wonderful flaky bread that a Moroccan woman was making by hand in the market to tear and wrap each olive in which seemed to add to the experience.

I suppose it’s the hot sunny weather but vermouth seems such a good drink at this time of year. And now we’re off back to cool, cloudy England :(

See also how pastis and olives make an excellent pairing.

Prawns and Aligoté

To those who have spotted on Twitter that I'm down in the Languedoc it might seem odd that to be drinking aligoté but we’d picked some up in Burgundy on our journey through France and wanted to try it out.

What better pairing than a plate of prawns from the local fish van that comes up to the village from Agde?

With seafood that fresh you don’t want anything too fancy from your wine so aligoté - Burgundy’s ‘other’ white grape apart from chardonnay - was an obvious candidate. What wasn’t so obvious was that the wine, which we bought from a small family domain in Saint-Romain called Barolet-Pernot, was six years old (so the 2008 vintage) and cost us just six euros - amazing for a wine that tasted as good as a premier cru Chablis. A real treat.

For a longer post on wine matches with prawns or shrimp as they’re called in the US see here.

Boeuf bourguignon and Saint-Romain

It should really come as no surprise that a beef stew made with red burgundy should pair with red burgundy but when you think about it it’s not a given. A rich stew cooked for hours in red wine accompanied with a light red burgundy doesn’t sound like a match made in heaven even if the cooking wine involved is burgundy.

But it works as I can testify from a meal at the Hotel les Roches in Saint Romain last week when a youthful bottle of Frederic Cossard’s delicious 2011 Domaine de Chassorney Saint-Romain ‘Sous Roche’ proved the ideal counterpoint to one of the darkest most intense bourguignons I’ve had for a long while, just lifting the flavours rather than being obliterated by them. I’m not at all sure that a more full-bodied burgundy let alone a lusher, riper pinot noir would have done any better.

Proof, if proof were needed, that the classic wine matches are hard to beat!

Sweetcorn, feta and green chilli waffles and pink grapefruit juice

Soft drinks don’t often feature in my weekly pairings but this combination of an inventive savoury breakfast waffle and some lovely fresh pink grapefruit juice at The Modern Pantry last week was spot on.

The waffle, which contained sweetcorn, feta, green chilli and curry leaf and was topped with crisp maple-cured (I think) bacon had that sweet/sour/spicy character that features in so many of chef Anna Hansen’s dishes and the pink grapefruit juice with its own sweet/sharp notes was the ideal match.

I think pink grapefruit juice is perhaps the easiest citrus to pair without the tartness of lemon and lime which frequently needs a correcting dose of sugar but fresher and less filling than orange juice. (Incidentally it was interesting that they’d filtered out the ‘bits’ or shreds of fruit pulp that so many people dislike)

It was also great with the sugar prawn omelette that my breakfast companion Signe Johansen ordered, one of the signature dishes at the restaurant.