Miso and malt whisky

I’ve been away in Scotland for a couple of weeks and seem to been drinking more beer and whisky than wine but the standout pairing was with an innovative dish at The Macallan distillery of fermented barley with a confit egg yolk and caramelised yeast which was like a savoury marmitey risotto. (Much tastier than it looks in my particularly rubbish photo).

It was paired with a Broglia Gavi di Gavi which was a perfectly good combination but I had a hunch it would work with the Macallan 12 y o and got them to bring along a dram. It really did which makes sense really when you think that whisky is made from malted barley too. And if fermented barley why not any dish with miso? I’m sure that would work too.

Maybe the Macallan is particularly well suited to the pairing because of its rich sherried style and viscosity but it's definitely an idea worth playing with.

Other good pairings while I’ve been away were the 2011 Vina Tondonia Rioja rosado gran reserva with grilled lobster at Hawksmoor in Edinburgh (a pre-birthday treat from my son, Will) and a crisp fruity Austrian Funkstille riesling with a smoked fish platter at a nice little wine bar called the Giddy Gannet in St Monans in Fife. (Dry riesling works really well with smoked fish)

I ate at the Macallan as a guest of the distillery as part of The Mastery Experience .

Smoked salmon and Deanston Virgin Oak single malt whisky

There were a number of great matches with Deanston’s Virgin Oak whisky up in Scotland last week but unusually I’m going for the most conventional - a starter of (very good) smoked salmon with gravadlax and a tomato and cucumber dressing at Gleneagles hotel - on the grounds that it’s the most useful.

I don’t pair malt whisky frequently enough with smoked salmon and it really is delicious.

The whisky is a bit unusual though. It’s a 46.3% blend of younger whiskies aged, like bourbon, in new American oak casks which give it a rather delicious note of light soft brown sugar and vanilla fudge and it’s master distiller Brendan McCarron’s favourite whisky of the range

It was also used in the very delicious ice-cream that went with the final course of the dinner - a rich Valrhona chocolate dessert with banana toffee, clootie dumpling croutons (yes, really!) although that dish was paired with the more complex Deanston 18 year old which could handle the richness of the chocolate.

The wild card in terms of pairing was the macaroni cheese and chips I ordered in the distillery café at lunchtime. I asked if I could try the Virgin Oak with it and it turned out to be a cracking match. If that’s a step too far for you I reckon it would also go very well with cheddar cheese.

What foods pair best with whisky?

You can buy the Virgin Oak single malt from The Whisky Exchange for £35.25 and the 18 year old, which was voted The Whisky Exchange’s Whisky of the Year), for £63.95 currently.

I visited the distillery as a guest of Deanston and The Whisky Exchange

Single malt whisky and salted caramel fudge

One of the interesting trends I’ve noticed is the number of English whiskies that are now coming on stream including the Masthouse single malt from the Copper Rivet Distillery in Chatham, Kent I was sent the other day. (In fact there are, amazingly, more distilleries in England than Scotland now!)

Masthouse is what they call a ‘farm to glass’ whisky made with a Kentish malted barley called Belgravia, from the nearby Isle of Sheppey. It’s pot-distilled and matured in ex-bourbon and virgin American white oak barrels which gives the young spirit an appealing touch of almost heathery sweetness

That could well be why it went so well with the rather indulgent white chocolate and salted caramel fudge they sent as a snack to nibble with it which was apparently made by the head chef at their distillery restaurant The Pumproom. I certainly think fudge and whisky bears more exploration.

You can buy the Masthouse single malt which is bottled at 45% for £45 for 50cl from the distillery.

Picture of fudge by Sebastiana Raw at shutterstock.com - not specifically of the fudge mentioned in the post!

I was sent the whisky as a press sample.

Treacle tart with Ledaig 10 year old malt whisky

Occasionally you come across a pairing so brilliant, so simple that you wonder why you’ve never thought of it before and so it was on Saturday evening.

We’d been talking about whisky and my friend Nick had been saying I should try his 10 year old Ledaig from the Tobermory distillery on the Isle of Mull which he impressively pronounced correctly as lech-ig (for an explanation see this invaluable post on the blog Cask Notes. I’m glad he did - I’d have been going round pronouncing it le-dayg for ever more.)

My friend Andy (cookery writer Andrea Leeman) had made a traditional treacle tart* which is made not with treacle but golden syrup and I wondered if that might be a good opportunity to try the whisky rather than waiting until after dinner. And so it proved.

The whisky tastes (to me) like a cross between a lowland and an island whisky with traces of peat (although it’s described on some sites as heavily peated) and a charming sweet heathery character that chimed in perfectly with the tart making it even more of a treat.

I don’t think a richer sherried whisky like The Macallan would work as well though I’m thinking it *would* be good with a pecan pie. Either would make a great dessert for Burns Night.

* there's a similar recipe from James Martin on the BBC website