Quenelle de brochet, sauce Nantua and Mondeuse blanche

Quenelle de brochet is one of the classic dishes of French haute cuisine so it was amazing to find it the other day on the set lunch menu at Joséphine, an excellent new bistro on the Fulham Road

It has been opened by Michelin-starred chef Claude Bosi and his wife Lucy in homage to the ‘bouchons’ (homely restaurants) of his home city of Lyons

Technique apart it’s a relatively straightforward dish. - a hot fish (pike) mousse with a shellfish - in this case langoustine - sauce but the mousse is so airy and the sauce so rich that it’s hard to find a wine that will flatter both.

Chablis would have probably done the trick but tends to be overpriced on restaurant wine lists so I settled for a glass of Domaine les Bruyères Mondeuse blanche, Cuvée L’Avarice. (Mondeuse blanche is a rare grape variety from Savoie though this was classified as a Vin de France.) It was a delicately creamy white which was surprisingly intense for its 11% ABV and was perfect with the dish. It’s imported into the UK by Dynamic Vines who are selling it for £26 a bottle.

I suspect a blanc de blancs champagne would also work.

Shellfish, citrus and tequila

I went to an absolutely brilliant citrus dinner last week at Toklas in London, at which almost any one of the pairings could have been my match of the week.

The meal was cooked by Elena Reygadas of Rosetta in Mexico City who was voted World's Best Female Chef at the 50 Best awards last year using citrus from the Todoli Foundation just outside Valencia.

However I’m going for the first course of langoustine and scallop aguachile with Rangpur lime and Spanish sweet limetta and paired with a shot of Casa Dragones Joven tequila with clam lime.

Aguachile is a similar preparation to ceviche as explained here though made with chile-infused water but it was almost as if the shellfish has been lightly cooked in its own juices. It certainly wasn’t overly spicy in this case, more sweet and slightly smokey which really picked out the agave and other herbal flavours of the tequila.

It's not an easy pairing to replicate at home especially without access to specialist citrus though you do seem to be able to buy rangpur lime - a cross between a mandarin and a lime - online at a site called myexoticfruit.com. Sweet limetta is a cross between citron and bitter orange, according to Wikipedia.

The Casa Dragones Joven which was the most delicious, fragrant tequila I’ve ever tasted unfortunately turns out to be around £300 a bottle so I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to try it.

It's definitely an incentive to experiment more with tequila and seafood.

Another match I’d single out was a red pepper tamal with tarragon buttermilk and kumquat which was sensationally good with the ‘Cool Moon’ IGP Côtes Catalanes Les Enfants Sauvages - a blend of grenache gris, grenache blanc and macabeu which you can buy from Dynamic Vines in the UK for £42.

Again extrapolate from this that sweet red pepper and kumquat - or orange - is a flavour combination that works with white grenache or a white Grenache blend.

For other tequila pairings see Some Great Food Pairings for Tequila

I ate at Toklas as a guest of the restaurant

Langoustines and caviar with Faiveley’s Puligny Montrachet 1er cru La Garenne 2009

A celestial combination I enjoyed at a burgundy dinner at the Grand Hotel de Bordeaux last week. Burgundy in Bordeaux? Yup - I guess they want to ring the changes from time to time but it does seem heretical.

It also seems on the face of it an unlikely combination particularly with red burgundy but the way the chef Pascal Nibaudeau got round it was to incorporate caviar (Caviar d’Aquitaine from Sturia) into other burgundy-friendly dishes.

This dish, for instance, owed as much to the accompanying sweet, fat langoustine, risotto and creamy, delicately saffron-flavoured sauce as it did to the caviar although the caviar certainly accented the beautifully pure, crisp Puligny perfectly.

Incidentally I found this interesting description of the background to the wine from Haynes, Hanson Clark who sell it for £48.90 a bottle.

"This is only the second vintage since this vineyard was acquired by the Domaine. It covers less than one fifth of a hectare, producing just five barrels in 2009, the wine being vinified and aged in one third new barrels. La Garenne's situation high on the hillside has allowed admirable acidity and minerality to be retained, giving the wine outstanding balance and potential (for drinking 2012-2020+)".

A classic combination in the great tradition of French haute cuisine but none the worse for that.

Langoustine cannellonis and citrus with Pacherenc de Vic Bilh

It's always a challenge to pick a single wine with an elaborate tasting menu but the Jardins de Bouscassé 2008 Pacherenc du Vic Bilh sec from Alain Brumont we ordered with our meal at La Renaissance in Argentan last week hit the spot with almost every dish.

My favourite match by a whisker was an intricate dish of 'cannelloni' formed from pieces of squid, wrapped round some beautifully fresh langoustines and served with an intense seafood broth flavoured with pomelo and dots of mandarin and basil (I think) pure. I'm not normally that keen on the French obsession with 'sucré-salé' but the combination of fish and citrus worked perfectly with the light, lush, tropical fruit-scented wine. (There was also a hint of Sichuan pepper in the dish.)

It also went brilliantly well with the next course of John Dory with small, sweet crevettes grises (shrimps) and carpaccio of pigs trotter, an extraordinarily intense surf'n'turf combination.

I'll be writing a bit more about the restaurant in due course but it was an outstanding meal. Bizarrely it doesn't have a Michelin star.