When you can pair asparagus with red wine

The idea of partnering asparagus with wine is contentious enough but red wine? Surely that won’t work?

Well, it so happens it does as I managed to prove at an event called the Great British Asparagus Feast in Bristol last week when I picked the pairings for a menu that had been devised by three of the city’s top chefs.

The main course was a whole roast, brined chicken on a bed of wild garlic served with chargrilled asparagus cooked with sautéed girolles (wild mushrooms) and dukkah (a middle-eastern style topping of chopped hazelnuts and sesame seeds) from Josh Eggleton of The Pony & Trap.

I’d paired the 2014 Tyrrell’s ‘Old Winery’ Pinot Noir from south-east Australia with it in the hope that it would go with the chargrilled asparagus and mushrooms and it really worked - largely because it was quite a dark-fruited style of pinot rather than a light, raspberry-scented one. You can buy it from independent wine merchants including Dennhöfer Wines and Richard Granger Wines for between £10-12 which is excellent value for money for a pinot.

The other matches were a Gavi di Gavi with a dish of asparagus, hand-rolled cavatelli, slow-cooked egg and goats cheese from Adelina Yard which I picked to reflect the Italian influence of the dish and a lovely lush white Chateauneuf-du-Pape ‘Les Hauts de Barville’ 2014 from Maison Brotte with a dish of asparagus, with white and brown crab meat, saffron and lovage from Wallfish Bistro.

We finished with a cheese course rather than a dessert - Caerphilly with pickled asparagus with which I paired a medium-dry cider - Charmer from Somerset producer Orchard Pig. (Well, the dinner did take place in the West Country!).

Oh, and we kicked off with a sparkling wine called Castlebrook Brut which came from one of the asparagus producers, Wye Valley which you can actually buy in selected branches of Marks & Spencer (and from their website)

The wines were sourced from Stewart Wines who supply Yurt Lush who hosted the dinner.

Roast kid and dry Mavrodaphne

As it was my first Easter in Greece - which was celebrated a month later than that of the western Christian church this year - what could I focus on but what to drink with a Greek Easter lunch?

The centrepiece is a whole roast lamb or kid on a spit - in the case of the family I was staying with, kid. It’s simply seasoned with pepper, plenty of salt, stuffed with herbs such as thyme and rosemary then cooked slowly over the coals for 2 1/2-3 hours. The tastiest bits are the bits you pick with your fingers off the carcass and the kokoretsi - the offal, which is wrapped in the intestines and also roasted over the fire. That may, I realise, put off the more squeamish among you but it is truly delicious.

You could drink a white with this - the Greeks drink more white wine than red but the return of meat to the menu after lent calls for a bit more of a celebration. In our case that took the form of a magnum of the 2013 vintage of Gentilini’s Eclipse, an exotically fragrant dry mavrodaphne that was predictably great with the lamb but also particularly good with the more gamey flavour of the offal. If you're a Bandol fan you'd love it.

Other Greek reds such as agiorgitiko and xinomavro would obviously be good too, depending on where you are in Greece. This is definitely an occasion to drink local.

I was invited to spend Easter with Petros Markantonatos and Marianna Kosmetatos of Gentilini

Is this wine the perfect match for Thai food?

Thai food is particularly difficult to match with wine. Not only do you have the heat to contend with but the tricky sweet-sour flavours and - as with many Asian cuisines - several dishes on the go at a time.

Up to now I’ve thought that off-dry pinot gris or riesling was the ideal pairing but after a meal at the much talked about Som Saa this week, an impossible to get into pop-up which has now found permanent premises in Commercial Street, I’m not so sure.

The food is authentic and therefore really spicy (and we didn’t have the hottest options!). Two dishes in particular, the som tam isaan (country-style green papaya salad) and pad prik king (red pork curry) really blew our socks off. A braised salted beef curry was challenging too.

I expected the medium-dry Markus Huber riesling on the list to be the best match but it was a improbably named German wine called Boogie from Friedrich Altenkirch in the Rheingau, a slightly drier but deliciously fragrant blend of sauvignon blanc, pinot blanc and riesling that sailed through.

Frustratingly the wine is not that widely available in the UK but Handford Wines told me on Twitter yesterday they occasionally have it. It’s imported into the UK by German specialist O W Loeb. For stockists in other countries see wine-searcher.com

For other ideas on what to drink with Thai food read

Which Drinks Pair Best with Thai food

Sukiyaki Wagyu and red burgundy

I’d have been hard pushed to explain exactly what sukiyaki was before I had it this week at Jason Atherton’s swish new restaurant Sosharu in Clerkenwell.

But it’s a real showstopper of a dish that arrives at the table sizzling away in a cast iron dish over a burner, borne in this case by an improbably good-looking chef who looks as if he’s stepped straight off an advertising shoot

The ingredients seem quite simple - glass noodles, shitake mushrooms, tofu and heavily marbled wagyu beef and at first you don’t think it’s going to pack much of a punch but then The Handsome One returns to your table to toss the ingredients together and there’s this great waft of a deeply savoury umami-rich sauce.

With nothing in my glass I was thinking wistfully of burgundy so was gratified when the sommelier produced a bottle of Domaine de Trapet’s 2012 Marsannay which struck exactly the right note. Not cheap at £15 a 125ml glass but a chance to try something really delicious. If I’d been drinking sake that woud have worked well too as, I suspect, would a dry amontillado sherry.

If you’re inspired to try this at home I found a similar-looking Wagyu sukiyaki recipe from chef Masaharu Morimoto on the Food Network website. And here’s an interesting post about the difference between sukiyaki and shabu shabu if you’re as confused as I was.

I ate at Sosharu as a guest of the restaurant.