Korean meatballs with mango, lime and ginger gin

Oooofff, Korean food is spicy! Even when I toned down the gochujang chilli paste in the meatballs I made on Saturday night they were a challenge for most of the wines I tried with them (a characterful Babylonstoren rosé powered through). But the best match by far was a gin and tonic made from Romy's Edition Mango, Ginger and Lime gin, a collaboration between Bristol-based Six O’Clock Gin and Indian food writer Romy Gill.

I made it up as a G & T with Fevertree Naturally Light tonic, plenty of ice, a couple of slices of mango and an extra squeeze of lime and its sweet fruitiness offset the chilli heat perfectly. I can imagine it going really well with Indian street food like Romy’s addictive samosa chaat too.

Six food pairings for gin that might surprise you

The meatballs were from chef Judy Joo’s new book Korean Soul Food though I used minced turkey thigh meat rather than chicken. It’s a really good recipe - the meatballs were a perfect texture. Judy suggests accompanying them with Gochujang mayonnaise which provides another fiery kick and I made her addictively spicy Korean style cucumber salad to go with them too.

I don’t know nearly enough about Korean food so am looking forward to experimenting more from this book. Hopefully my chilli tolerance will increase!

For more about pairing Korean food and wine read this archive post from Marc Millon.

I was sent the gin as a sample.

Baron Bigod cheese and Sipsmith orange and cacao gin

I really didn’t know which match to choose from the spectacular 10th anniversary dinner which Sipsmith held in their distillery last week. Most of the pairings were cocktails (I also loved the combination of roast Iberico pork fillet with a Red Cat, an invention of master distiller Jared Brown’s*) but I’m going to go for the line-up of four cheeses which was paired with four different gins

The outstanding combination was Baron Bigod a luxurious Brie de Meaux style cheese from Suffolk with Sipsmith’s orange and cacao gin. It’s a gin I’d have run a mile from if I’d heard it described but was actually ridiculously good.

According to their website it’s distilled orange blossom, cacao nibs, vanilla, coffee, and black cardamom blended with a syrup made from orange zest and raw cacao nibs - more orangey than chocolatey in the event They say it makes a 'decadent' Old Fashioned though I was pretty happy sipping it on the rocks.

The other cheese pairings were Bath Blue with sloe gin (I’ve pulled the same trick with Stilton), Comté with Bramble gin liqueur and Petite Rouell Cendrée (a Pyreneean goats cheese) with Bees Knees which I think must be one of their limited edition gins as I can't find it online. Or maybe this cocktail.

Anyway it proves that flavoured gins and gin liqueurs definitely have a place alongside a cheeseboard should you care to push the boundaries with your guests.

See also Six pairings for gin that might surprise you

* a blend of 50ml gin, 20ml dry vermouth (though he modified it to 10ml dry, 10ml sweet to pair against the dish) and 10ml-20ml juice from homemade cocktail cherries

I attended the dinner as Sipsmith’s guest.

Gin and tonic with peppered smoked mackerel

Gin isn’t just an aperitif, it’s also a surprisingly good match for food as I’ve already suggested in this post. Last week I discovered yet another way to enjoy it - with peppered smoked mackerel.

It was an impromptu picnic on the hottest day of the year with temperatures (uncharacteristically for Bristol) well up into the 30s. Having slogged away clearing the kitchen for a major refit this week we took two large G & Ts down into the garden below, then realising what a brilliant idea that was, had another, this time with an impromptu fridge picnic of smoked peppered mackerel with a few tomatoes, a squirt of mayo and some crunchy Spanish olive oil crackers called regañas. (No it wasn’t particularly elegant but like most things eaten outdoors tasted sooo good)

Gins are sometimes flavoured with peppercorns these days so I think that was why it worked so well. I’m now on a mission to find other interesting gin pairings.

Six pairings for gin that might surprise you

Photo © Richard Griffin @fotolia.com

Hepple gin and venison tartare

We think of gin even less than whisky as a pairing for food but with the incredible popularity of gin these days - and the need for the many new entrants to the field to create a distinctive image for their brand that could be about to change.

Last Friday I was tasting a new super-premium gin called Hepple from Northumberland with one of its creators, TV chef Valentine Warner. It’s based on juniper of course but handled slightly differently with three different distillation methods, green berries as well as riper ones along with bog myrtle, lovage, Douglas fir and citrus so it’s incredibly aromatic and herbal.

After we’d tasted its component parts we drank it as a gin and tonic (with Fevertree Naturally Light) and I had a hunch - based on gin’s compatibility with patés - it would go with the venison tartare on the menu at Wallfish Bistro where we were doing the tasting - and so it proved. I'm guessing you could also drink it neat though at 45% that might be a bit challenging. Maybe a martini.

You can currently buy it at Fortnum & Mason and drink it (cough) in my son Will’s Hawksmoor restaurants though it will be in wider distribution from early November.