Anchovy crisps and a pink Gibson

After hibernating virtually the whole of January I had a run of eating out last week which threw up a number of good matches but this slot is all about discovering more unusual wine and other drink pairings.

This week’s match of the week definitely falls into that category.

It was one of the bar snacks at The Lowback at Hawksmoor Wood Wharf which I *know* is co-owned by my son Will but that’s not the reason why it’s here. OK, only part of the reason 😉

The drink was a pokey but beautifully balanced Pink Gibson which is made from Absolute Elyx, Audemus Umami Gin, Aperitivo Co. Dry Vermouth and a Pink Pickled Onion (the pink comes from the hibiscus in the pickle) So basically a dry(ish) martini

And the snacks were some anchovy, whipped goat butter and pickled onion t=-opped crispbreads and a bowl of home-made (well, restaurant-made) pickles which chimed in perfectly with the cocktail

So it was really all about the pickles. I normally think of drinking lager with pickles but turns out dry martinis, especially a Gibson, work really well too.

I ate at Hawksmoor Wood Wharf as a guest of the restaurant

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.

Hake with cream and anchovy sauce and cava

It’s a pretty safe bet that if you have a wine-based sauce that an accompanying glass of the same type of wine will pair well with it so I was confident of ordering a glass of cava to go with a hake dish cooked with a cream, cava and anchovy sauce last week.

The restaurant was Rambla, a small Catalan restaurant in Dean Street in Soho which has been attracting a lot of favourable comment lately. Weirdly the dish was billed as ‘velveted’ hake which I suppose is an accurate description of the rich opulent texture of the sauce. It didn’t look much as you can see but the flavour was amazing - if you like anchovies which I most certainly do. The accompanying morel mushrooms were an extra bonus.

The cava which was made by Mirame wasn’t an exceptional one - no reason to expect more at £6.50 a glass - but it would interesting to try the dish with one of the new high quality caves de paraje - a new classification for top quality wines from the region. They do have Gramona by the bottle if you're in the mood for something a little flashier.

It would be well worth trying something similar at home to show off a good cava - or a bottle of champagne for that matter.

Anchovies and Txakoli

What pairing can I possibly I pick from a trip to San Sebastian, the most gastronomic city in Spain, possibly even in Europe?

Well, I’m going for a simple but brilliant one: anchovies and the deliciously crisp local white wine Txakoli.

You get this combination everywhere - the locals love their anchovies and take great pride in the ones they cure themselves.

This is a pintxo from Antonio bar in which they’re wrapped round some diced, spicy guindillas and some sweeter pickled (I think) green pepper, a punchy mouthful that would defeat most wines but surprisingly not the 11.5% txakoli which sailed both through them and practically everything else we threw at it over the 36 hours we were in the city.

The bottle to the right is made by Basque family producer Txomin Extaniz which cultivates the precipitous vineyards just outside the town which form part of the denomination of Getariako Txakolina. You can buy it from Ocado, Oddbins and Cambridge Wine Merchants for £14.99 or thereabouts* which is admittedly not cheap but it’s not an easy wine to produce and worth it for something quite unique.

There's also a quirky way of serving txakoli which is poured from a great height to preserve its slight spritz as this video explains.

(*Look out for promotions and, in the case of Ocado, of those 25% off deals!)