Roast pork belly and young tempranillo

This week’s match of the week isn’t a new discovery - roast meat with red wine isn’t exactly rocket science - but the fact that it was pork that was going so well with tempranillo rather than the usual lamb or beef intrigued me.

The wine isn’t labelled as rioja although both it and the winemaker Gonzalo Gonzalo Grijalba come from the region. It was named as a result of the banks turning him down for a loan. (Gran cerdo loosely translates as fat pig!)

It’s a really vibrant, swiggable red which went really well with a biiig and very delicious plateful of fennel salted pork belly with all the sides I had at The Old Market Assembly in Bristol at the weekend.

You can buy it from Buon Vino for £9.95 a bottle or from Roberson for £9.99 or £53.95 a case of six (£8.99 a bottle) which is remarkably good value for an organic wine. It would be great with a barbecue too.

For other suggestions with roast pork and other Sunday roasts see

A quick guide to wine pairings with a Sunday roast

Miso-marinated pork belly and Karasi Sour cocktail

Sometimes I wonder what pork belly doesn’t pair with. It seems to be delicious with so many drinks but even so It’s always intriguing to find a new match.

This was at a brilliant event called Street Food Jam at the Hong Kong Wine & Dine Festival which I was lucky enough to attend last weekend where eight bars paired a dish with a matching cocktail.

They were all pretty impressive but this Japanese-inspired pairing which came from the team at Zuma was spot on. The pork was quite simply prepared, marinated with miso and grilled over charcoal and was perfectly offset by the citrussy sour which contained Bulleit bourbon, karasi* syrup, honey, yuzu, egg white and mirin - in other words a sour with a Japanese twist.

We also really liked an unusual panna cotta made from barley, gingko and yuba milk from Jerry Maguire which was paired with a highly complicated but wickedly creamy, gingery concoction of purple sweet potato, crème brûlée, ron zacapa 23, Canton ginger liqueur, ginger peel, lemon juice, egg white and osmanthus (peach flavoured flower) syrup. Maybe not one to try at home ...

Incidentally Zuma is launching what must be one of the world’s most lavish brunches in collaboration with Louis Roederer this weekend: a Cristal brunch for 1888HK$ (or £199/$243). For that you get ‘freeflow’ (i.e. unlimited) Cristal 2009, beluga caviar, lobster, Wagyu beef and white chocolate with alba truffle. Eye-wateringly expensive but a bottle of Cristal on its own could apparently cost you that in Hong Kong. (They do a more modestly priced brunch with Louis Roederer Premier Brut at HK$650 for those of you who whose wallets don't quite stretch to Cristal!)

There are other events in Hong Kong all the rest of this month. Check out the Great November Feast if you're visiting.

* Karasi is actually a Turkish red wine but I’m wondering whether that's what they used. Seems unlikely in Hong Kong but you never know. I’ll tell you when I find out!

See 5 other good matches for pork belly

I travelled to Hong Kong as a guest of the Hong Kong Tourist Board.

Tamworth belly ribs and 2006 Qupé Roussanne

Sometimes the best matches are the unexpected ones. I was (shameless plug alert) helping the team at my son’s restaurant Hawksmoor select wines for a dinner to celebrate their 10th anniversary which will feature some of the classic dishes they’ve had on the menu since the early days.

One was Tamworth Belly Ribs which I remembered as a rich, sticky, American style pork rib. I was almost sure a lush red like grenache would be the ideal match but it turned out the dish had evolved into a lighter, more Asian style of dish and that the ribs were now accompanied by a punchy slaw.

It suggested a white rather than a red so Hawksmoor’s wine buyer Becca pulled out a range of options including this 2006 Roussanne from Qupé's Bien Nacido Hillside Estate*, a Californian producer who has also been on the winelist since the early days. It was absolutely stunning, partly because of the age of the wine but also its intensity and concentration (it’s a none-too-timid 14.5%).

For those of you in the restaurant business it goes to show you need to keep an eye on the wine pairings you recommend for signature dishes. Chef may have changed them while you weren't looking!

* and from the website it doesn't look as if they are actually making it any more

Slow roast pork belly with a ‘Gardener’s Old Fashioned’

Pork and apple is, of course, a match made in heaven but the pairing was taken to new heights for me by mixologist Jack Adair Bevan of The Ethicurean who invented an Old Fashioned cocktail with a twist to go with a dish of slow roast pork.

The recipe had a few clever bells and whistles of its own. The Saddleback pork had been roasted for 12 hours to a fall-apart texture and was accompanied by pickled shitake, apple and chipotle crackling salt (pulverised pork crackling, seasoned with chipotle)

But the drink was something else - an Old Fashioned made with 3 y.o. Somerset cider brandy infused with toasted oak chips, and stirred with toffee apple syrup left over from the restaurant’s signature toffee apple cake, vanilla (to make the brandy taste more like a bourbon), Angostura and orange bitters and a chipotle tincture - served with an apple and chipotle tuile. Rich, appley, spicy and utterly delicious

Normally I’m not mad about cocktail dinners - too much alcohol, too much sweetness - but where the cocktails are made from ingredients produced in the same kitchen as the food and designed to go with a particular dish it just seems a seamless extension of the menu.

Jack and his colleagues chefs Matthew and Iain Pennington have a really lovely book coming out next month called The Ethicurean Cookbook where you can find most of their recipes (except the pork and the toffee apple cake - drat!) and a lot about their preserving, curing and smoking techniques. There's a really nice video which explains their philosophy on YouTube.