Salt cod, oxtail and Ferñao Pires

It’s not often you have a wine flight with a tasting menu in which every pairing is so perfectly constructed that it’s almost impossible to say which was the best. Every match at Restaurant Nathan Outlaw deserved to be a match of the week but if pushed I’m going to go for this one because it was so unexpected.

It was course 4 and a beautifully balanced dish of salt cod (freshly salted, not dried) oxtail, crisply fried parsnip and chilli. Given the oxtail and the fact I’d drunk white wine up to that point I was expecting a red. But in fact sommelier Damon Little boldly stuck to white all the way through the meal and he was right - the richly textured Ferñao Pires from Quinta da Boa Esperança near Lisbon stood up to all the ingredients without overwhelming them in just the same way as the other elements in the dish respected the fish.

Ferñao Pires is a much underrated Portuguese grape variety - well, isn’t all Portuguese wine underrated? - with an exotic tropical fruit character but not in anyway coarse, confected or cloying. (You can buy it through Sommelier’s Choice in the UK)

While I’m at it let me tell you about the other course where I thought Damon might have brought in a red but which again worked with a white - in this case the Terrace 2015 from Keermont in Stellenbosch South Africa - a ‘Cape White’ blend of chardonnay, chenin blanc, sauvignon blanc and viognier - with a dish of turbot, and swede with red wine and sage. Despite the red wine sauce the white was perfect due, I suspect, to a generous amount of butter. (That wine comes from Swig)

If you’re not a white wine drinker don’t worry - there are plenty of reds on the list and I’m sure Damon could construct you a whole wine flight around them!

I ate at Nathan Outlaw as a guest of the restaurant.

Salsa verde and Chianti Classico

Wine pairing is much more about the way you cook a dish and the sauce you serve with it than it is about the basic ingredient and so it proved with this week’s match at the recently opened Brackenbury.

It was a dish of roast skrei cod with a potato, radicchio and sage bake and salsa verde, a punchy sauce of parsley, mint, olive oil, anchovy and capers* with which the elegant young Selvapiana Chianti Rufina we had chosen paired perfectly.

There was in fact quite a lot going on in the dish that assisted the match. The fact that the cod was roasted. The radicchio and sage - both slightly bitter - and the smoothing effect of the potato but it was the tangy salsa verde that clinched it.

Note: one of the reasons it worked was because the wine was both dry and lean. The salsa would have made a riper, more full-bodied red taste much sweeter, most likely unbalancing both the wine and the match.

Obviously the wine would work just as well, if not better, if the sauce had been served with lamb or veal.

* There’s a video of Danny Bohan of the River Cafe making a salsa verde here

For my full review of The Brackenbury click here.

Image © koss13 - Fotolia.com

Salt cod with ciambotta di peperoni and 2004 Argentiera, Bolgheri Superiore

Another interesting insight on pairing red wine and fish in Tuscany this week. We were served lightly salted cod with a rich tomato and pepper stew called ciambotta at Tenuta Argentiera which proved a perfect match for the mature 2004 vintage.

Like other wines in Bolgheri, the wine is a Bordeaux blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc but quite different in character from similar blends in the Bordeaux region which I’m not sure I’d pair with a tomato sauce at all. Much warmer, richer and sweetly mellow.

The dish was part of a buffet during which five different Argentiera wines were served with a wide range of dishes from crudo di pesce (raw seafood salad) to grilled ribeye to cheese.

As I’ve remarked before, Tuscans consider it perfectly normal to drink red wine right through the meal even though many producers now make some attractive whites and rosés.

We had a similar pairing in a trattoria called Cibreo in Florence - a dark, dense dish of squid cooked in red wine with a 2006 Stielle supertuscan (a younger vintage than is currently available on the UK market)

After a couple of days in Tuscany drinking rich full-bodied reds with fish seems quite normal.

*Here are the details of the current 2008 Argentiera

Seared cod with red wine sauce and Premier Cru Santenay

There’s still a bit of resistance to drinking red wine with fish, let alone with a white fish like cod but last week I had the perfect dish to combine with a good red burgundy.

It was prepared for us by Gordon McDermott the head of Waitrose’s very swish new Cookery School when we went for a tasting the other day and I imagine was an easy dish to make. The cod was seared then served on a bed of wilted, shredded leeks with a red wine and butter sauce that was probably made by deglazing the pan with red wine and whisking in soft butter.

It was a perfect match both with the lovely Domaine Lucien Muzard 2008 Santenay Premier Cru La Maladière (£19.99 in 20 selected branches and Waitrose Wine Direct*) which I thought tasted of autumn raspberries and with the truly delicious 2008 Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir from Merrick’s Grove (£23.99 from only 2 branches and Waitrose Wine Direct), one of the best Aussie Pinots I’ve tasted. Great for a romantic dinner for two.

* Neither of these wines seem to be on the site yet. I'll try and find out when they're coming in.