Koftas with tahini and orange wine

I’ve been enthusiastically cooking from Sami Tamimi’s and Tara Wigley's new book Falastin this past couple of weeks and made their recipe for koftas with tahini, potato and onion over the weekend during a Zoom cooking session with a couple of pals in Bristol.

I picked an orange wine, Bulgarian Heritage from a producer called Via Vinera to pair with it on the basis that middle-eastern lamb dishes generally go well with orange wine but in fact it was the very rich tahini sauce which was spiked with lemon juice and garlic that really made the wine sing.

Sami, as you may or may not know, is Yotam Ottolenghi’s business partner and collaborated with him on the wonderful Jerusalem and Ottolenghi Simple but this is a tribute to his home country of Palestine.

The wine which comes from the 2018 vintage is made from a Bulgarian grape called dimyat and is quite aromatic with a pronounced flavour of dried apricots, quince, and yes, orange. Not at all scary so quite a good bottle to try if you’ve never had orange wine before. Particularly if you’re eating lamb although the Via Vinera website also charmingly suggests it as ‘demanded company’ for seafood salads, gnocchi and pesto, salmon trout baked in salt, grilled pork chops and soft cheeses.

You can buy it from the Wine Society if you’re a member for £51 a case of six (the equivalent of £8.50 a bottle but they’re only doing unsplit cases at the moment) but I’m confident that other orange wines would work too.