Fish tacos and Clare Valley riesling

Last week I pushed the envelope a bit further with wine and spice pairing with a Wine and Chilli dinner at The Spicery in Bristol

This is a really great little company which sells spices tailor-made to a specific recipe so you don’t have to buy more than you need and don’t get left with musty spices that have no taste (mea culpa). You can set up a monthly subscription which would make a great Christmas present for a keen cook.

Their development chef Matt Williamson (ex Flinty Red for the benefit of fellow Bristolians) devised a brilliant menu which took us through a whole variety of chillies (including some ancho chilli-spiked chocolate brownies) which I matched with a range of different wines.

The most popular pairing was a zingy 2015 Baily & Baily Clare Valley riesling (which is currently selling for a bargainous £6.49 at Waitrose) with a fish taco with a fruity aji amarillo sauce. It was just like having an extra squeeze of lime with the dish - a style of wine well worth thinking about for other fresh-tasting Mexican dishes.

Incidentally The Spicery is having an open day on Saturday December 10th if you’re in or around Bristol and want to go along and see what they do.

If you’d be interested in having me host an event for you do get in touch at fiona@matchingfoodandwine.com.

Guacamole, salsa and a citrussy pale ale

Last Friday night Helen, our designer, and I had a bit of a works outing to our colleague Monica Shaw's who works on the nuts and bolts of the website. She cooked up an amazing Mexican feast of which this was just one element but it was striking how much better the whole meal went with beer than with wine.

It wasn’t that the wine was bad. We had a deliciously limey Peter Lehmann Wigan riesling which went extremely well with the guacamole too - as did a Sauvignon Blanc and a new English rosé from Dunleavy vineyards just outside Bristol.

But the beers we had - a selection from Helen’s other clients Wild Beer Co, Arbor Ales and the Bristol Beer Factory - were just so easy with the widely varied ingredients and dishes we threw at them.

I’m singling out the guacamole (which was properly chunky) with our first and second beers, Wild Beer Co’s intensely hopped Fresh and Madness IPA because they both had a citrussy edge that went brilliantly with the lime and coriander in the dip.

We also had roast squash-stuffed tamales with mole poblano, a big roast corn and avocado salad, refried beans, stuffed jalapenos, tomato salad and homemade pickles a punchy/spicy combination which went really well with an Arbor Yakima Valley American-style IPA. (A red wine big enough to handle all those powerful flavours wouldn’t have been as refreshing)

I can’t pretend we found a beer to go with the chilli-spiked mango fruit salad and ice-creams and sorbets but we finished with a flourish with some intensely chocolatey truffles with candied chillies and the Bristol Beer Factory’s raspberry stout - an unlikely but knockout combination.

It was the big flavours in the beers that carried the day too. Light lagers and more traditional ales wouldn't have worked as well.