Ox cheek lasagne and zinfandel

It’s always a treat going round to my friends Stephen and Judy for supper.

Stephen is one of my all-time favourite chefs and his former restaurant Culinaria in Redland was one of the reasons we moved to Bristol when we found the flat we were thinking of renting was just down the road!

Judy lets me know what he’s planning to cook so I can bring along an appropriate wine. In this case it was an ox cheek lasagne so I scanned my wine rack and came up with this single estate bottling of Ridge’s 2019 Pagani Ranch Zinfandel I’d splashed out on from The Wine Society a few months back. (I love Ridge!)

It comes from vines planted before Prohibition and is a field blend of (mainly) zinfandel, petite sirah and alicante bouschet

I’d prematurely opened a bottle not long after I'd bought it which I’d found too sweetly overripe but six months on it was spot on: smooth, rich and sumptuous, just perfect with the deep flavour of the oxtail and cheese.

Great dish. Great match! (Rubbish photo - sorry!)

See also:

 The best food pairings for lasagne 

The best food pairings for Zinfandel

White onion and cheddar tart and Mayacamas chardonnay

I was really spoilt for choice with wine pairings at Claridges last week. (It’s not often I get to write a sentence like that …)

When you eat in their restaurant you can choose a bottle to go with the meal from the enviable selection in the shop downstairs, the only problem being settling on which one.

One solution is to work out roughly what you have in mind to eat before you go down there, a decision made rather easier by choosing from the very good value (for Claridges) set price lunch or pre-theatre. menu which is £49 for two courses or £58 for 3.

My companion, fellow winelover Barry Smith and I worked out that if we chose a red we would go for the ballotine of confit duck and the lamb navarin while if we chose a white we’d opt for the white onion and cheddar tart and Cornish brill with clams and seaweed butter.

In the event we discovered from head sommelier Emma Denney that they also had a 2018 Maycamas chardonnay from the Napa Valley on by the glass which meant one of us could have the tart and the other the ballotine with the bottle of Domaine 2005 Blagny La Pièce sous le Bois, a lesser known and comparatively modestly priced burgundy Barry had spotted on the shelves.

It also went really well with the navarin but the standout match for me was the chardonnay and the cheddar tart.

I’ve tried chardonnay with cheddar before but this wine, which had a wonderfully refreshing acidity you don’t always associate with Californian chardonnay, took the pairing to another level.

You can also buy it by the bottle from Claridges Wine Cellar for £75 (at the time of writing) which is great value given it’s £50 by the glass and read about it here,

Next time you have cheese and onion quiche think chardonnay …

See also The Best Wine Pairings for Cheddar Cheese

And for other chardonnay pairings The Best Food to pair with Chardonnay

I ate at the restaurant as a guest of Claridges

Bacchus with asparagus with gnocchi and wild garlic pesto

With the home grown asparagus season kicking off and wild garlic in full bloom you may well be thinking of combining the two as my friend TV presenter Andy Clarke did this weekend when a group of us stayed at Wraxall vineyard in Somerset.

Andy had devised the dish to go with Wraxall’s Bacchus which it did perfectly.

Bacchus is a grape variety that does well in England. As the website Grape Britannia explains, it’s a cross of Muller-Thurgau with a Silvaner/Riesling cross, Silvaner itself being a cross of Traminer and Oesterreichish Weiss, while Muller-Thurgau is a Riesling/Madeleine Royal cross.

If you find it hard getting your head round this (me too!) just think of it as England’s answer to sauvignon blanc.

I personally liked the pairing of the delicate unoaked 2021 Wraxall Bacchus which you can buy from their website for £18 a bottle best with the assertive flavours of asparagus and wild garlic but the oaked version, which won a silver medal last year in the Independent English Wine Awards, picked up on the buttery toasted crumbs which Andy had scattered over the dish and would be a good match for richer, creamier sauces.

Anyway bear in mind Bacchus with asparagus over the next few weeks - and beyond.

For other Bacchus pairings see here 

Baba with rum

Yes, you did read that right. Baba with rum not rum baba.

It was one of the dishes that was served by top pastry chef Pierre Hermé at the Constance Festival Culinaire in Mauritius as a finale to the multi-Michelin-starred tribute dinner for chef Serge Vieira who tragically died last year at the age of 46.

Described - as only the French can - as baba infiniment exotique it was paired with a local Mauritian spiced rum liqueur, Chamarel Vanille. which undergoes a second maturation in a cask to which vanilla is added.

What Pierre had done was take the rum out of the baba and serve it alongside as a drink pairing. Which was an absolute game changer, leaving the cake much fresher and lighter. It was served on a bed of passionfruit and finely sliced pineapple and fine shards of chocolate all of which went with the Chamarel rum liqueur too.

You can buy it in the UK from Master of Malt for £36.55.

It's hard to think of a wine pairing that would have worked as well.

More food and wine matches from the festival shortly including the pairings for the Deutz trophy for which I was one of the judges.