Cider and cheddar

Cider and cheese are natural bedfellows.

You may have had a pint of cider with a ploughman’s but if you want to elevate the combination to another level try this.

It’s a collaboration between one of our best cider makers, Tom Oliver and Sam Wilkin aka Cellarman Sam who came up with the idea of crafting a cider to go specifically with cheddar - called, appropriately, Cheddar on my Mind.

It’s a rich fruity cider that tastes almost like a tarte tatin and is just perfect with a mature farmhouse cheddar such as Montgomery’s, Keen’s or Pitchfork - and with other cheeses as I discovered to my cost.

Tom paired it with a Teifi gouda style cheese in the second round of our Battle of the Beverages at the Abergavenny Food Festival (me on wine, Tom on cider and Pete Brown on beer) and it won hands down despite my fielding a really good Ribera del Duero, the 2108 Pradorey Crianza from Finca Valdelayegua.

He also showed it at a 'cheese and cider summit' last week - an initiative to link cider with cheese in people’s minds. I certainly don’t have a problem with that!

For other cheddar pairings click here and for other food pairings with cider here 

Steak and sake

As with most ingredients the best pairing for steak is going to depend on the way it’s cooked. For the most part you're probably going to reach for a red wine but we were in Japan and so the automatic go to was sake.

The accompaniments were more important than the steak itself though that was a couple of magnificent cuts of heavily marbled Kobe beef which we were lucky enough to enjoy twice - at Medium Rare at the Hotel Oriental in Kobe and Biftek Kawamura in Akashi

There were two elements of the dish that particularly kicked in with the sake we were drinking, both umami-rich: fried garlic chips and soy sauce. On both occasions the steak was followed by fried rice.

The style that worked best was Akashi Tai’s Honjozo Genshu Tokubetsu* a full-flavoured sake with, at 19%, a higher alcohol content than some lighter more delicate sakes. (Honjozo generally indicates a higher degree of alcohol, genshu that no water has been added and tokubetsu that it’s a premium sake where the rice has been polished to 60% of its original size. It can be served cool (which is how we had it with the steak) or warm.

Serving steak this way is actually a great way to enjoy it as the garlic and soy enhances the Maillard reaction you get from grilling meat and umami-rich sake amplifies that. 

*there’s a good explanation of the style in Sake Times 

For wine matches see The best wine pairing for steak.

I travelled to Japan as a guest of the Akashi sake brewery.

Okonomiyaki and orange wine

Our experience of Japanese wine is so limited in the UK that it came as quite a surprise to find three wines I would never have expected in a small restaurant and natural wine bar called Pasania in Osaka - a pinot noir, a kerner and an orange koshu.

Koshu is the variety that most often makes it over here but is on the whole relatively unexciting, or has been in the past at any rate. Maybe I need to revisit it as this orange version - Coco Farm & Winery's F.O.S. (fermented on skins) - was luscious, as aromatic varieties so often are.

It went perfectly with the restaurant’s speciality, okonomiyaki - a delicious umami-rich pancake made with cabbage and in this case, pork, squid, shrimp and octopus. (If you're unfamiliar with it - and a Brit - imagine a cross between bubble and squeak and a tortilla.)

Pasania is one of the restaurants in Osaka that is listed on the Star Wine List website. You can find the others here.

By the way you need to make a reservation as they don’t have many seats or take walk-ins. There’s a full explanation on their website  but don’t be put off - it’s worth it, especially if you're a natural wine fan.

Strawberries and white zinfandel

I think it’s good to re-examine your prejudices so every so often I go back to wines I don’t much like, white zin being a good example.

I had to taste some as part of research for an article recently and by and large it confirmed my impression that it wasn’t a wine for me. Not with savoury foods in any case but maybe sweet ones would show it off better?

I’d suggested in the past it might go with strawberries and hit on the idea of a perfect snack to pair with it - a riff on scones and cream without having to make the scones.

Ritz crackers, generously spread with Philly or other cream cheese and topped with a couple of slices of strawberry. There's a lovely contrast of salty cracker, smooth creamy cheese and sharp, fruity strawberry. A little freshly ground black pepper if you like, makes it even better IMO.

Serve the white zin (not sure why they don’t call it a rosé these days) well chilled or even over a couple of ice cubes. It’s only around 10% so perfect teatime drinking even if you don’t have a sweet tooth. Berry-topped cheesecakes or Eton mess would would work too.