White truffles and Boca

A full-bodied red mightn’t be the first wine you’d think of reaching for with white truffles but it works remarkably well as I discovered at a truffle dinner at Bocca di Lupo last week.

Boca is one of Piedmont’s lesser known appellation but still features its best known grape Nebbiolo, there known as Spanna, which can be blended with two other local grapes Bonarda di Novarese and Vespolina

The Tenute Guardasole Boca we were drinking was a relatively young 2017 - in order to be certified the wines have to be aged for 36 months , two years of which must be in oak - but was still bright and vibrant with no signs of age. Chef Jacob Kenedy had paired it with a dish of carne cruda, raw veal liberally anointed with white truffles but despite being 14% it didn’t overpower the dish at all.

You can buy it from Nemo Wine Cellars for £35 a bottle or £38.06 from Shelved Wine.

According to this article on wine-searcher.com it has a formidable ageing capacity. - I’d love to try an older vintage. You can find out more about the winery here.

I ate at Bocca di Lupo as a guest of the restaurant.

Dumplings and grand cru Chablis

You might think dumplings were humble fare, not best suited to show off a great wine but as last week’s tasting lunch at Bob Bob Ricard proved, that’s not necessarily the case.

They laid on two from their largely Russian-inspired dinner menu - some lobster, crab and shrimp pelmeni which were served with a langoustine bisque and truffle, potato and mushroom vareniki (above) which came with a forest mushroom velouté.

Both were spectacularly good with a mature 2016 grand cru Chablis ‘Les Clos’ from Domaine Christian Moreau which sells for £100 on the list.

Of course it wasn’t the dumplings themselves that were the key to the match but the umami-rich fillings and soups in which they were served - shellfish on the one hand and mushrooms and truffles on the other.

And although the wine itself was expensive, at £10 for the mushroom dumplings and £14 for the loster ones, the dumplings are quite affordable.

Since wine is a feature of the restaurant it’s good to see a menu that’s designed to show it off.

I ate at the restaurant as a guest of Bob Bob Ricard who obligingly supplied the very professional photos given that mine were a bit rubbish and wouldn't have encouraged you to try the combination out at all.

Louis Roederer Brut with a truffle cheese toastie

This match last week at 45 Jermyn St had EVERYTHING going for it starting with a decadent toasted cheese sandwich lavishly scattered with grated white truffle. What could be better? Well, actually a glass of very decent champagne (Louis Roederer Brut premier) with it - one of those matches made in heaven where the whole is better than the sum of the parts.

The entire experience which I suggest is the ultimate Christmas shopping treat isn’t cheap of course - £26.50 for the sandwich, another £12.50 for the fizz plus service which is likely to take you over the £50 mark for what is basically a snack. But frankly I’d rather pay that to sit in 45’s immensely glamorous dining room for a couple of hours than have a dull Christmas lunch elsewhere.

You could pull off a more affordable version at home by anointing the cheese in your toastie with a drizzle of truffle oil before you grill it and serving it with a glass of cut price fizz. (Sainsbury’s Blanc de Noirs is currently selling for £16 with a further 25% off if you buy 6 bottles in total - not all of which have to be champagne)

(45 Jermyn St is part of Fortnum & Mason btw so you have the added pleasure of looking at their fabulously glittery windows.)

Disclosure. As it happened I was treated but I went fully intending to pay.

Black truffle and fontina pizza and Puligny Montrachet

It’s easy to get into a mindset with food and wine pairing where you automatically revert to a tried and tested combination. Like pizza with Peroni or a Sicilian red

But with the incredible number of variations on pizza toppings these days maybe we need to be a bit more adventurous and my experience at the newly opened Jean-Georges at the Connaught last week suggested just that.

One of his pizzas (for which you pay a princely £29) is topped with fontina cheese and black truffles. Frankly lager would be wasted on that, ditto most run of the mill reds by the glass. A Barolo maybe or a glass of champagne but neither I suspect would compare with the quite stellar 2014 Bachelet-Monnot 1er Cru Puligny Montrachet (Hameau de Blagny) which was picked by sommelier Raffaele Silvestre and was just sublime. White burgundy and pizza - who knew? (Try it at home with a mushroom pizza and a drizzle of truffle oil)

PS Lucky guests at the Connaught can actually order the pizza on room service - it apparently arrives in a box. So if you win the lottery you know what to do …

*Actually you can also order it to take away although that that rather misses the point. Part of the fun (and the price) is to get to eat it at the Connaught - in fact if you're minded to go I'd go just for that. And/or the extraordinarily good crispy sushi!

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I ate at Jean-Georges as a guest of the Connaught.