Oysters and sake

A surprise match from the RAW wine fair last week: some extraordinarily good wild rock oysters and a range of unpasteurised, unfiltered sakes from Yoigokochi Sake.

I’ve always thought of white wine as the natural pairing for oysters but the sake was sensational - mimicking the texture of the oysters more than wine and emphasising their saline character. (I think that was the umami effect.)

The range, which is all of junmaishu quality and has no added alcohol, sugar- or taste-, aroma-, or colour-enhancing elements, is about to be brought in by Raeburn Fine Wines. Most were also unfiltered and unpasteurized - a similar revelation to natural wines.

The oysters were served unseasoned - I’m not sure how a squeeze of lemon would affect the pairing but some kind of soy or sesame dressing would only benefit, I suspect. Delicious anyway.

Cider-battered onions with fino sherry

To kick off National Vegetarian Week and a week of veggie pairings (don’t groan, carnivores, we’ll be back on meat next week!) here’s a great pairing from Friday night’s underground supper club, Montpelier Basement in Bristol.

You might think cider would be the perfect match with cider-battered onions and of course it would, not least because you’d have an open bottle to hand, but chilled fino sherry - in this case Tio Pepe - is also the biz.

Fino sherry is normally associated with ingredients such as olives, nuts, Spanish ham and cheese but it’s also great with anything fried including croquetas, fritters and goujons.

I particularly liked this simple idea of serving onions in strips like churros. A really unusual and imaginative tapa.

Cinnamon beignets with peach jam, Nutella and a black Americano coffee

Those of you who follow my Twitter feed will be aware I’ve been away at the Vegas Uncork’d festival so it might seem a touch perverse to pick out a non-wine pairing as my match of the week - and one from a meal outside the festival programme.

Fear not - I’ll be writing a longer post about the great food and wine I came across in a few days time but this was just the perfect start to the day at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in The Venetian.

Incredibly light warm beignets dusted with fine sugar and cinnamon, served with separate pots of peach jam and Nutella to slather over them and a good strong cup of black Americano coffee.

As I’ve mentioned before I don’t have a particularly sweet tooth so it seemed to be the perfect counterbalance to the beignets - though by American standards they weren't particularly sweet - but you could equally well wash them down with a flat white or other milky white or indeed an espresso.

Incidentally this is a good way to handle breakfast in an expensive place like Vegas. Most cooked breakfast dishes - even at less swanky places - are about 15$ plus with tax and service on top. This brought my bill to an affordable $10.

Toasted hay tart with coffee and walnuts with 1981 madeira

Toasted hay tart might not sound particularly appealing but you’ll have to trust me, it was delicious! It was the spectacular finale to a meal to celebrate 36 years of the iconic Bristol restaurant Bell’s Diner at the Eat, Drink Bristol Fashion festival in Bristol last week. The current chef Chris Wicks who cooked the meal has been in place for the last 12 or so.

The tart which was delicately, creamily sweet had, I think, been made with toasted hay infused milk and was accompanied (I think - end of a long evening!) with a coffee granita, a rubble of walnuts and some slightly malty ice cream which is probably where the beer came in. Or maybe it was the other way round - beer granita and milky coffee ice cream. Whatever . . .

And it was perfectly set off with a glass of very old rare madeira - a 1981 Pereira d'Olivera Colheita Verdelho from one of Chris’s regular suppliers R S Wines which provided another layer of dark, treacle toffee and grilled nut flavours. Madeira is such an underrated drink.

You can actually buy the wine from R S Wines for £61 a bottle. Making the dessert might be slightly less straightforward, I suspect . . .