Match of the week

Fish stew and an oaked Valencian white wine
As those of you who follow me on instagram will know I’ve been in Valencia for the past two weeks, trying to improve my Spanish which hasn’t left a great deal of time for considered food and wine pairing but this was a great match at a restaurant called Rausell in the city centre.
The dish was called suquet de pescadores, a 'fishermens' stew' with hake (I’m guessing), clams, mussels and deliciously soft potatoes in a rich saffron-spiked broth. There was probably some tomato in there too and some very good fish stock.
As in many of the other Valencian restaurants I went to they didn’t have a local wine by the glass but very nicely opened a bottle of a rich oak-aged white called Blanc d’Enguera, a blend of chardonnay, verdil, sauvignon blanc and viognier (which they very generously topped up while only charging me for the glass which was only 4 euros anyway). Viognier generally goes with saffron so it was an excellent match.
There’s a YouTube video here (in Spanish!) if you want to have a go at making a similar dish.
The 2022 vintage I tasted doesn’t seem to be available in the UK or US (though it is in Germany if you check out wine-searcher.com but you can buy it direct from the producer’s website.

Monkfish and Meursault - and Muscadet, come to that
One of the best restaurants to enjoy well thought out food and drink pairings is Trivet in London which comes as no great surprise when you learn that the two partners - Jonny Lake and Isa Bal - worked at one of the UK’s most famous restaurants, The Fat Duck.
The other day I was interviewing them for a feature and got a run-through of their menu into the bargain including a dish of monkfish, girolles and roast chicken beurre blanc which was described as ‘the best friend of white burgundy’. As indeed it was, paired with a glass of Domaine Buisson Battault’s 2018 Meursault 1er cru Les Gouttes d’Or (which you can buy from Four Walls Wine for £57.50.) A sumptuously rich dish with a sumptuously rich wine.
Interestingly I’d also had monkfish a couple of days previously at The French House where it had been served in a lighter, more summery style with a mussel vinaigrette which went perfectly with the simple but delicious muscadet I was drinking.
You can of course also pair monkfish with red wine as you can see here.
It underlines, yet again, that it’s not so much a question of the base ingredient you're dealing with as the way you cook it and in this case, the sauce you serve with it. Always pay attention to that!
I ate at Trivet as a guest of the restaurant
Most popular
.jpg)
My latest book

News and views
.jpg)


