Sopa Azteca with pale ale

One of the things Mexicans seem to be particularly good at is soup and there’s a special one that is served around Day of the Dead called Soap Azteca which I tried in a restaurant called La Casa del Gigante in Patzcuaro.

It’s - or at least it was at this restaurant - a thick soup of blitzed beans and tomatoes topped with fresh cheese, avocado, smoky chiles, sour cream and crispy tortilla strips though there seem to be other versions including this recipe from the James Beard Foundation. (I don’t recall mine including chicken). 

Because it was so hearty it wasn’t a difficult dish to pair (soups can be tricky as you can see below) and went particularly well with the local Victoria beer which was basically a pale ale. (Wine is mega expensive here in Mexico so we’ve been mainly drinking beer.)

Anyway it was delicious and well worth trying to recreate at home.

See also Matching Wine and Soup

Wine, beer and other pairings with Mexican food 

Slow roasted seatrout and ‘pet nat’ perry

I’ve been on a cider weekend in Herefordshire this past couple of days so obviously trying lots of different ciders and perries. They included a new one from one of my favourite producers Tom Oliver called Almost a Pet Nat but Still a Tangy Perry (all his perries and ciders have quirky names)

It’s dry, gently fizzy and fresh-tasting.You can pick up the pears but there’s also a touch of citrus - the element that made it such a good match for a dish of slow-roasted sea trout that my mate Elly Curshen (aka Elly Pear) cooked for us. Even the accompanying hollandaise which was made with cider vinegar (by Dan Vaux-Nobes aka @essexeating) didn’t throw it.

Perry is a really useful drink when you’re looking for an alternative to dry white wine, especially with seafood. You can see other pairings here. 

If you want to try Tom’s it costs £12 for a full 75cl bottle from his website.

If you want to have a go at Elly’s recipe you can find a version here although the richer brown shrimp butter would suggest a white burgundy or other creamy chardonnay to me rather than a perry. Or a fuller, richer cider.

Salmon, apple, dill and cider

You’d think having come to Norway to judge the World Cheese Awards my pairing this week would involve cheese but we were tasting it in a competitive environment rather then enjoying it as part of a meal. And by the time we’d tasted 45 of them we were pretty well cheesed out.

So it was a bit of a relief to be offered a cheese-free meal at the Awards dinner at the Britannia hotel particularly when the pairings were so good.

The standout one for me was a cured salmon ‘mosaic’ or ballotine with pickled apple and a dill ‘emulsion’ which went brilliantly well with a 2021 pet nat (semi-sparkling) cider from Hardanger which picked up beautifully on the apple in the dish.

Having just written about how we need to put cider on the table it was good to see the Norwegians doing just that. They also served a sparkling cider as an aperitif. Norwegian ciders tend to be lighter and more delicate than ones of British origin as they generally use dessert rather than cider apples.

The main course pairing with reindeer and lingonberries was also excellent with a 2020 Alain Graillot Crozes-Hermitage and the dessert of a light milk chocolate bavarois with blackcurrant cream and ice-cream with a raspberry mead.

Impressively innovative pairing for such a big gathering (there were over 250 people present)

I attended the dinner as one of the Cheese Awards judges.

Cider and cheddar

Cider and cheese are natural bedfellows.

You may have had a pint of cider with a ploughman’s but if you want to elevate the combination to another level try this.

It’s a collaboration between one of our best cider makers, Tom Oliver and Sam Wilkin aka Cellarman Sam who came up with the idea of crafting a cider to go specifically with cheddar - called, appropriately, Cheddar on my Mind.

It’s a rich fruity cider that tastes almost like a tarte tatin and is just perfect with a mature farmhouse cheddar such as Montgomery’s, Keen’s or Pitchfork - and with other cheeses as I discovered to my cost.

Tom paired it with a Teifi gouda style cheese in the second round of our Battle of the Beverages at the Abergavenny Food Festival (me on wine, Tom on cider and Pete Brown on beer) and it won hands down despite my fielding a really good Ribera del Duero, the 2108 Pradorey Crianza from Finca Valdelayegua.

He also showed it at a 'cheese and cider summit' last week - an initiative to link cider with cheese in people’s minds. I certainly don’t have a problem with that!

For other cheddar pairings click here and for other food pairings with cider here