Miscellaneous autumnal ramblings

No particular theme this week but another catch-up on bits and pieces.

New sherry alert! I came across this in Waitrose and it immediately jumped out at me due to the resemblance to the wonderful sherries Dad gave me for Christmas last year (see here). It's made by Gonzalez-Byass and is called Delicado. It's a limited edition fino and someone more conscientious than me has reviewed it properly here. It's £13.99 for a 50cl bottle which is an excellent size in my opinion, allowing generous portions for two over two evenings. Quite expensive for a fino but we felt this was worth it so I'll be back for more in due course if it's still there.

While on the subject of aperitifs, at long last the Ali Boit Boit et les 40 Buveurs has shipped, just in time for winter! Never mind - we didn't have much of a summer anyway. This is a wine I first tried back at the beginning of the year. It's made by Agnes Paquet (NB viticultrice) and is a sparkler, a 50/50 mixture of Aligote and Chardonnay. There's some technical stuff on her website here about how exactly it's made, and I'm not sure if it's technically a cremant de bourgogne or not, but the take-home point is that it's just 8% alcohol. I don't think I would have guessed this if I didn't know already, but it certainly is quite light in style and I'm very happy with it. The fact that it comes with a crown cap makes it even more perfect for quaffing on a park bench.

We've continued to drink up G's haul of old Hugels and very pleasant they have been too.

This Bourgogne Rouge 1998 from Domaine Maume, which is based in Gevrey-Chambertin, also arrived and was fascinating. It was lighter and more acidic than I expected, almost piquant. Looking forward to drinking the rest of it.

After my disastrous adventures in cider the other week, I read an article in the Grauniad about perry which encouraged me to try the stuff. We had Henry Westons 2010 vintage against Waitrose 2011 vintage. Both were dry and relatively strong but the Henry Westons beat the Waitrose in my opinion. The Henry Weston cider wasn't bad either, so now I know what to go for in future.

Adventures in cooking: I found that the East London Steak Co, which I use as an occasional alternative to the Ginger Pig, sell legs of mutton, so I got some and did it in the slow cooker.

G made his "signature" biryani with the leftovers, which was excellent, as the mutton was less fatty than lamb.

Last week my boss brought back some quinces from his country estate so after several days had passed with me looking at them and them looking at me, eventually I found a Nigel Slater recipe (here) and after reading his column out loud in a fey voice as per tradition, we cooked them. They were amazing. I shall now have to drop some hints that I'd like some more...

Today I attempted to make granola cupcakes. These consist of flaked almonds, dessicated coconut, chopped up unsulphured dried apricots, butter and honey. Unfortunately they fell apart as I took them out of the tin so it's back to the drawing board - but they taste bloody delicious.

Normal service will be resumed this week as I have two dinners out in a row - a Vincent Perrin tasting and the next SPNS dinner. Tickets have also been booked for the New Year outing to Burgundy. So lots to look forward to!

Odds and sods

Today’s post is going to be completely lacking in narrative structure, but instead will be a meandering ramble taking in the past couple of weeks.

First, I went on a cruise along the Moselle and the Rhine with my mother for four days at the beginning of September. This wasn’t a wine tour but we did have a dinner in Strasbourg beforehand where we had this Riesling from Gustave Lorentz (a whopping 17 euros) and flammekuchen and some rather delicious puddings.

Flammekuchen - spot the difference. One had extra Munster!

My pudding - nom nom nom

Mum's creme caramel - she seemed pretty happy with it!

We got up at the crack of dawn on the Sunday morning and a coach took us from Strasbourg to Cochem on the Moselle, a journey involving some exciting hair-pin bends. Here we got on the boat which travelled the next day to Koblenz and then back down the Rhine to Strasbourg. The Moselle is very pretty and when the boat was moored, I could see fish swimming about in the river. The towns we stopped off at were mostly small places and very touristy so I didn’t buy any booze to bring back.

Cochem, on the Moselle

Steep vineyards by the Moselle

It was nice to see so many vineyards and often they had their name on a big sign visible from the river. I was impressed by how steep they were – sometimes the gradient looked perilously close to 45 degrees. I wouldn’t fancy working in them. The gentle slope of the Cote d’Or is bad enough after a moderate Burgundian lunch.

This cat sensibly stayed in the shade and shunned the strange English women who wanted to talk to it

I got back to A de V Towers last Saturday to find that G had drunk all my marc so he will have to get the next batch in (hint hint). This week we've mostly been drinking my house red and white – the Bourgogne Rouge 2009 from Odoul Coquard and the Bourgogne Blanc 2008 from Anne Parent. Both are showing really well at the moment and are just the ticket after a hard day slogging at the coal face.

"Ne bouillez pas!" the somewhat bossy instruction on the back label

Also, we've been finding that the sherry which I wrote about last time works very well with some soupe de poissons. This stuff, intermittently available from the Waitrose tinned soup section, is amazing and you can feel it doing you good as the Omega 3s work their magic.

Sadly, the Inverse Law of Labels didn't apply in this case

G got adventurous at the weekend and picked up this bottle of red Macon-Serrieres 2008 from the People’s Supermarket down the road in Lamb’s Conduit Street. I wasn’t very familiar with red Macon, but it turned out to be similar to Beaujolais. It didn't wow us. I wasn’t feeling particularly well that evening so that may have influenced my judgement, but we didn't finish the bottle which is very unusual!

During the week I indulged in some cider – this Rekorderlig and some Aspall Lady Jennifer’s.

I bought the Rekorderlig because it was Swedish. It describes itself as “Premium Strawberry-Lime Cider” so really I should have realised what I was letting myself in for. It was sickly and frankly not very nice.

The Lady Jennifer’s was much better and was light and dry as described. However after all the manzanilla we’ve been drinking, I fear I’ve lost my taste for fizzy commercial cider.

Things I’ve enjoyed this week:

1. A meeting with a professor who described a formidable high-level Coca Cola executive with whom he’d had dealings as “the kind of woman who eats a bowl of rusty nails for breakfast, just to get her in the mood”. Not an expression I’d come across before but delightfully pungent.

2. Listening to The Menu, a weekly Monocle podcast presented by a guy with a very weird accent. This turns out to be Markus Hippi who I gather is from Finland, which explains a lot. The programme is mainly a series of interviews with various international food-related people and it seems the whole archive is available! There was a particularly interesting piece on the renaissance of craft beers in London which made me want to investigate further.  

3. Discovering that Bring It On: the Musical is showing on Broadway. This is the kind of news that makes me very excited. Of course everyone will be familiar with the film version of Bring It On, about rival groups of cheerleaders and starring none other than Eliza Dushku of Tru Calling fame (#sarcasm). I’m still working on persuading G to join me on a weekend trip to NYC. He seems strangely reluctant. 

An empty packet - the cheese itself didn't hang around long enough to get a photo

 4. Speaking of Trou de Cru, guess what I found in Waitrose. It’s been rebranded by the mainstream producer of Epoisses as a “Petit Berthaut” but to me it’s a Trou and mighty fine it was too. Still, one baulks slightly at the price differential – this was £3.25 whereas a normal Epoisses is twice that, yet the Epoisses is four times the size. Some sort of equation involving square roots seems in order.

5. While we’re on the subject of cheese, I’ll try not to gush too much about my trip to Pascal Beillevaire yesterday evening but let’s just say that when it came to choosing a goats cheese, the lovely woman who runs the shop decided she wasn't happy with the ones on display, so despite a sudden flurry of customers she took the trouble to go down to the store room to find the perfect goats cheese for me and came back with this.

The cheese of glory!

“Is it a Pouligny Saint-Pierre?” I asked innocently and she was suitably impressed at my powers of cheese-identification. I'm still glowing with self-congratulation, although I know perfectly well that this is a very easy cheese to identify, being such a strange pyramid shape. I also received yet another free chocolate mousse and a brace of natural yoghurts. Apparently they're doing cheese and wine evenings on the first and third Thursdays of the month – am seriously tempted to pop along for one of those some time.

6. A wine tasting held by ACC of the Burgundy Portfolio on Thursday night, which deserves its own separate post and will receive it in the near future. 

7. Finally, the excellent news that Eurostar tickets have been booked for New Year in Burgundy! Can’t wait.