Salmon, apple, dill and cider

You’d think having come to Norway to judge the World Cheese Awards my pairing this week would involve cheese but we were tasting it in a competitive environment rather then enjoying it as part of a meal. And by the time we’d tasted 45 of them we were pretty well cheesed out.

So it was a bit of a relief to be offered a cheese-free meal at the Awards dinner at the Britannia hotel particularly when the pairings were so good.

The standout one for me was a cured salmon ‘mosaic’ or ballotine with pickled apple and a dill ‘emulsion’ which went brilliantly well with a 2021 pet nat (semi-sparkling) cider from Hardanger which picked up beautifully on the apple in the dish.

Having just written about how we need to put cider on the table it was good to see the Norwegians doing just that. They also served a sparkling cider as an aperitif. Norwegian ciders tend to be lighter and more delicate than ones of British origin as they generally use dessert rather than cider apples.

The main course pairing with reindeer and lingonberries was also excellent with a 2020 Alain Graillot Crozes-Hermitage and the dessert of a light milk chocolate bavarois with blackcurrant cream and ice-cream with a raspberry mead.

Impressively innovative pairing for such a big gathering (there were over 250 people present)

I attended the dinner as one of the Cheese Awards judges.

Slow-cooked salmon with a yuzu-flavoured beer

I dithered between two brilliant beer pairings at the British Guild of Beer Writers Beer Meets Food event at the Wild Beer Co, Wapping Wharf last week, both of which involved citrus.

The first was a dish of slow cooked salmon with spiced and pickled cucumber and herb crème fraîche which was served with the Wild Beer Co’s Yokai, a 4.5% beer brewed with yuzu (a Japanese citrus fruit), kelp seaweed and Sichuan peppercorns. Beer doesn’t generally exhibit acidity but this was a wonderfully refreshing counterpoint to the richness of the salmon.

The other was even more daring - a lemon tart served with chantilly cream and Sleeping Lemons sour beer which is made with salty preserved lemons. I would never have thought it would have been able to handle the sweetness of the dessert but it just piled lemon flavour on lemon in the most delicious fashion.

The only reason why I went for the salmon pairing as my match of the week is that it’s probably more to most beer drinkers' taste and easier to replicate - although you’d probably have to pick up a can of Yokai for the full effect (The Wild Beer Co sells it on their website for £2.50) Not that that's any hardship ...

You may also like to check out 10 Great Wine Pairings with Salmon

I attended the BGBW lunch as a presenter, talking about how the seasons can affect our choice of beer. (Both these strike me as really summery)

Salmon with shellfish sauce and aged semillon

Last week I was in Australia’s beautiful Hunter Valley enjoying their two great specialities semillon and shiraz.

The semillon in particular is quite unique - crisp as a sauvignon blanc or riesling when it’s young, rich as a chardonnay as it ages. At Keith Tulloch’s winery restaurant Muse Kitchen we had his 2009 Museum Release Semillon with a plate of seared salmon with a creamy shellfish sauce which it matched perfectly despite its richness as Hunter Valley semillon always retains its acidity. Although it was eight years old it still had plenty of life in it.

Older vintages of semillon like this are hard to track down in the UK which makes it worth buying it young and tucking it away. In Australia you can buy the 2009 vintage direct from Keith Tulloch for 60 Australian dollars which is roughly equivalent to £36 a bottle

For more semillon pairing ideas read this post

The best food matches for semillon and semillon-sauvignon blends

Beetroot-cured salmon with horseradish and Furmint

It’s always good to find a new wine that will take on all comers and I think I’ve found it in dry Furmint.

It’s the same grape variety that goes to make Hungary’s luscious sweet wine, Tokaji but is also increasingly used to create attractively mineral whites that you could turn to when you might otherwise drink a dry riesling or a grüner veltliner.

This one, a 2014 Oremus Mandolas (available for £15.59 from thedrinkshop.com) is actually owned by Vega Sicilia and was listed by the glass at Corrigan’s in Mayfair where I had lunch last week.

I had a hunch it would work with my starter of beetroot-cured salmon and horseradish cream and it was absolutely spot on. I’m doing a food and wine matching masterclass at VinCE in Budapest in March and can’t wait to see what else it pairs with. Any thoughts do ping them my way ….

Incidentally the fixed price lunch at Corrigan’s is exceptionally good value at £28 for 2 courses or £34 for three. Our main course was an oxtail and cep pie (which was perfect with a 2009 Rioja from Finca Allende).