Spicy beef and Barbera d'Asti

Barbera wouldn’t have been the wine I’d have generally turned to with a beef dish that came accompanied by a spicy Thai relish but it worked surprisingly well.

The dish, you might be suprised to learn, was not in Shoreditch or Hackney but at a pub called The Black Bull in a picturesque small town called Sedbergh on the edge of the Lake district and the Yorkshire dales.

The kitchen is run by Nina Matsunaga who was born to Japanese parents but brings influences from all over Asia into her cooking. Intriguingly much of this is based on local native cattle breeds

The beef in this dish was Hereford beef sirloin from Howgill and had a rich flavour of its own but came with a spicy nam prik noom, a roasted green chilli dip from northern Thailand.

Nina's husband James, who is responsible for the really excellent wine list, suggested a vivid, juicy 2018 Barbera d’Asti called Bandita* from a natural Piedmontese producer called Cascina Tavijn. It was absolutely delicious - great with the beef and able to stand up to the spicy relish (though Nina had cleverly offset that with soy beans which did a similar job to rice in mitigating the heat.

Unfortunately it seems to be sold out in the UK but you could try a similar unoaked barbera or an orange wine which I think would also work well.

For other barbera matches see Top food pairings with barbera

I ate at the restaurant as a guest of the Black Bull.

Thai food and orange wine

Orange wine wouldn’t have been the first pairing I’d have turned to with Thai food but what I love about this business is that there are always opportunities to revise your opinion

It was actually the theme of a tasting organised by Donald Edwards the head sommelier at La Trompette and a past contributor to this website* who convenes a monthly get together for fellow wine professionals around a food and wine theme. (You can keep track of them via the somemondaysarebetter account on instagram)

This one which took place at Smoking Goat Shoreditch really intrigued me. There wasn’t a single wine and food combination that stood out - there were a lot of wines on the table and dishes were served in rapid succession but overall I thought the lighter wines with shorter skin contact, particularly those made from aromatic grape varieties worked best with the salads and grilled dishes and the deeper coloured wines with longer skin contact went better with the meatier dishes like the smoked brisket and long pepper laab and aged beef sirloin with smoked bone marrow and galangal relish. But orange wine certainly has the personality to stand up to the hot/sweet/sour flavours of Smoking Goat’s food.

Most intriguing wine of the tasting? A 2019 Polish roter riesling from a winery called Winnica Silesian whose site is unfortunately only available in Polish. I’m trying to track it down!

* you can read Donald’s article on orange wine here and more suggestions for orange wine pairings here

Stir-fried pork with Thai basil and Australian riesling

This week’s match of the week doesn’t come as a big surprise but it’s sometimes good to be reminded of tried and tested pairings rather than ones that come totally out of the blue.

The dish - Pad Krapow Moo - was from Kay Plunkett-Hogge’s Baan which I can strongly recommend for first-timers to Thai cooking, the recipes being both authentic and relatively simple.

Wimpily I scaled down the bird’s eye chillies to two - along with a large red chilli - rather than Kay’s 4-6 and think it could probably have done with another one and also added a good dash of fish sauce which was suggested in the alternative version. It also included a good handful of fragrantThai basil which you can now conveniently find in Waitrose.

The riesling was a 2016 Pacha Mama riesling from the state of Victoria which wasn’t quite as limey as the ones from the Clare and Eden Valleys but still with a strong citrus character that went with both the pork and the accompanying green mango salad. Given the wine is Australian it is somewhat bizarrely named after an Inca earth goddess so they also jocularly recommend it on the back label with llama cheese and barbecued guinea pig “or, for the less adventurous, pan-seared barramundi.”

Majestic used to stock it in the UK but I can’t now find it there on-line but it is still available Down Under. Similarly citrussy rieslings would obviously work too.

For other suggestions as to what to pair with Thai food see Which Drinks Pair Best with Thai Food

Is this wine the perfect match for Thai food?

Thai food is particularly difficult to match with wine. Not only do you have the heat to contend with but the tricky sweet-sour flavours and - as with many Asian cuisines - several dishes on the go at a time.

Up to now I’ve thought that off-dry pinot gris or riesling was the ideal pairing but after a meal at the much talked about Som Saa this week, an impossible to get into pop-up which has now found permanent premises in Commercial Street, I’m not so sure.

The food is authentic and therefore really spicy (and we didn’t have the hottest options!). Two dishes in particular, the som tam isaan (country-style green papaya salad) and pad prik king (red pork curry) really blew our socks off. A braised salted beef curry was challenging too.

I expected the medium-dry Markus Huber riesling on the list to be the best match but it was a improbably named German wine called Boogie from Friedrich Altenkirch in the Rheingau, a slightly drier but deliciously fragrant blend of sauvignon blanc, pinot blanc and riesling that sailed through.

Frustratingly the wine is not that widely available in the UK but Handford Wines told me on Twitter yesterday they occasionally have it. It’s imported into the UK by German specialist O W Loeb. For stockists in other countries see wine-searcher.com

For other ideas on what to drink with Thai food read

Which Drinks Pair Best with Thai food