Root vegetables in dashi with junmai sake

A terrific pairing which was part of a fascinating tasting I went to last week of sakes from the Tohoku region of Japan, the area most affected by last year's earthquake and tsumani. It was organised jointly by the British Sake Association and events company Tengu Sake (@tengusake on Twitter) and took place at Tombo, a Japanese cafe in South Kensington which laid on some particularly delicious food.

The usual pairings of sashimi and sushi with different sakes were excellent but the one that intrigued me most was an umami-rich dish of root vegetables including turnip and mooli cooked in dashi with a side dish of green beans and broccoli with a sesame dressing. It went brilliantly well with a Tokubetsu junmai sake which had a lovely sweetness combined with an earthy character that reflected the same flavours in the vegetables. Truly delicious.

It would be worth checking out Tombo for a full meal I'd have said.

I attended the tasting as a guest of the British Sake Associaton.

Tea-smoked duck with beetroot jelly and Bandol

We may have got rid of the old convention of white wine with fish and red wine with meat but you’d still expect to drink a light wine with a starter and a more robust wine with your main course, non? Well not when it’s tea-smoked duck as I discovered at a great meal at one of our local Bristol restaurants, Riverstation in Bristol last week.

We’d been having a tasting with Jason Yapp of Yapp Brothers so had a fair number of bottles on the table to play with. The Bandol, a dense, rich, plummy Mas de la Rouvière 2007 from Domaine Bunan, didn’t look the most likely candidate but once I’d tasted the dish which had a really smokey edge I knew i had to try it.

It went brilliantly which goes to show if you want to drink Bandol right through a meal start with tea-smoked duck - or perhaps other smoked meats like venison. The slightly earthy taste of the beetroot helped too. (I’ll try and prise the recipe out of them.)

Apologies for not posting a pic of the dish. It wasn't my starter but my husband’s and as he was down the other end of the table he’d eaten most of it by the time I’d got to it.

The Bandol is £17.25 a bottle, btw. Expensive but worth it. It would be fantastic with a barbecued butterflied leg of lamb too.

Fresh prawns and Greco di Tufo

Odd though it sounds it's unusual to find a chef who's really knowledgeable about wine let alone one who's involved in creating his own list. Sam Harris of Zucca is one of the rare exceptions and the other day showed me some of the wines he's excited about.

One was an intense, pristine 2010 Greco di Tufo from Pietracupa in Campania - a bright minerally white with a lovely citrussy zing that Sam reckoned would go well with simply prepared shellfish.

To illustrate his point he got one of his chefs to peel a couple of prawns that had just arrived from Sicily and served them with a sprinkle of seasalt and a trickle of fresh, fruity olive oil. The combination was perfect. (Note: if he'd added a squeeze of lemon to the prawns it wouldn't have been as good. The wine did that job for him.)

We reckoned it would also be great with grilled swordfish and seabass.

Wild asparagus and Istrian Malvazija

This week’s wine pairing couldn’t be anything else but Istrian having spent three days in this northern part of Croatia last week. Surprisingly it turns out to be a great gastronomic destination - not from the point of view of fine dining but of respect for local traditions, ingredients and grape varieties.

We went during the wild asparagus festival, a month-long promotion called Days of Istrian Asparagus which lasts till the beginning of May. It has a stronger, slightly more bitter, herbal taste than the green asparagus we get here and is served with eggs, a rolled pasta called pljukanci and as a risotto (right. You can see a couple of the egg dishes here)

The most widely available white wine in Istria is malvazija (Malvasia) so that’s naturally what the locals drink with it. Most commonly it’s a fresh crisp, aromatic white with an attractive floral character although there are older vintages made with extended skin contact which have richer, more complex flavours, better suited to the region's other great speciality, white truffles‘.

There are apparently some 30 different types of Malvasia, mainly across the Mediterranean according to the quaintly translated website Vinistra which contains more than you probably ever need to know about the variety

For a list of producers contact Pacta Connect who import Istrian wines into the UK and hosted our trip. They’re bringing over some of their producers to the Real Wine Fair in London this May.