Beef cheek arancini with a (very special) Spanish garnacha

In some cases it doesn’t matter what form an ingredient takes, if it’s present in a dish it dominates the match. So Claire Thomson of 5 o’clock apron’s innovative beef cheek and black rice arancini which she brought to a (very soggy) outdoor picnic last week hosted outside by wine importer Carte Blanche was just as good a pairing with a grenache as braised beef cheek would have been. In fact the dark nutty rice added an extra dimension which made it even more interesting.

The wine - a 2018 Spanish garnacha from called Camino de Otsaka was admittedly a bit special though - almost more like a red burgundy than a grenache and quite thrillingly intense. It’s from Aseginolaza & Leunda in Navarra who make their wines in microscopic quantities with a minimum of sulphur and without fining or filtering. Only 365 bottles of the Osaka were produced of which only 60 bottles made their way into the UK. That’s reflected in the price of between £40-45 a bottle - you are literally paying for a wine almost nobody gets to drink. You can buy it from Element Wines in Scotland, Chesters of Abergavenney and Bin Two in Padstow who are also selling it as part of their Wine Car Boot case.

You can find some of Claire’s other recipes on this website and in the Telegraph for which she writes regularly.

I attended the tasting as a guest of Carte Blanche Wines.

Pot-roast pigeon and Sangre de Toro

As the weather is finally turning warmer we thought we had better clear the freezer of winter ingredients so last night my husband pot-roasted a couple of pigeons we’d picked up on the cheap. Unusually we didn’t have any red wine left over so we cracked open a bottle of Torres Sangre de Toro, a sound but not overly exciting Garnacha and Cariñena-based Spanish red.

We chose it because we thought it would give the sauce body (it did) and were intending to open something more serious with the finished dish but when we tasted it we found it went really well - not overwhelming the quite complex sauce but having enough power and character (it’s 13.5%) to hold its own.

Although it’s a commercial brand (and has a rather cheesy label) it’s an easy-drinking companion to all sorts of dishes: as the back label suggests - game, stews, meat paella and traditional mountain cuisine. (Though not Alpine cheese-based dishes like cheese fondue and tartiflette which would be better with a white. More like bean- or chickpea-based Spanish dishes with ham or chorizo)

Roast venison with tapenade and a modern Spanish red

Frankly almost any full-bodied red will work with a roast meat like venison but I’m particularly excited about the new breed of modern Spanish reds that are appearing on the shelves.

This was a dish I had last week at one of our neighbourhood restaurants in Bristol, Greens Dining Room which has a typically modern British/Mediterranean influenced, seasonal menu. (The head chef has worked for such mod Brit restaurants such as Chez Bruce and The Brackenbury in London)

The venison, which was quite gamey, was served Italian-style with grilled polenta and cavolo nero but the most important ingredient from the point of view of the wine match was a roughly chopped tapenade topping.

Black olives, as I’ve mentioned before, have an almost magic effect on red wines making even the fiercest tannins tame and velvety. They also seem to boost a medium-weight red like the incredibly good value 2006 Viña Urbezo from Bodegas Solar de Urbezo in Carinefia we drank - a blend of Garnacha, Tempranillo and Syrah.

It’s one of a number of vibrant young reds of real quality that Spain is currently producing at a knock down price from wine regions such as Cariñena, Bierzo, Campo de Borja and Toro. Look out for them!

Image © stockcreations - Fotolia.com

Sparkling wine and spicy snacks

The idea of drinking sparkling wine with Indian street food might seem crazy but it’s a really good pairing as I was reminded last night when I dined at Masala Zone just off Carnaby Street with Warren Edwardes, the CEO of a company called Wine for Spice.

Edwardes sells three wines which you’d probably consider unremarkable if you tasted them on their own but which are cleverly designed to deal with the heat of spicy food. He deliberately set out to replicate the effect of a lager, still most people’s drink of choice with a curry. by creating a wine that had a refreshing spritz - less fizzy than a sparkling wine but fizzier than a still one. The wines are also modest in alcohol which means that you can swig rather than sip them.

The pairing I thought worked best was his Viceroy White, a blend of the grapes that are used to make cava (Macabbeo, Parellada and Xarel-lo) and just 11.5% We tried it with two different spicy snacks - chicken tikka served with a fresh coriander chutney and some sev puri, crisp little biscuits topped with spicy mash and fresh chutneys and scattered with what looked like deep-fried vermicelli. As usual with sparkling wines it paired really well with the crisp snack but also handled the stronger flavours of the marinated chicken and chutney well, both dishes enhancing the natural creaminess of the wine.

I also tried his Raja Rosé, a strong dry rosé, again made in Spain from Tempranillo and Garnacha with a lamb thali based on rogan josh and a hottish Goan prawn curry with his Rani Gold, a blend of the Catalan grape varieties above with 50% Muscat, quite similar to Torres Viña Esmeralda. Again, given the strength of the wines (12.5% and 11.5% respectively) they held up surprisingly well because of the spritz. (One of the reasons Edwardes - a banker in a former life - makes them semi-sparkling is because the wine attracts a lower tax rate than sparkling wines like Champagne but they also do the job of refreshing the palate without making you feel excessively bloated or gassy.)

Would I serve the wines at home? I’m not sure that I would (I’d probably go for full-strength fizz) but I’d be extremely grateful to find them in an Indian restaurant. You can apparently buy them from Ocado in the UK or contact Warren through his website wineforspice.com

Incidentally, Masala Zone is a great place to go for a quick meal if you’re in the West End. It serves genuinely authentic Indian street food at a very fair price. There are also branches in Islington and Earl's Court.