Pairings | Scallops

My favourite food pairings with Viognier

My favourite food pairings with Viognier

Viognier (pronounced vee-on-yee-ay) is a rich, exotically fruity white wine, sometimes achieving quite high levels of alcohol so what are the ideal foods to pair with it?

Top wine pairings with scallops

Top wine pairings with scallops

Scallops are some of the most delicious seafood around and some of the most flattering to a serious white wine. There’s one grape variety that will almost always see you right but also some other options

 The best food pairings with white burgundy

The best food pairings with white burgundy

White burgundy includes a multitude of wines from generic bourgogne blanc to the grandeur of a Bâtard-Montrachet or Corton-Charlemagne. But it’s the affordable wines that I’m focussing on in this post. What type of food do they pair with best?

Which foods pair best with whisky?

Which foods pair best with whisky?

I’ve been a bit of a sceptic in the past about pairing food with whisky. Not that there aren’t some great combinations but I find it hard to sustain for more than one dish.

Which food to pair with South African chenin blanc

Which food to pair with South African chenin blanc

You might think it odd to pick out South African Chenin rather than Chenin Blanc in general but I do think the wines are distinctive, particularly when it comes to the crisper styles which are much zestier than they tend to be in the Loire

 How to pair wine with fish

How to pair wine with fish

Advertisement feature Fish can be cooked so many different ways these days that you may wonder what kind of wine you should pair with it.

Top pairings for dry and off-dry Alsace whites

Top pairings for dry and off-dry Alsace whites

A re-run of an old post following a visit to Alsace, updating my recommendations on the best pairings for the region's dry and off-dry white wines.

The best pairings for albarino (and alvarinho)

The best pairings for albarino (and alvarinho)

If I had to sum up the best food pairing for albarino in one word it would be seafood. Which makes sense considering where it comes from on the coast of Galicia in the Rias Baixas region of northern Spain.

The charming eccentricity of Rye Bay Scallop Week

The charming eccentricity of Rye Bay Scallop Week

One of the more endearing aspects of the current British food scene is the number of festivals devoted to a single food. I’d heard of oyster festivals, crab festivals and cheese festivals but I’d never come across a scallop festival before.

Scallops with Sauternes butter and oaked white Bordeaux

Scallops with Sauternes butter and oaked white Bordeaux

One of the treats I’ve lined up during lockdown is to have a weekly takeaway from a local restaurant, both to give me a break from cooking and hopefully help keep them in business and my first was a meal from one of my favourite Bristol restaurants littlefrench.

Scallops, nduja and Frappato

Scallops, nduja and Frappato

Last week I went to a wine dinner hosted by the Sicilian wine producer Donnafugata at Luca in London. They’re best known for their fabulous passito di Pantelleria dessert wine, Ben Ryé, but in fact it was the cleverly partnered dry wines that stole the show.

Seared diver-caught scallops and mature white burgundy

Seared diver-caught scallops and mature white burgundy

I was trying to think what food and wine match I would most like to be presented with on Valentine’s Day. I’m off foie gras. Caviar is horrendously expensive and very un-PC. Smoked salmon is nice, certainly, but no longer quite the special treat it once was (unless it’s wild). And I must be one of the few people in the world who isn’t anyone’s for a gooey chocolate pud.

Scallops and Muscat

Scallops and Muscat

A clever combination I had last week at a French restaurant called Larcen.

Peruvian-style scallops and Rioja rosado

Peruvian-style scallops and Rioja rosado

I thought it was pretty brave of rioja producer Ramon Bilbao to present their wines at a cutting edge Peruvian restaurant last week. Still, everyone knows rioja goes with Spanish food so why not? You never make new wine pairing discoveries if you don’t push the envelope.

Château Pontet-Canet at Alain Ducasse: Lucy Bridgers lives the high life

Château Pontet-Canet at Alain Ducasse: Lucy Bridgers lives the high life

The recent lunch hosted by Alfred Tesseron of Château Pontet-Canet at Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester revealed the extraordinary versatility of red Bordeaux and how it can be served right through a meal.

Scallop tartare and sauvignon blanc

Scallop tartare and sauvignon blanc

What on earth do you do when you have a line-up of some of the best wines in the world in front of you? Do you attempt to match them or reflect more the mood, the company and the time of year? Or, given that they're indisputably the hero of the occasion, do you just go with the sort of food the kitchen does well anyway?

Why Pinot Gris hits the spot with spicy food

Why Pinot Gris hits the spot with spicy food

You may think tasting wine sounds arduous but a major wine and food tasting, I assure you, is a much greater assault on the system as I was reminded the other day when Victoria Moore of The Guardian and I ran 14 Pinot Gris through their paces with foods that ranged from smoked eel to chicken tikka masala. Neither of us was able to eat much for several days.

Chablis at Nobu

Sometimes you go to a wine dinner with some trepidation wondering if the wine will stand up to the food but I was pretty optimistic that Domaine Long-Depaquit’s Chablis would survive at Nobu (the original Metropolitan hotel restaurant in London, not LA, sadly!)

Scallop Ceviche

Scallop Ceviche

If you're looking for an impressive dish for Valentine's Day try this delicious scallop ceviche from Rick and Katie Toogood's Prawn on the Lawn: Fish and Seafood to Share. (It feeds 4 but I'm sure you can manage it between you!)

The best food matches with New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc

The best food matches with New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc

The flavours of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc - and this is why it is so popular - are powerful and aromatic: citrus, gooseberry and passionfruit in spades. So you if you're looking for a food match need big flavours on your plate to stand up to it.

Scallop and mango ceviche with Montes Cherub Syrah Rosé

Scallop and mango ceviche with Montes Cherub Syrah Rosé

Given Chile’s proximity to the coast, this week’s match couldn’t be anything but seafood but I’m going to pass over the more obvious pairings with sauvignon blanc in favour of this wildly brilliant combination of scallops and rosé.

John Dory poached in red wine with Daniel Rion Nuits-St-Georges

John Dory poached in red wine with Daniel Rion Nuits-St-Georges

It was hard to pick just one pairing from the stellar meal I had at Marcus Wareing in London last week but this combination of robustly cooked John Dory and 2005 Nuits-St-Georges from Domaine Daniel Rion was the most interesting, underlining that red wine can be just as good a partner for white fish as for meatier fish like tuna.

Ceviche and Susana Balbo Torrontes

Ceviche and Susana Balbo Torrontes

I’m currently away in Priorato in Spain (of which more later this week) but this was a great combination I came across last week at the Gaucho Grill in Swallow Street, London.

 Baked celeriac and blanc de blancs champagne

Baked celeriac and blanc de blancs champagne

Not many producers take food and wine pairing as seriously as champagne house Gosset which sponsors an annual ‘Matchmakers’ competition for young sommeliers and chefs which was held at the Cordon Bleu's Cord restaurant in Fleet Street

Stir-fried lobster, egg white and scallop mousse with Chateau Fombrauge Bordeaux Blanc 2009

Stir-fried lobster, egg white and scallop mousse with Chateau Fombrauge Bordeaux Blanc 2009

A standout combination from the Hong Kong Tourist Board lunch at Bordeaux’ annual wine festival Fête le Vin last week. It was also the standout dish, a finely worked assembly of delicate flavours and textures from Chef Man Sing Lee of the Mandarin Oriental.

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