Match of the week
Pasta with pork, peas and lemon and bardolino
So often a wine takes us through several courses these days (which, of course, is a virtue) but I’m rather arbitrarily spotlighting just one dish on the menu we had at Sonny Stores in Bristol the other night as the ideal match for the Bardolino we were drinking.
It was a pasta called paccheri served with a sauce of pork shoulder (cooked in milk, I would guess), with peas and lemon zest, a light summery combination that went perfectly with the wine
Bardolino is a light fruity red from north-east Italy, made from the same grapes as Valpolicella. (There’s a fuller description of it here)
To be honest it wasn’t the best example - sorry, Sonny’s*, you can do better - but there are more attractive ones out there including this one from Majestic which is very reasonably priced at £7.99 if you buy any six bottles. Which you always should at Majestic as their single bottle prices are generally a bit toppy. Oh, and chill it lightly too
* Their pasta is amazing though which is why I go there so often.
Polenta with roasted courgettes, tomatoes and basil and Bardolino
After months of lockdown it’s been such a pleasure to return to favourite restaurants like Elliott and Tessa Lidstone’s Box-E and I couldn’t have had a more perfect day to enjoy it. The food too - especially this quintessentially summery dish of courgettes, tomatoes and basil with the lightest, fluffiest polenta - was just perfect for sitting outside on a hot day.
We’d had a glass of orange wine (not on the list) with our starters so fancied moving onto a light red rather than back to a white and picked on the Raval Bardolino Classico, an Italian red that tends to get overlooked but actually hits the spot perfectly at this time of year. It was full of lovely fresh cherry fruit - we asked for it to be lightly chilled - and really matched our mood as much as the food. I’d also love it with cold meats and cheeses or with smoked duck
It’s not that easy to track down in the UK but you can buy it from a London deli and wineshop called 8 rocks for £13.75 (and, I've now discovered, from Box E themselves who have acquired an off-licence for £15).
The Raval family also has a rather glorious agriturismo if you fancy a trip to Lake Garda. Who wouldn't?
Bardolino Chiaretto and seafood pasta
Yesterday I had lunch with some old friends in a chic little Italian restaurant called Trenta. It’s in in the upwardly mobile neighbourhood just west of Edgware Road in London into which Tony and Cherie Blair have just moved. (It also has a Jimmy Choo shop two doors down. It’s that kind of ‘hood)
The food, well reviewed, didn’t disappoint and the highlight for me was a dish called fregola sarda ai frutti di mare - a light dish of prawns (shrimp) and other seafood cooked in a fresh tomato sauce with a curious small round pasta rather like outsize couscous grains. It looked very pretty especially with the bottle of rosato we were drinking - an inexpensive Bardolino Chiaretto 2006 - with a fresh crisp acidity that in some ways made it behave more like a white than a rosé.
Bardolino Chiaretto is one of those Italian wines that has improved hugely in quality over recent years. It used to be, frankly, quite wimpy but this was charming, full of wild strawberry fruit and a perfect foil for the delicate seafood. This isn’t the first time I’ve discovered dry rosé goes well with prawns. I suspect it’s partly a colour thing. The colour of the seafood prompts you to think of a pink wine.
It also went particularly well with two of other other dishes we chose - a dish of sauted baby artichokes, new potatoes and melted goats’ cheese and buffalo mozzarella with grilled vegetables.
Trenta is at 30 Connaught Street, London W2 2AF. Tel: 0207 262 9623. There’s a set lunch at a very reasonable £14.50 for two courses which for this posh part of London is great value.
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