Match of the week
Manzanilla sherry and sushi
Sushi is possibly not the first kind of food you’d think of pairing with wine but turns out it’s surprisingly good with sherry.
Not the sweet treacley kind your nan used to keep in the dining room cupboard obviously but a fresh, tangy manzanilla served cold from the fridge as I discovered this weekend when I tried a number of experimental sherry pairings on a group of friends.
The sherry concerned was a Hidalgo La Gitana Manzanilla which normally sells for about £6-7 a half bottle but which is on offer at the time of writing at £6 for 50cl in Sainsbury’s. Fino sherry, being quite similar in flavour to sake, would obviously work too.
Given how easy it is to buy sushi off the shelf these days it would make a super-easy treat of a midweek supper. All you have to do is keep a bottle of manzanilla in the fridge which isn’t too much of a hardship ....
If this appeals to you see this list of other drink pairings with sushi
Tandoori salmon and fino sherry
One of the more successful pairings from the otherwise rather challenging sherry lunch I attended at the Cinnamon Club last week was a dish of tandoori salmon with a Valdespino Innocente fino. I tend to overlook fino in favour of manzanilla but I’m not sure it’s not a more flexible match with food.
The salmon itself was quite delicate but it came with some mango purée and a fiery wasabi-like green pea relish which didn’t dent the flavour of the Inocente at all.
Another fino, the Lustau La Ina also went well with a dish of Norwegian king crab with tamarind and burnt chilli dressing and a (totally delicious) chilled lentil and coriander soup.
I wouldn’t have thought of fino as an automatic go to for spicy food but this lunch certainly suggested it has potential. Maybe with a selection of Indian snacks at the beginning of a meal? Indian tapas - now there’s a new trend!
Cider-battered onions with fino sherry
To kick off National Vegetarian Week and a week of veggie pairings (don’t groan, carnivores, we’ll be back on meat next week!) here’s a great pairing from Friday night’s underground supper club, Montpelier Basement in Bristol.
You might think cider would be the perfect match with cider-battered onions and of course it would, not least because you’d have an open bottle to hand, but chilled fino sherry - in this case Tio Pepe - is also the biz.
Fino sherry is normally associated with ingredients such as olives, nuts, Spanish ham and cheese but it’s also great with anything fried including croquetas, fritters and goujons.
I particularly liked this simple idea of serving onions in strips like churros. A really unusual and imaginative tapa.
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