Gosnells mead and honey-smoked chicken

Every so often someone trumpets a mead revival but it never quite seems to happen, probably because there’s not enough of it about yet.

But at The Manor in Clapham you can drink it and I suggest you do.

It sailed right through a brilliant fixed price lunch but I’m highlighting two dishes - the honey-smoked chicken with lettuce and borlotti beans (makes sense given mead is brewed from honey but the honey in the dish didn’t overwhelm it) and a spectacular dish of cauliflower with grue de cacao, medjool dates and kefir. Which was basically different textures of cauliflower - raw, roast and whipped into an light-as-air mousse. (No, I didn’t know what grue de cacao was either. It’s cocoa nibs and there’s an excellent explanation on this US site.) I'm going for the chicken as it's easier to replicate at home.

The mead is brewed by Gosnells in Peckham (‘course it is!) and is much drier than mead traditionally was. Think of it like a dry, slightly honeyed perry. Hugely refreshing. You can find a list of other places that stock it on their website.

Laksa and Riesling

Laksa is one of those dishes you hesitate to pair with wine being both a soup and really spicy but the pairing I came across at the Pegasus Bay wine dinner at The Providores the other night was spot on.

One of the reasons I think it worked so well was that the chicken that had been used to make the laksa had apparently been smoked and smoked food is generally good with Riesling. It was also aromatic rather than fierily hot and contained - I would guess - a fair amount of coconut milk which tends to ease in a wine pairing.

As I’ve mentioned the Riesling, the 2008 Pegasus Bay ‘Bel Canto’, was already acquiring those appealing limey, kerosene notes which chimed in perfectly with the flavours of the soup. (You might think that you’d go for a simpler, less expensive Riesling with this sort of dish but in my opinion it was the intensity of the wine that made the match work so well.)

It’s not widely available but you should be able to track down a stockist through New Generation wines in the UK (info@newgenerationwines.com) and Empson USA in the US (nbarber@empsonusa.com). For other stockists see the Pegasus Bay website.

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