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Pairings | French wine

A classic English meal with a perfectly matched French wine

Posted on June 14 2007 at 09:56

People occasionally ask me what characterises British food. Unlike French or Italian food it can be hard to pin down, there are so many different ethnic influences but last night I had a meal that was quintessentially English summer food.

Tags: cucumber Bandol Bandol Rosé dry rosé drink:rosé dill cream cucumber fritters food:veg & salads Stephen Markwick Culinaria French wine English food dill
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Bit of a rubbish pic but a quick riff on the TikTok baked feta pasta adding sundried tomatoes as I didn’t have enough fresh ones. Otherwise everything from the store cupboard and fridge. #givingupstockingup. . . . #pasta #bakedfetapasta #tomatoes #sundriedtomatoes #storecupboardcooking #frugalmeals #lovefoodhatewaste #loveyourleftoversTea and cake at the very charming @ospreylondon café St Albans. Great deals on bags and purses too (which means, yes, I bought one 😉). . . . #cake #café #almondcake #tea #earlgrey #osprey #stalbansStews also act as a useful receptacle for random freezer finds. The first shot is a fish stew made from a couple of chunky fillets of hake, a few queen scallops (goodness knows how long they’d been there) and a few frozen prawns. I made a base from onion, garlic, a slosh of white wine and half a tin of chopped tomatoes, then added the fish and a few parboiled new potatoes. Oh and the magic ingredients - a few drops of nam pla (fish sauce) which boots the flavour of any fishy dish and a pinch of saffron soaked in warm water. And some of that flat leaf parsley that went into the tuna and bean salad at the end. The other dish was based on an odd chunk of meat I thought was mutton but turned out - not disastrously - to be a ham hock. I slow roasted it with onions, carrots and a bit of beer then served it with a root veg stew made from onions, carrots, swede and potatoes finished off with brown miso and a dash of soy. Took the meat off the bone and added it back to the stew. It WOULD have been better with mutton but was pretty good nonetheless. Except that I now have to think what to do with the leftover root veg as I inevitably bought too much 🙄. Useful reminder that IT REALLY DOES HELP TO LABEL AND DATE THINGS YOU PUT IN THE FREEZER. And then remember that they’re there. When I was first married I used to have a freezer book, believe it or not. Not a bad idea. What have you found lurking in your freezer lately? . . . #stew #fishstew #hake #prawns #shrimp #hamhock #rootvegetables #miso #freezermeals #loveyourleftovers #lovefoodhatewaste #givingupstockingup #frugalmealsMore fridge foraging over the weekend built around half a jar of @boldbeanco’s fabulous queen butter beans which my generous neighbour @jennychandleruk had passed on to me as I’d run out and she knows I love’em. I used them to rustle up this quick tuna and bean salad with a tin of very good tuna from @thetinnedfishmarket, a handful of delicious cracked green Lebanese olives from @shorkk.food and a small preserved lemon it took me at least 5 minutes to find in the back of the fridge. I used the oil from the tuna tin and the brine from the olives and lemon as a dressing and mixed in some freshly chopped flat leaf parsley from my local greengrocer @regthe_veg. (I AM allowing myself fresh herbs) The sharpness of the olives and lemon really made it for me as I normally find tuna salads a bit bland. Incidentally the sharp-eyed among you may notice that there are two different shots of the dish - actuall 3 as I forgot to delete one. I recently bought some vinyl backdrops from @blackvelvetstyling in an attempt to raise my food styling game. Ideally there should have been a vase of flowers, some Scandi cutlery and a folded napkin in the shot, I know 😂. I still have a lot to learn. Which pic do you like best? . . #beans #pulses #tuna #tunaandbeansalad #olives #pickledlemons #fridgeforaging #storecupboardcooking #lovefoodhatewaste #frugalliving #givingupstockingup #foodphotograpy Follow on Instagram

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