Smoked Salmon, Goats' Cheese and Dill Risotto

Sun 4 May 2008

I actually have one more Marcus Wareing recipe to post but I'm running the risk of becoming a one trick wonder so let's skip past Sunday's baking (just for now) and move on to Sunday's afternoon tea and supper.

For afternoon tea we had some smoked salmon along with a bottle of 2003 Cape Mentelle Chardonnay. I've probably only had this bottle about a year, and I hadn't meant to keep it that long. In hindsight, I very much wish I hadn't. The full retail price had been £13.99, but this was another wine I bought on offer. The back label advised drinking for up to three years, and the Cape Mentelle (extraordinarly slow) website offers no cellaring suggestions for their whites (although the 2006 they advise drinking up to 2014). You know where I'm going with this: the wine was old and tired. The fruit had vanished, its high alcohol (14.5%) dominated the back palate and it was all a bit one dimensional, both nose and palate wise.

I know I'm not a big Australian oaked Chardonnay drinker but I am actually being quite fair. There is something quite distinctive about a tired Chardonnay (and I'm thinking back to a very past it Kumeu River I had a couple of years ago), and leaving a wine too long to drink is always annoying. Cork taint, wine faults - they're someone else's problem. Leaving a wine hanging around, un-drunk - it's 100% YOUR fault. If I get the opportunity in the near future, I'll see if I can pick up a more current vintage CM Chardonnay for comparison.

Wine disappointment meant that supper had to be good. With dill and chèvre left over from the sea bass, and smoked salmon left over from afternoon tea, the obvious thing to put together was a risotto.

For two people, I used about 150g of Arborio rice. On Sunday night, I used one small onion, finely chopped and sweated down in some unsalted butter. I didn't bother with garlic. Add the rice, and stir, so that the grains are covered in the butter. Now start adding hot stock. You don't have to be too precise about how much stock you have on the go. I have one pan that I always use and often I need to top it up with some water (or white wine) as I go along. The main thing is that your stock is hot and you mix it in to your rice slowly. Let the rice absorb the stock before adding the next ladle.

Yes, this takes a while but it's not exactly tricky ... pour yourself a glass of wine, put some music on or read the paper, just keep stirring.

When the rice was cooked (you need to keep trying it), I added half of my remaining chèvre, chopped, some grated parmesan and a load of chopped dill. I put the remaining chèvre in the bottle of our bowls, quickly stirred the chopped smoked salmon through the risotto and finished with a sprinkling of chopped dill and a twist of pepper.

Not bad at all for a meal based on leftovers!

tagged with: chardonnay, risotto

WBW 45: Old World Riesling

Wed 8 May 2008

Hooray for Wine Blogging Wednesday: my once a month excuse for a good bottle of wine, mid week, on a school night! And this month, Tim at WineCast has chosen Old World Riesling.

I was so excited I almost did WBW last Wednesday!

Having grown up in South Australia, home of the great Clare Valley Rieslings, I used to think that Riesling was, well, kind of nasty. For a long time, my white wine grape, almost exclusively, was Semillon. Then a bit of Sauvignon Blanc. And more often than not, a glass of Shiraz, thank you very much. Riesling smelt nasty and tasted even nastier.

And then a wine maker bought a bottle of ten year old JJ Prüm Kabinett* and I was sold. This was a completely different beast. It was, truly, aromatic.

Of course, this doesn't mean that German Riesling is widely available in Adelaide: it's hard enough getting hold of Victorian wines, let alone the even more foreign types! But in the UK, it's generally a different matter, and, given half a chance, I'll be drinking an Old World aromatic (Riesling, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Gewurztraminer from the Alsace in France, or Riesling from Germany). They tend to be a lot more food friendly than many other wines (and can even handle spicy food), and they tend to be stupidly good value for money (although I'd avoid the £3.50 Riesling I found in Somerfield as a comparison!).

When it came to WBW, I was surprised to find a German Riesling tricky to track down (always the way - as soon as you look for something, you can't find it), but found that (of all places) Harvey Nichols had an OK selection. The bloke in the HN wine shop suggested a Sybille Kuntz 2004 Riesling Trocken from Mosel-Saar-Ruwer. It was about £11, and even when I started looking at the £23 single vineyard number (remember, I was spending prize money!), he still recommended this.

So, what do we reckon?

This is a pretty gold wine, with just the merest hint of green as the glass empties. The nose is predominantly floral, with some stone fruit and the whiff of petrol that comes with age. On the palate, the mineral notes were very much to the fore, and the fruit was almost tropical and most certainly honeyed. This was cut through with some pretty solid acid, so it felt clean and bright in the mouth. And the length was pretty good, although not necessarily sophisticated: you don't get a lot of flavour development, more flavour persistence.

This is all quite positive, I know, but this is a German Riesling for which I paid £11 and, to be honest, I'd expect it to deliver just a little more. It was very slightly unbalanced in terms of alcohol (this is packing a whopping 13%): leaving the alcohol dominating just when you kind of wish it wouldn't.

I drank this with a bowl of pasta, dressed with a simple dill pesto: dill, whizzed up with pinenuts, a clove of garlic and a good slug (or two, or three) of extra virgin olive oil, plus plenty of parmesan - both in my pesto and on the pasta. To its credit, the wine stood up to me munching parmesan cheese and worked well with the pasta. Both pretty tall orders.

As far as I'm concerned, the less well known, or less fashionable, German Riesling (or Riesling in general) remains - the better. It allows me to moan that, at £11, this is perhaps a trifle expensive for what it delivers. Blimey - you'd never get away with that with a red Burgundy!

The wine: Sybille Kuntz, 2004 Riesling, Trocken, Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, available in Harvey Nichols, around £11.

*In the same meal, the same bloke bought a bottle of Château Montrose, thus setting me up for even more expensive tastes than the ones I'd already acquired ...

tagged with: wbw, riesling, wine

Fish Dish

Sat 3 May 2008

At the risk of sounding very much like Marcus Wareing's PR lady, I've made yet another dish from his (so far) excellent One Perfect Ingredient. This time, it was the sea bass with pine nut crust. Not every recipe in the book is illustrated, but this one is and the fish looks absolutely fantastic.

I think Wareing's recipe is more complicated than it need be, so what follows is my 2 person Wareing-inspired fish dish.

We bought one sea bass at the market (£3.20) and had the fish monger fillet it. Leave the skin on.

The topping requires just butter, garlic, dill and pine nuts. I began by toasting about 25g of pine nuts, but I think that even this is a little unnecessary. So my pine nuts were only lightly toasted, before they were blitzed. I then added about 50g of unsalted butter (the slightly warm pine nuts meant that it ended up malleable, which is probably worth a quick turn in the pan with the nuts in itself!), some roughly chopped dill and a clove of garlic. When this mixture is well combined, add a further 25g of pine nuts and chop until they just begin to break up. Leave some texture in your paste.

I then made a couple of slashes in the fish skin before slathering on the butter and pine nut paste. Rub it in to the slashes but remembe you're making a crust, so build it up and cover the fish generously.

Because sea bass fillets are quite slender, I heated some oil in a grill proof pan, put the fillets in (skin/crust side up) and, after about a minute, put the whole pan under a pre-heated grill. A few minutes later, the crust was bubbling and the fish was cooked.

I served the fish with potatoes sautéed in duck fat and a simple salad (lettuce, tomato, red onion and chevre), with a dressing made from olive oil, red wine vinegar and a spoonful of the butter topping. Finish the plate with some more chopped dill and a sprinkling of black pepper ... and supper is served.

I think you could get away with drinking your favourite white wine with this dish. We could have even finished off our afternoon tea ... if there had been any left. We'd enjoyed a bottle of Gosset NV Brut Excellence Champagne, which we'd bought for about €20 in Cologne Airport. I have a friend who raves about Gosset, but this was my first taste - and, for an entry level wine, I was very impressed. I'd certainly be happy to invest in another of their more expensive wines! A blend of all three Champagne grapes (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier), this wine had some of the weight and complexity that you'd expect from a vintage. I thought the nose more complex than the palate, showing plenty of bready, biscuity and even brioche aromas. The palate wasn't quite as clever, but it is a good savoury Champagne and would certainly go well with food. In fact, although I have doubts about how the dill would work, the bubbles and acidity could well make it a good match for sea bass with a rich, buttery crust!

tagged with: sea bass, marcus wareing, fish, champagne, gosset

On Champagne

Sat 3 May 2008

Champagne is one of my favourite drinks. I say 'one' because I wouldn't be so bold as to be definitive (a lot of other wines may feel miffed and I apologise to all the wonderful wines made from Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Sauvignon Blanc - I still really really love you, same goes for any wines from Alsace and good Riesling in general, and anything else - I'm not picky, really).

However, today I learnt a very salient lesson.

A month or so ago I mentioned that Pol Roger had released a zero dosage Champagne that was being sold in Harvey Nicks. Having recently won £60 I decided to treat myself to a bottle of this, on the premise that I've never tasted a zero dosage bubbly before and that I don't have to revise any more (and that leaves more time for drinking).

So off I went to Harvey Nicks. Past the queue outside the Espresso Bar in the Victoria Quarter, past the impossibly tanned ladies buying make up and accessories on the ground floor, past the impossibly tanned and glamorous ladies hovering around the Christian Laboutins on third and past the wannabes queuing for the ladies' loo on fourth. Just a normal Leeds on a Saturday afternoon.

And then I had a brain fail. There I was, looking impossibly tanned and glamorous (hmm, pale skinned, jeans, hiking boots, tatty t-shirt and five year old jacket) and I spotted the Laurent Perrier Ultra Brut. £44 a bottle. I bought it. I got back home and realised I'd meant to buy Pol Roger and it should have cost me £33.

The real stinger? Oddins sell Laurent Perrier Ultra Brut for £32 a bottle.

The moral: do your homework. While some things may cost the same at Harvey Nicks as at House of Fraser ... in other areas they may well be taking the mick.

Marcus Wareing Does Curry - Part 2

Mon 21 April 2008

So ... finally on to the lamb chops that went with Marcus Wareing's tasty dahl. Another recipe from One Perfect Ingredient: lamb chops, Indian style.

This dish is a fantastic example of the flexible nature of the recipes in this book. Now, ideally you begin this recipe the day before - that way the lamb will soak up the flavours and the yoghurt and remain deliciously moist. But all that means is a bit of prep on a Sunday afternoon and Monday night's dinner is sorted. This is also a perfect dish for a BBQ: prep the day before, throw the chops on the BBQ as and when you're ready.

And ... it's simple.

First ... my alterations ... Because we were still missing the fennel seeds (this has since been rectified, but I doubt any recipes will call for them for months now), I substituted in coriander seeds, and I had no fresh mint. I meant to use some dried mint I had but I forgot ...

Start by heating a pan (no oil) and dry roasting equal quantities of coriander seeds, cumin seeds and peppercorns. Once roasted, grind the spices and then mix into plain yogurt. Finally, mix in a good load of chopped, fresh coriander.

Take your lamb chops and cover them with the yogurt mix. If you're in a hurry - grill straight away. If not, cover them and leave in the fridge overnight (or at least a few hours).

We grilled (basting with any left over yogurt mix), but you could easily pan fry or griddle, or slap on the BBQ. No lamb? Chicken would work just as well.

Serve with a little fresh coriander sprinkled on top, and perhaps rice and dahl.

The verdict: gorgeous!

tagged with: lamb, curry, marcus wareing

Wokon

Mon 28 April 2008

The great WSET Advanced Exam has been and gone! What a relief! In many respects, not nearly as scary as I expected. Our blind tasting was a sweet white wine. I'd taken Karen's advice and completed the tasting before looking at the options. I was expecting to see 4 sweet whites listed, but was pleasantly surprised by one sweet white (a Bordeaux) and THREE DRY WINES. What a relief. So ... that's 2 marks at least out of 25 for the tasting exam!

The multiple choice section was OK too ... one question on Port I definitely got wrong and another tricky one on Vins de Pays that I fluffed, but overall I'm pretty happy with that section.

Short answer - I was expecting (I don't know why) one question worth 25 marks, so I was a bit confused to be faced with four questions worth 100 marks. Anyway, my map work paid off, as the first question was all about Bordeaux, including picking a few appellations off a map. There was also a question on Champagne (really annoyingly, I mucked up the part about which areas predominantly grow which graps), a question on wine storage, and a more general question covering a whole pile of things like matching Old World and New World wines/styles, a few service oriented questions and some vinification questions.

Hopefully I didn't fluff anything too badly - and hopefully the markers can read my writing and that I managed to cram enough information in the VERY small spaces the WSET think you need to answer the ten point questions! If anyone from the WSET reads this - please consider leaving more space for answers!!

Monday night had already been set aside for celebrating: a few games of pool, with beer, followed by a quick snack and more beer. Quite a few people ate at the Elbow Rooms, where the chips are great and the BLTs are monstrous. I ended up stopping at Wokon for noodles, where I had flat rice noodles with beef and spicy chilli sauce. While nicely spicy I was a bit underwhelmed. Perhaps I'm just very difficult to please, as both of my dining companions were really happy with their noodles, and said they'd definitely return (and I'd definitely go back in preference to Nooshi). Given that most of the noodle dishes come in at just under £5 it does represent good value for money (generous portions), so maybe I just chose the wrong combination of things. What I did like is that, in addition to their standard dishes, they also have a mix and match section, allowing you to have your own combination of noodles, meat and sauce.

After fuel, next stop was the North Bar where another shock lay in store. NO MORE JAMES BOAGS. Please don't try to sell me Coopers Sparkling as a lager ...


1. The Elbow Room, 64 Call Lane, Leeds, LS1 6DT, phone: 0113 245 7011
2. Wokon, 156 Briggate, Leeds, LS1 6LY, phone: 0113 234 6666
3. North, 24 New Briggate, Leeds, LS1 6NU, phone: 0113 242 4540

tagged with: wset, leeds

Almost There ...

Apologies for the rather sporadic nature of posts recently ... especially if you've been waiting for Marcus Wareing Does Curry Part 2, where we road test the lamb chops that went with the very successful dahl.

My excuse? The WSET Advanced exam is tomorrow. For the last month (plus) I've been on a reasonably intense revision program, which has involved an extortionate amount of paper and a fair degree of panic. I started the course worried about the tasting exam, but now I'm far more worried about the short answer section. Many of the sample questions are rather vague ...

Will I know enough? Well, I'll know the answer to that question by 12:30 tomorrow afternoon.

Normal Eating Leeds service will resume on Tuesday as Monday night will involve beer, pool and a pita from Pita on the Otley Road on my way home!