Pairings | Pesto

Butternut squash with pistachio pesto, feta and pomegranate seeds

Butternut squash with pistachio pesto, feta and pomegranate seeds

Finding a special occasion vegetarian dish is tough if you're not a veggie yourself but try this show-stopping recipe from Sabrina Ghayour's Persiana which won best new cookbook at this week's Observer Food Monthly awards.

Peter Gordon's beef pesto and Pencarrow pinot noir

Peter Gordon's beef pesto and Pencarrow pinot noir

I found myself back in an old haunt last week - Peter Gordon’s The Providores in London’s Marylebone High Street. As the bar was crowded we went up to the restaurant and treated ourselves to the à la carte*

Pasta with pesto and Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi

Pasta with pesto and Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi

This past week has reminded me yet again what a great match Italian whites are for food. Their lack of obvious character means they tend not to stand out in a tasting but they explode into life with a dish.

Mature Savennières with chargrilled carrots, burnt aubergine, miso and walnut pesto

Mature Savennières with chargrilled carrots, burnt aubergine, miso and walnut pesto

OK, this pairing at Jason Atherton’s new Social Wine and Tapas isn’t exactly easy to reproduce at home but it was certainly the highlight of my food and wine matches last week.

 Pistachio pesto and solaris

Pistachio pesto and solaris

One of the best food pairing experiences I’ve come across in a winery is the one laid on by Hebron vineyard in West Wales.

Penne in walnut sauce

Penne in walnut sauce

If you've run through your pasta sauce repertoire several times during lockdown try this delicious penne in salsa di noci (penne in walnut sauce) from Christine Smallwood's lovely new book Italy: The World Vegetarian. It's really simple - as she says basically a walnut pesto.

How to read a menu and come up with a great wine match

How to read a menu and come up with a great wine match

When you have a menu in front of you how do you decide which wine to order? Sure, you can ask the sommelier or waiter but in some restaurants the service is not as helpful or knowledgeable as it might be. But there are plenty of clues in the descriptions of the dishes themselves that point to the key ingredients and the way in which they are handled. Here are a few examples:

 Have food hacks become the new recipes?

Have food hacks become the new recipes?

Barely a day passes without coming across some kind of hack.

Rheinhessen silvaner and penne with tomatoes and peppers

Rheinhessen silvaner and penne with tomatoes and peppers

I must confess I’ve never associated German wines with pasta dishes especially ones based on summer vegetables like tomatoes and peppers but then I haven’t come across many genuinely dry German wines in Italian restaurants before.

 Salad caprese and malagousia

Salad caprese and malagousia

One of the objectives of the organisers of our trip to Greece last week was to try to show how Greek wines pair with other international cuisines and flavours. It resulted in some quite bizarre dishes like black eye beans and kiwi fruit and chicken with carrot cream and tangerine gel but also provided some useful new insights.

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