Anchovies and alvarinho

If you don’t like fish don’t go to Olhao! Restaurants in this bustling fishing port on the Algarve serve almost nothing else which is fine with me but less good for people, like my friend J, who has a real phobia about fishbones.

That sadly meant he had to miss out on these excellent fresh anchovies - even though they were already filleted he still found their fishiness offputting.

They were scattered with pink peppercorns - an underrated spice that gave them a fragrant, spicy lift that went particularly well with the crisp young (2017) Torre de Menagem alvarinho/trejadura we’d ordered (from the Monçao e Melgaço sub-region of Vinho Verde up in the north of the country. Alvarinho is Portugal's equivalent of Spain's albarino.)

It really underlines the fact that anchovies pair well with almost any crisp white (or rosé) wine - I also enjoyed them last year in San Sebastian with Txacoli.

Pumpkin ravioli and a Douro white

You wouldn’t necessarily expect an Italian dish like pumpkin ravioli to pair with a Portuguese white but the match was just perfect.

The wine, Planalto Branco Reserva 2012 was one of those lovely lush whites from the Douro that I think I enjoy even more than the region’s highly respected reds - a blend of the local Viosinho, Malvasia Fina, Gouveio and Códega grapes.

It had the fullness and richness to carry the pumpkin ravioli - a ready-made pasta from the Co-op that had a really authentic sweetness. I served it simply with melted butter - it could have done with a little sage but I don’t think that would have affected the pairing.

The great advantage about rather more obscure wines like this is that they’re priced to encourage people to experiment. At £6.49 if you buy 2 bottles (at Majestic) it’s an absolute steal.

I reckon it would be good with salt cod fritters too - it makes a great aperitif. And if you didn’t have a Portuguese white to hand? I’d go for a chardonnay.

Image © vincenzoangeli - Fotolia.com

Chargrilled endive, hazelnut crumble and Bayonne ham with white Bairrada

I’m having a bit of thing about Portuguese wine at the moment - it’s so great with food and such brilliantly good value. Especially on restaurant wine lists where it’s invariably underpriced in comparison to better known wine producing countries and regions

So I zoomed in on the Filipa Pato Enscaios Branco Bairrada 2012* when I spotted it on the Grainstore list the other day hoping it would go with the very different flavours and textures of the dishes we’d ordered.

It did but I think this was the best match: a warm salad of chargrilled endive, hazelnut crumble, prune vinegar (didn’t pick that up) and Bayonne ham with a nicely judged combination of sweetness, bitterness, nuttiness and umami which played beautifully with the lushness and richness (but dryness) of the wine, a blend of Arinto and Bical.

It was also good with my more raw-tasting starter of sprouting beans and seeds, miso aubergine and crispy chicken skin which I guess had a fair amount of umami too.

(The menu matches the endive dish with one of the house cocktails - a green tomato Margarita which I must say sounds unlikely. Maybe the numbers have slipped out of sync. Then again maybe not. I need to go back to find out - at least that's my excuse.)

*Happily it's available at Oddbins at £11.75

For my review of Grainstore click here though I did encounter a couple of less successful dishes this time.

Grilled sardines and - eeek! - Sir Cliff's Onda Nova Verdelho

As the best summer for a barbeque for some years it’s been a frustrating time for us flat-dwellers but when I was sent some fresh sardines* the other day I knew I was going to have to find some way to grill them outside if the flat wasn’t going to smell of fish for days.

We ended up buying a portable barbecue and cooking them in the gardens below and I have to say they were all the better for our campfire-style efforts. Sardines are made to be grilled.

They’re also made to be washed down with Portuguese Verdelho, a terroir-based match that makes eminent sense. My husband had discovered a bottle labelled Onda Nova on the ViniPortugal stand at the Bristol Wine and Food Fair the other day and we’d enjoyed its fresh green sappy almost Vinho Verde-esque character. It also picked up well on our accompanying veg: grilled fennel, courgettes (zucchini) and baby artichokes and on the radishes we nibbled while we were waiting for the fire to catch.

It wasn’t until I read about the wine afterwards I discovered that the estate Adega do Cantor, which is based in the Algarve, is owned by none other than British pop legend Cliff Richard, whose silver signature adorns the back label. The wine - according to Sir Cliff who I imagine doesn’t make it himself - is fermented in stainless steel and filtered and bottled with minimal handling within six months of vintage. It's a substantial 14% but wears its alcohol lightly.

Would I have enjoyed it as much if I’d known beforehand? I probably wouldn’t. I’d have expected it to be confected and commercial and I would have been wrong. You can buy it from everywine.co.uk for £73.59 - not bad but not nearly such a bargain as it was at the fair where we snapped it up for £7.99 a bottle. (It would have been €8.50 direct from the site but is unfortunately sold out. It might be worth keeping an eye out for the 2009 vintage)

*By mail by a firm called Fish for Thought which originally traded as Martin's Seafresh and was one of the original online fish suppliers.

Image © ruigsantos - Fotolia.com