Junmai sake with cheung fun, asparagus and shiitake mushrooms

It’s partly because not enough restaurants offer the option but I don’t drink sake often enough in Asian restaurants. (And yes, I know Asian is an imprecise term but that’s how many describe the food they offer)

Anyway proof, yet again that it is a reliable pairing at dinner last week at Wokyko Kauto in Bristol where I drank an Evening Sky junmai sake with a range of dishes including a brilliantly clever vegan dish of roasted cheung fun (rice noodle roll), apsaragus, shiitake mushrooms and Sichuan jus that had all the depth of flavour of a meat dish.

It also worked with an intensely flavoured onglet steak in black bean sauce (as surprisingly, did the tail end of a gin and tonic, made with their own Woky gin which has been developed for them by the local Psychopomp distillery and which is flavoured with nashi pear).

And - although you hardly needed a liquid accompaniment - with a moreish bowl of Korean fried chicken ramen with a deeply flavoured umami broth which is apparently made with serrano ham bones.

I’d like to try one of the other sakes when I go back (and it is a question of when rather than if. I definitely need that tang (umami broth) fix!)

I ate at Wokyko Kauto as a guest of the restaurant

Courgette, seed and curry leaf cake and dry German riesling

The more I taste authentic Indian food the less I think it causes problems for wine. A group of us cooked up a whole load of recipes on Saturday night including this savoury cake called handvo from Anjum Anand’s I love India.

It was based on semolina and gram flour and was flavoured with courgette, peas, curry leaves and pumpkin seeds. Despite also containing ginger and green chilli it was fragrant rather than hot and the most brilliant match for a lovely dry German riesling

The wine came from a producer I very much admire - Peter Jakob Kuhn from the Rheingau who works biodynamically. The wine is beautifully pure and fruity but not the slightest bit affected by the spice. In fact I think it was even enhanced by it. It makes the perfect aperitif.

You can buy the wine from Tanners shops and online and find the recipe - if you feel inspired to make it - on the Australian SBS site or, of course in Anjum's book.