Shellfish, citrus and tequila

I went to an absolutely brilliant citrus dinner last week at Toklas in London, at which almost any one of the pairings could have been my match of the week.

The meal was cooked by Elena Reygadas of Rosetta in Mexico City who was voted World's Best Female Chef at the 50 Best awards last year using citrus from the Todoli Foundation just outside Valencia.

However I’m going for the first course of langoustine and scallop aguachile with Rangpur lime and Spanish sweet limetta and paired with a shot of Casa Dragones Joven tequila with clam lime.

Aguachile is a similar preparation to ceviche as explained here though made with chile-infused water but it was almost as if the shellfish has been lightly cooked in its own juices. It certainly wasn’t overly spicy in this case, more sweet and slightly smokey which really picked out the agave and other herbal flavours of the tequila.

It's not an easy pairing to replicate at home especially without access to specialist citrus though you do seem to be able to buy rangpur lime - a cross between a mandarin and a lime - online at a site called myexoticfruit.com. Sweet limetta is a cross between citron and bitter orange, according to Wikipedia.

The Casa Dragones Joven which was the most delicious, fragrant tequila I’ve ever tasted unfortunately turns out to be around £300 a bottle so I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to try it.

It's definitely an incentive to experiment more with tequila and seafood.

Another match I’d single out was a red pepper tamal with tarragon buttermilk and kumquat which was sensationally good with the ‘Cool Moon’ IGP Côtes Catalanes Les Enfants Sauvages - a blend of grenache gris, grenache blanc and macabeu which you can buy from Dynamic Vines in the UK for £42.

Again extrapolate from this that sweet red pepper and kumquat - or orange - is a flavour combination that works with white grenache or a white Grenache blend.

For other tequila pairings see Some Great Food Pairings for Tequila

I ate at Toklas as a guest of the restaurant

Lasagna and Georgian saperavi

I’m beginning to think lasagna or lasagne is one of the perfect dishes to pair with a good red wine - it seems to go with practically every bottle you throw at it (metaphorically speaking).

Last week it was a saperavi from Teliani Valley - their Glekhuri Kisishevi Saperavi Qvevri 2021.

It’s aged, as you can see from the name of the wine, in qvevri, the distinctive clay pots that are  used for ageing in Georgia and which give the wine a deeply savoury character.

I always think you need a red with some acidity with lasagne which is a rich dish. But the wine's exotically wild briary fruit was a delicious contrast too.

You can buy it online from The Secret Bottle Shop for £19.95.

There’s no picture of the bottle or the lasagne I’m afraid as I was round at a friend’s and off-duty so this is a stock photo.

For other possible wine matches see The best wine pairings for lasagna.

Image ©neil langan at shutterstock.com 

Fish stew and an oaked Valencian white wine

As those of you who follow me on instagram will know I’ve been in Valencia for the past two weeks, trying to improve my Spanish which hasn’t left a great deal of time for considered food and wine pairing but this was a great match at a restaurant called Rausell in the city centre.

The dish was called suquet de pescadores, a 'fishermens' stew' with hake (I’m guessing), clams, mussels and deliciously soft potatoes in a rich saffron-spiked broth. There was probably some tomato in there too and some very good fish stock.

As in many of the other Valencian restaurants I went to they didn’t have a local wine by the glass but very nicely opened a bottle of a rich oak-aged white called Blanc d’Enguera, a blend of chardonnay, verdil, sauvignon blanc and viognier (which they very generously topped up while only charging me for the glass which was only 4 euros anyway). Viognier generally goes with saffron so it was an excellent match.

There’s a YouTube video here (in Spanish!) if you want to have a go at making a similar dish.

The 2022 vintage I tasted doesn’t seem to be available in the UK or US (though it is in Germany if you check out wine-searcher.com but you can buy it direct from the producer’s website. 

Fideuá and Bobal

You might know Valencia best for paella but in fact it has another paella-like dish called fideuá pronounced fi-de-wah which is made with pasta rather than rice.

As opposed to the classic Valencian paella which contains chicken and rabbit it’s almost always based on seafood, generally prawns and squid with tomato and sweet (dulce) pimenton.

You might think that would make it a better pairing with a white wine than a red one but the locals drink red with it, not always a red from the region (Valencia or Utiel-Requena) as Rioja and Ribera del Duero are popular here. But the local grape variety Bobal which is fresh, fruity and cherry flavoured - not unlike a Valpolicella - is a particularly good match.

I had a home-cooked fideuá at a local winemaker called Bruno Murciano with a couple of their wines - of which I think the fresh, vibrant 2022 Cambio de Tercio worked best although their very elegant El Sueño which isn’t currently available in the UK is my overall favourite of their range*. You can buy the Cambio de Tercio from Ultracomida for £15.95

There’s a recipe for fideua here if you want to give it a try yourself. The secret according to this post is a really good fish stock.

*I made Bruno Murciano's L’Alegria my wine of the week a couple of years ago.

I lunched with Bruno and José Luis as their guest