Grilled ox tongue with radishes and Mr Thirsty vin de soif

As soon as I heard Will Lander of The Quality Chop House and Portland had opened a new restaurant, Clipstone, I couldn’t wait to check it out - and I wasn’t disappointed.

Mind you it should be good. Will is the son of restaurant critic Nick Lander and wine writer Jancis Robinson and with a pedigree like that if he can’t get the food and drink right, who can?

Mr Thirsty Vin de Soif

Two of the dishes I had were top notch including this plate of grilled ox tongue with radishes and crème fraiche which was fantastic with one of the wines we had on tap, the appropriately named Mr Thirsty vin de soif which they were selling for a very reasonable £5 a glass.

It comes from Fabien Jouves of Mas del Périé in Cahors, a man who obviously likes to stir things up. (He also has a wine called You Fuck my Wine!) This one is a blend of malbec and merlot with a little tannat and cabernet franc. It’s made without sulphur and unfined and unfiltered - so it is a proper card-carrying natural wine but deliciously vibrant and juicy.

I also tried the fresh, citrussy Bernardo Farina Verdejo 2015 from Castilla y Leon which sells for an even more reasonable £3.50 and went brilliantly with a ‘crudo’ of char, peach and ‘cultured cream which, judging from Instagram, looks like becoming Clipstone’s signature dish, this summer at least. (Char is a fish for those of you who haven't come across it before).

I wasn’t quite so keen on the scallop flatbread with walnut pesto and lemon zest - the base was a bit dense and the scallop got lost among such punchy flavourings - but early days. Two runaway winners out of three isn’t half bad and it’s a really cool little place. Go!

Clipstone is at 5, Clipstone Street London W1W 6BB. 0207 637 0871. The wines come from O W Loeb.

Venison and Cot (Malbec)

The most successful wine pairing from a tasting I hosted on behalf of Touraine wines the other day was not the expected sauvignon and goats cheese or even fish and chips but a rich gamey dish of venison with a robust Cot, the name by which Malbec is known in the Loire.

You might think that Loire reds tend to be on the light side and that’s generally true but this wine, Henry Marionnet Vinifera 2010 (13.5% and £10.95 from the Wine Society), was really robust and smoky itself with quite a touch of funk. It was made from ungrafted vines which gave it a particularly intense character.

It would also match, I reckon, with gamey pheasant or pigeon dishes, mixed game casseroles and pies and with offal, especially kidneys. Probably stinky cheeses too - a pairing the Wine Society also seems to favour.

It goes to prove my theory that there’s always an unexpected and exciting find in any food and wine tasting you do.

Photo © Jeanne Horak-Druiff of CookSister

Cahors and duck 'parmentier'

I spent three days last week travelling through France (about which more over the next few days) so it’s a tough call to decide which food and wine combination came out tops but I think it would have to be the Matthieu Cosse Cahors and the duck ‘parmentier’ I ate at a delightful modern bistro in Cahors called L’O à la Bouche.

Hachis parmentier is the french equivalent of shepherds’ pie - a dish made with mince (usually lamb) and mashed potato, the difference being that the French put a layer of mash at the bottom of the dish as well as the top. This version had shredded duck confit as a filling instead of lamb which made it particularly tasty. (Unfortunately the table I was sitting at was in a dimly lit corner of the restaurant courtyard so the photo I took of it is too blurred to publish)

The wine came from two of the new rising stars of the region Matthieu Cosse and Catherine Maisonneuve and was the 2004 vintage their top cuveé Les Laquets produced from biodynamically grown Malbec. What was so impressive about it was its cool elegance - many of the new wines from the region are over-extracted in my opinion, the better to compete with Argentinian Malbecs - but this was restrained, sophisticated, complex and delicious - shown off to perfection by such a simple, rustic dish.

You can buy it in London from Gasconline (the wine arm of Comptoir Gascon) at £13.95 a bottle - oddly a much better price than the 25€ at which we found it in the market in Cahors or in the US where it is stocked by Specs and Port Chester of NY for about $48 (£29)

Image © karandaev - Fotolia

7 hour leg of lamb with Cot (Malbec)

When you’re roasting lamb you’re almost spoilt for choice. Almost any red you enjoy will go with this most wine-friendly of dishes but my pick of Thierry Puzelat’s quirky KO In Cot we Trust (2005) proved a winner

Both wine and lamb were bargains - the lamb snapped up by my husband at our local branch of Somerfield for just £9.49 (you’d be lucky if you got a couple of lamb shanks for that these days), the wine (originally £12.99) on a 25% off promotion in Waitrose earlier this year, though I’m not sure whether they still stock it*

We simply made a few cuts in the lamb and inserted slivers of garlic and a few rosemary leaves, smothered it with olive oil and put it in the hot oven of the AGA until it got going (about 20 minutes) then transferred it to the low oven and left it for the best part of the afternoon - about 7 1/2 hours in total. A sliced onion and a glass of red wine (and one of water) got added along the way. The result was wonderfully savoury, far more complex than one has any right to expect from supermarket meat and a perfect match for this luxuriant off-the-wall ‘natural’ wine with its dark, damsony fruit.

There’s an interesting article about Puzelat here if you want to know more.

* Green and Blue in London sells it for £14.40. Their recommended matches are venison, hare, game pie or sweetbreads.