Cozido and Cortello

We went to a Portuguese evening at a local cafe, Tart in Bristol last week, which does a monthly supper club. The food was great, especially a main course of cozido, a substantial, saffron-laced stew of chicken, pork, chorizo and beans that would have actually made a meal in itself.

With it we drank a Portuguese red of great personality called Cortello, a well-priced blend of Aragonez and Castelao, which comes from the Lisbon region. It was quite light but had plenty of structure to stand up to the stew. Interestingly I thought it went better than a fuller-bodied Dao of the same vintage. Saffron seems to have the effect of accentuating wood in a wine.

The wines were provided by a new Bristol wine merchant Grape & Grind run by Darren Willis who used to work at London wine merchant Philglas & Swiggott. It has a really interesting range.

Mackerel en escabeche with manzanilla sherry

No apologies for returning to one of my favourite drinks, manzanilla sherry, as it’s such a versatile food wine. This time I found a felicitous match with a dish of mackerel en escabeche which was served at one of my regular hangouts in Bristol, Quartier Vert.

Mackerel, as I’m sure you know, is an oily, rich-tasting fish which needs robust treatment in the kitchen and an accompanying drink with real bite and attack. The escabeche treatment (sousing the cooked - usually fried - fish and any accompanying vegetables in spiced vinegar then leaving it to marinate for several hours) suits it perfectly and also creates a useful, inexpensive starter that you can make well ahead. They have a similar preparation in the Caribbean where it is called escovitch.

Needless to say your manzanilla, like other fino sherries, should be served chilled from a freshly opened bottle. If you don’t drink it regularly, it’s best to buy it in halves.

Chicken pot pie and perry

In the wake of the great cider boom that has gripped the UK over the past year or so perry - which is cider made from pears - is also undergoing a renaissance. Typically drier than cider it goes well with the sort of dishes with which you’d drink a light dry white wine like a Chenin Blanc or a Chardonnay.

The other night I enjoyed a half pint of draught Weston’s Herefordshire Country Perry with an absolutely exemplary organic chicken, leek and mushroom pot pie at my new local The Kensington Arms in Bristol which turns out to be a real gem. The sauce was creamy with just a hint of mustard, a bitter note which stopped the dish being over-rich and brought out all the flavour in the perry. It also took a side dish of strong, irony fresh spinach in its stride.

Other dishes - a chunky terrine of chicken and veal with pistachios and onion chutney, a very crabby crab linguine, some rich, gamey faggots (meatballs made with offal) served with cauliflower cheese and Guinness gravy, and an intensely blackcurranty summer pudding were first rate. And we’ll certainly be back for the fish and hand-cut chips which we eyed covetously on the next door table.

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