Chicken and vegetable tagine with southern French rosé

Today, as you’ll probably not need reminding, is le quatorze juillet which marks the storming of the Bastille and the start of the French revolution. These days the French are more likely to head for the beach than onto the streets as it’s a public holiday and the start of the month long summer vacation for many but it’s celebrated with street parties all over France.

Here’s an appropriately modern French pairing, which I enjoyed last week in Arles to inspire you if you want to throw an impromptu party of your own. North African food is very popular in the south of France and I ordered this unusual chicken and vegetable tagine in a Moroccan restaurant called L’Entrevue. Normally a chicken tagine has fewer vegetables but this was more like a cross between a classic chicken and lemon tagine and a vegetable couscous. It also contained chicken livers, an unusual and imaginative touch which went very well with the preserved lemons in the dish.

As it was a sweltering 33°C we automatically reached for the rosé, a pale, crisp dry style from Château Mourgues du Grès in the Costières de Nîmes region around Arles. It matched the tagine perfectly, the slight spiciness bringing out all its delicate fruit. The cuvée is a blend of Syrah, Grenache and Carignan called Fleur d’Eglantine and is available from vivinum.co.uk and Sam’s Wine and Spirits and Morrell in the US

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

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.

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