Moroccan salads and vin gris

Wine is by no means served in all restaurants in Morocco so the idea of going so far as pairing it with specific dishes is equally if not more unfamiliar.

But they have a style of rosé called vin gris or gris de gris which is a versatile partner for many Moroccan dishes especially salads. It’s more like a white wine than a rosé with just the palest pink tinge.

We had a Moroccan wine, the 2023 Eclipse Les Deux Domaines made from grenache with a selection of salads including eggplant (aubergine) lemon and coriander, purslane salad and Taktouka (cooked peppers and tomatoes) at an excellent Marrakesh restaurant called Shabi Shabi.

This isn’t that selection but the light was so low I didn’t get a decent photograph of it but here’s a similar offering from the restaurant at the Musée de l’Art Culinaire Marocain which, like many Moroccan restaurants, doesn’t serve alcohol.

It would also go well with a vegetable tagine or 7 vegetable couscous.

It doesn’t seem to be available in the UK but you can find similar wines from the Languedoc in the South of France.

Cacio e pepe and Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi

That Italian white wine goes with pasta is not news I know but it was such a good pairing I’m going to make it my match of the week anyway.

Normally I prefer a light red wine with cacio e Pepe - I’ve previously enjoyed it with Frappato but there wasn’t anything particularly tempting on the list (at Prego, one of my local Italian restaurants in Bristol.)

It wasn’t a classic cacio e Pepe either - thoroughly enjoyable but a bit too cheesy (made with parmesan rather than the traditional pecorino) and not quite peppery enough. However it was topped with winter truffle, so I’m definitely not complaining.

The verdicchio, a 2022 Pallio di San Floriano from Monte Schiavo looked more tempting - and so it proved. Much more complex and flavourful than the average sub £10 Italian white. (It was organic.)

Verdicchio is a wine that goes with so many things, including artichokes - which means that you can happily drink it throughout a typical Italian meal especially if it’s based on vegetables or seafood. You can buy the 22 vintage online from N.D.John for £13.49. 

For other pasta pairings see Wines to Match different Pasta Sauces

Ceviche and Friulano

My visit to Santo Remedio whose third branch recently opened in Marylebone reminded me how much I’ve missed Mexican food since I got back from CDMX and Oaxaca in November.

Of course you can find ceviche all over the place - it’s Peruvian rather than Mexican but it’s popular in Mexico too.

This was a dish of seabass with guanoabana juice and habanero - not as hot as it sounds from the description but still with a bit of a kick. Guanabana is the Latin American name for soursop, a fruit with - as the name suggests - a slightly sour citrussy flavour.

For that reason I generally steer clear of similarly sharp wines with ceviche and go instead for an aromatic white - in this case a fragrant Antonutti Friulano from north-east Italy which actually went extraordinarily well though not quite as well with the fish tacos that followed it.

Still, in a Mexican meal like this which involves a succession of different small plates you can’t be constantly chopping and changing. I’d move on to a red with dishes like birria and pork pibil though.

You can buy the Friulano from Albion Wine Shippers for £13.96. Their website doesn’t specify the vintage but the label is a different colour which suggests it’s not the same one I had in the restaurant. Check if you’re interested in following up.

I ate at the restaurant as a guest of Santo Remedio

For other ceviche pairings see What wine to pair with raw fish

Whisky and a cheese and onion toastie

You may be thinking more of whisky in the context of haggis this week given Burns Night is coming up but an accidental pairing suggested another direction to take it

I’d just finished an online whisky tasting for my Substack subscribers and was a bit peckish but couldn’t be bothered to make a proper meal so rustled up a cheese and onion toastie (grilled cheese sandwich) with the glass of Shackleton whisky I was finishing off. (Drunk neat with a splash of water)

I hadn’t consciously thought it through but whisky goes well with cheddar so why not a toastie? Shackleton is a light, versatile blended malt whisky (which you can currently buy from Waitrose for £20) and worked really well. 

A perfect late night winter snack when you didn’t think you were going to be hungry and suddenly are ...

For other whisky pairings see Which Foods pair best with Whisky 

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Photo (not of the toastie I made) by Brent Hofacker at shutterstock.com