Wines to pair with fennel

Fennel is one of the handful of vegetables that can influence a main course pairing - almost always for the better. Its aniseed flavour seems to have a pronounced affinity with many wines, especially whites. Here are some suggested matches with recipes that two British chefs have published this weekend - Gordon Ramsay in the Times and Skye Gyngell in the Independent on Sunday.

Skye Gyngell’s recipes

Roast pork belly with roasted fennel
Fennel is a brilliant foil for the fattiness of pork and here it’s used both as a spice to season the meat and roast alongside the meat with more fennel seeds, chilli and lemon juice and peel. The latter, particularly, are punchy flavours that need an assertive wine as an accompaniment. I’d be inclined to turn to Italy for an intensely flavoured contemporary dry white such as a Greco di Tufo from Feudi di San Gregorio or, if you prefer red, a Chianti Classico.

Salad of rocket, cooked spinach and shaved fennel
Here a couple of other ingredients vie with the fennel for attention, the cooked spinach and the lemon zest and juice used to dress it. There’s also wine-friendly parmesan (though 100g, I have to say, sounds an awful lot). I think I’d recommend a dry white again here, probably Italian again (Italian whites and fennel seem to have a real affinity) and something quite straightforward like a Verdicchio or even a good Soave (I was drinking a Pieropan Soave last night with an intensely lemony dressing and it worked really well)

Sea bass with fennel pure
A dream dish for white burgundy lovers. There’s butter and cream in the pure as well as fennel which are the perfect foil for a classy Chardonnay. Oaked white Bordeaux would work too.

Gordon Ramsay’s recipes

Pan-roasted trout and caramelised fennel with a watercress and hazelnut salad
Quite a complex dish. The fennel is given a sweet-sour treatment with sugar and sherry vinegar and the salad is dressed with a dressing that includes hazelnut oil which adds to the nuttiness of the salad. I’d actually enjoy a lightly chilled dry amontillado or palo cortado with this but realise that wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste. A oaked (but not over-oaky) Chardonnay would also be an enjoyable match. The oak should pick up on the nuts.

Paprika pork chops with fennel and apple coleslaw
Actually the pork chops are not just seasoned with paprika but chilli powder, dark muscovado sugar, star anise, cinnamon and rosemary and the salad has a hot dressing that includes sugar and cider vinegar so the fennel plays second fiddle really. Winewise I’d probably go for a robust Côtes du Rhône Villages like a Vacquéyras but actually this is more a beer dish than a wine one. An amber ale or lager would hit the spot perfectly, I think.

Chilled fennel and melon soup with crab garnish
A dressy cold soup that will also have sweet and savoury notes. The fennel and melon will probably cancel each other out as a dominant influence so I’d take the crab as the ingredient to match. Spanish Albariño is a pretty safe bet with soups and should go well with both the crab and the soup.

Wines - and other drinks - to match recipes from the Ottolenghi Cookbook

The book I’ve been looking forward to most so far this year has just started being serialised in the Guardian today. It’s by Yotam Ottolenghi who founded two exceptional London restaurants and is simply called Ottolenghi: the Cookbook. l love Ottolenghi's food - it’s so generous and big-flavoured, piled high on bright, colourful platters - you can't fail to be tempted by it. It also lends itself perfectly to entertaining for large numbers at home.

Char-grilled asparagus, courgettes and manouri
Manouri, Yotam explains, is a Greek semi-soft cheese - you could substitute goats cheese or halloumi. Normally the asparagus would be the dominant flavour but the vegetables are dressed with a very rich home-made basil oil (which I can't wait to make) that makes me think that a dry Italian white such as a Gavi di Gavi or a Soave would be a better option.

Radish and broad bean salad
Another fresh-tasting salad with a very punchy dressing made from tahini paste, lemon juice and garlic. The salad also has a lot of lemon juice and some preserved lemon in it which makes for a lot of acidity so I’m not sure you need wine on top of all that. Personally I’d be drinking this with sparkling water or fresh fruit juice and water mixed (pomegranate would be nice) but if you’re serving it to friends you will probably want a bottle to pour. The best bet, I think would be a dry French or Spanish rosé.

Seafood, fennel and lime salad
An exotic seafood and fennel salad, seasoned with garlic lime and chilli. I think I’d go for a classic seafood white such as a Picpoul de Pinet or Albariño with this. Or even a Greek Assyrtiko.

Kosheri
An Egyptian dish of rice and lentils topped with fried onions and a spicy, sharp tomato sauce. Lentils normally lead to red wine but there’s quite a lot of chilli heat and vinegar in the sauce that makes it a slightly tricky dish to match. If you do go for red I’d make it a rustic one without too much obvious oak, something like a Côtes du Rhône Villages. But I actually think you’d enjoy a beer better. A good pilsner, I’d suggest.

Harissa-marinated chicken with red grapefruit salad
Wow! Here you have everything. Hot chilli, bitter/acid grapefruit and a sweet and sour dressing of grapefruit, lemon juice and maple syrup. The only thing I can think of that would work wine-wise is a big fruity ros - something like Charlie Melton’s Rosé of Virginia from southern Australia or an Argentinian or Californian Syrah rosé. Whatever you do you don’t want tannin. Otherwise I think you’d be looking at something like a pitcher cocktail - something like a Seabreeze (vodka, cranberry juice and grapefruit juice).

Macadamia and white chocolate brownies
Interesting that Yotam has put coffee in these brownies. I’d be looking at coffee too - an espresso or black Americano - to counteract the intense sweetness but that’s probably because I haven’t got a sweet tooth. Cold milk is great with brownies too.

What to eat with old Côte Rôtie

An irresistible dinner invitation came my way a few weeks ago, to attend a game dinner and tasting of René Rostaing’s Côte Rôties at Emanuel College, Cambridge. Cambridge colleges are famous for their wine cellars but these wines came from the personal wine cellar of its ‘wine steward’ Dr Jonathan Aldred, the fortunate fellow (in both senses of the word) who buys all the wine for the college.

Rostaing is regarded as a modernist in Côte Rôtie but most of these wines dated from the 1990’s before he was using such cutting edge equipment as rotary fermenters. The tasting was based on the outstanding ‘91’s with younger or, in the case of the La Landonnes, an older vintage for comparison. The outstanding wines in my view were his 1991 Côte Rôtie and the 1990 La Landonne which marginally shaded it over the ‘91. The Côte Blondes were a slight disappointment, the first ‘91 being slightly dirty. (The second was much better but not in the class of the La Landonnes)

Dinner was served in the ante-room to the gallery, a splendid crimson-painted room overlooking the courtayard of this 400+ year old college (founded in 1584) It was not a meal for the faint-hearted. It started conventionally enough with a large slab of rich game pat (very good with the ‘91 Côte Rôtie) then went on to an innocuous sounding venison ‘duo’, an exotically dark dish of venison liver and what tasted like braised haunch but which the chef later revealed had been heart. I didn’t have a chance to quiz the chef but I think the sauce was almost certainly made with blood lièvre à la royale style. The Blondes survived intact.

The main course was woodcook, served the traditional way with its entrails, another intensely gamey note that really set off the La Landonnes to perfection. They also matched well with the cheese - sensibly limited by Dr Aldred to three plain hard cheeses, a Beaufort, a Comté and a Gruyère.

The dessert wine was Austrian rather than French: a really lovely Beerenauslese, the 2003 Samling 88 from Helmut Lang, which Aldred had picked to go with a dessert of crêpes suzette (fortunately neither too orangey nor too syrupy otherwise it might well have overwhelmed the wine).

Dinner certainly highlighted even mature Côte Rôtie’s power in being able to stand up to such strong-flavoured game dishes - and also its longevity. The colour on all the wines had remained amazingly intense.

Dinner was jointly organised by Cambridge Wine Merchants who have three shops in the city and organise regular events and tastings.

Image by BlueBreezeWiki - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0