Asparagus with poached egg, watercress sabayon and Chateau Doisy-Daene Sec

Asparagus and fine white Bordeaux sounds a bit of a risky wine match but the way the dish was prepared made it a standout pairing.

Mind you, if anyone could get it right it should be wine auction house Bonhams in London who featured it on the menu of their first weekly supper club last week.

The dish included a Burford Brown poached egg and watercress sabayon which both added texture and richness to the dish and there was also some confit lemon which helped build a bridge to the still relatively young, but already lush wine.

Two of the other pairings at the dinner were spot on too: cod tempura and oyster mayonnaise with a crisp 2013 Vermentino di Bolgheri and gariguette strawberries with a delicate sweet red Aleatico Sovana Superiore, also from Tuscany. I was less keen on the powerful Alvaro Palacios Priorat that had been paired with the delicate main course lamb dish but that probably says as much about my personal taste as the match itself.

As I said Bonhams has started this weekly dinner which is a well priced £45 + another £35 for wine pairings which is good value for the central London location (just off Bond Street), the standard of food and the quality of the wines. The restaurant functions as a wine bar during the day so you can dip into their list at other times. Opening hours on their website.

For more asparagus matches see Top Wine Pairings with Asparagus

I ate at Bonhams as a guest of the restaurant.

Eggs Royale and St Austell Clouded Yellow wheat beer

I haven’t had a beer as match of the week for a while but with the British Guild of Beer Writers dinner and Dea Latis Beer and Breakfast tasting last week I could hardly have chosen anything else.

This combination edged it for me - and for the others who attended the beer breakfast tasting (Dea Latis is a group of women in the beer industry): Eggs Royale is Eggs Benedict made with smoked salmon rather than ham and, in this case, a light, lemony hollandaise sauce which paired perfectly with the citrussy beer.

Clouded Yellow is a 4.8% bottle conditioned wheat beer flavoured with spices and vanilla - St Austell's take on a witbier. (It’s generally served clear but you can enjoy the last remants cloudy by swirling the beer in the glass.)

It’s a very summery brew and a very suitable one for breakfast - or rather brunch. We didn’t get stuck in, you’ll be glad to hear, until 10.30!

According to the St Austell site it also goes particularly well with Thai curry and you could, of course, drink other witbiers with an eggs royale or straight smoked salmon on its own.

To read about the other contender for match of the week at a highly unusual champagne dinner click here.

Soft boiled eggs with anchoiade and radicchio and Bourgueil

Last week’s best pairing was at a fascinating meal I had at Les 110 de Taillevent in Paris which I’ll be writing up in more detail so here’s an off-the-wall match from last night’s feast at The Unfiltered Dog - a pop up restaurant at the Real Wine Fair run by the team from Terroirs.

Basically it was a souped up egg mayonnaise - the eggs fashionably soft-boiled, the mayo made with anchoiade (anchovy paste) and accompanied by bitter radicchio leaves. A simple and very do-able starter.

By rights it shouldn’t have worked with the Domaine de la Chevalerie Bonn' Heure Bourgeuil 2010 - a light Loire red we had ordered to go with our meal but you know what? Sometimes these off-the-wall pairings work. There’s a saltiness in anchovies and a bitterness in radicchio that accentuated the very appealing fruit in the wine.

It also rubbed along fine with some other challenging dishes - scallops with XO sauce and pork belly with kimchee only faltering at the ferociously hot mustard that accompanied the salt beef. As anything except a lager would probably have done.

If I’d been thinking more about what to drink with these particular dishes rather than just ordering a bottle that appealed on an unseasonably cold night I’d have probably gone for a crisp white. But sometimes it’s fun to go off-piste.

Apologies for the rather unappetising photo. It was very dark!

Bacon, egg and claret

You might think the idea of eating bacon and egg with good claret is sacrilege but bear with me.

When you've got a great bottle of Bordeaux you don't necessarily want anything too fancy to drink with it. I was put onto this combination by a friend who once worked for a tycoon who used to regularly crack open a bottle of Lafite or Latour for breakfast.

Now I'm sure the health police will ge me for saying this but it's a great combination. Maybe not before 11am but as a late breakfast or brunch. Rather less grand than the rib of beef with truffle jus you will find suggested on the Lafite website, but considerably more congenial, if I may say so, than the 'soft centred' chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream also recommended on the site.

You want a wine in which Cabernet makes up at least half of the blend, I suggest - not too young but not too venerable either.

Maybe a 'lunchtime claret' if funds won't stretch to first growths . . .

Go on, give it a try!