Cauliflower popcorn and a Seedlip and pineapple cocktail

Most pairings focus on alcoholic drinks but it’s equally intriguing to see how a similar synergy can be achieved with an alcohol-free one.

Last week I tried out the new vegan menu at the Ravinder Bhogal residency at The Perception bar at the W hotel and wasn’t really in the mood for wine so we chose the ‘soft’ option on the cocktail menu, a cocktail called Naked which was based on the non-alcoholic ‘spirit’ Seedlip Spice 94. It wasn’t actually vegan as it contained egg white but wasn’t billed as such either (there were vegan wine options). Other ingredients were lemon juice, pineapple juice, peach purée, ginger & lemongrass and a walnut garnish.

Being refreshingly fruity and not too sweet it actually paired well with almost all the dishes we tried but particularly with what has already become the most talked about dish on the menu - the cauliflower ‘popcorn’ with Thai basil tempura and a black vinegar and chilli dip. Appropriately enough as it's the perfect bar snack.

I also particularly liked it with the summer rolls, the beetroot and walnut kibbeh and the tempura inari. (Ravinder, who owns the restaurant Jikoni, is playing with a wide palette of Asian flavours not just Indian ingredients in this pop-up).

You can eat her vegan menu at The Perception which is just off Leicester Square until the end of June. I ate there as a guest of the W hotel.

Lemon and poppy seed cake with Tippy Yunan tea with ginger root

There’s an improbably good tea shop and café near where I live which is as good as any I’ve been to. I say improbable not because it’s in Bristol but because it’s in a far-from-smart shopping parade in one of the less cultish areas of the city. It also has a brilliantly clever name - ATTIC - which stands for All The Tea In China.

They have a great range of teas but also some great kit to serve them in. A glass infuser (see right and here on their website) which opens up once placed on top of a co-ordinated glass mug and lets the strained tea in.

They chalk the specials up on the blackboard - the one I tried was called Autumn Glow, a blend of Tippy Yunnan black tea and dried ginger root, a spicy, fragrant brew that went brilliantly well with a wedge of lemon and poppy seed cake I’d been unable to resist. Thank goodness we’re moving to the other side of town otherwise I'd be in there all the time though I suspect we’ll find reasons to get back over there. Like buying all our friends and relatives tea-infusers for Christmas.

They also offer a mail order service for those of you who live even further away and will apparently start supplying other tea shops and cafs shortly with a range of their teas called 'One leaf, many lives'. Look out for them.

Tarte au citron with Helmut Lang Beerenauslese Chardonnay

Citrus flavours are difficult to match with wine, as I’ve mentioned before, but a classic lemon tart with its combination of sharpness and sweetness is particularly tricky. The better a tart is the more it will tend to strip the flavour out of any accompanying wine, so much so that it’s almost worth serving a shop-bought one (of which there are some very good examples) if you have a serious dessert wine to show off.

The other day though, I came across an excellent pairing which was a 2006 Helmut Lang Beerenauslese Chardonnay from Austria which Tanners sells for the very reasonable price of £9.90 a half bottle (a bargain for a sweet wine of this quality).

The reason it worked so well was that it was exceptionally liquorous, coating the palate so that the sharpness of the lemon balanced but didn’t dominate. It would also be a fantastic wine to have in your cellar for Christmas drinking which I suppose we need to start thinking about soon.

Heavens - how fast it comes round!

Chicken, lemon and olive tagine with Rioja reserva

Friends came round the other night and I cooked one of my favourite new recipes - a chicken, lemon and olive tagine (which appears in my forthcoming book Food, Wine and Friends, she adds, unable to resist a cheap plug!). One of the reasons it’s slightly different from the authentic Moroccan version is that I remove the chicken skin which makes the dish a lot lighter.

You might be surprised at the idea of pairing it with a Rioja but I’ve found in the past that red wines are better than white with this dish. Whites tend to be too similar, too lemony. Reds offer a pleasing contrast of colour and flavour.

A chicken tagine contains two bitter ingredients, preserved lemons and green olives that bring out the sweet fruit in a red wine so I wouldn’t choose a wine that was very ripe and sweet-tasting already like a new world Cabernet, Merlot or Shiraz. An aged Rioja, with its soft, mellow cooked-strawberry fruit fits the bill perfectly. Ours was a Contino Rioja Reserva 2002, which came, surprisingly, from Marks and Spencer. Or not so surprisingly. M & S has some decent wines these days.

Image © stockcreations - Fotolia.com

For wine matches for other types of tagine check out Which wine to pair with a Moroccan tagine