Food and wine pairing

March 31, 2010

Beautiful scrimps in garlic and olive oil

In the hot weather of March and April big meals are not very attractive. Alas, Thailand has a lot of choice in seafood and lighter dishes are the go. Some rice with tofu and green vegetables and plenty of scrimps are the right stuff for a light meal. The question is which wine to drink with it?

A simple “Chinese set” meal

There is a lot of choice actually. As far as white wines are concerned one could choose a Chenin Blanc from Gran Monte, Thailand, for instance. Or one could have a Pinot Grigio from Italy or Germany. Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc are other possible choices.

If the dish is spicy, and the above one was, the ‘Grande Signature de Rapatel’ by Gérard Eyraud, France, a blend of Roussanne and Bourboulenc, is a great choice. The wine is oily and thick and full of apricot flavour. It balances the spicyness of the food in a wonderful way. I never thought that a Roussanne could be such a good complement to Asian food. My tip of the day: try it.

PS: You can get bottles of this wine in Bangkok from Lake House and Comte de Sibour.

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Wine tasting at Lake House, Bangkok

March 30, 2010

Last Friday we went to a wine tasting at Lake House. Four wines were on offer, two came from California and two from South Africa. The Californian producer was Bliss Family Vineyards, which is a third generation family business in Mendocino County. The South African producer was Darling Cellars. Both producers are not small entities.

From each producer we tasted a Merlot and a Sauvignon Blanc. I do not want to bore you with tasting notes. The clear “winner”, the wine I liked best, was the Merlot from Darling Cellar, a ‘2007 Six Tonner Merlot’. I did not like the wines from California. Both Sauvignon Blancs tasted very unusal but did not hold my attention for very long.

The atmosphere at the Lake House tasting was, as always, great. We met so many interesting people, from Argentina, India and the USA. Dan and Dan, two of three partners of the Lake House venture were also there and we had a good chat about life and the universe.

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What wine to drink in Bangkok’s hot season?

March 24, 2010

This is the time of the year when the thermometer shows already 32 degrees Celsius at 6:30 in the morning. In mid April it may reach 40-44 Celsius at noon. Alcoholic drinks are not ideal under such conditions. However, a glass of wine with lunch is still something desirable. So what to drink?

Well, my first choice is obviously white wine, maybe a rose, but the wine needs to be chilled. Gran Monte Estate, one of the nine Thai wineries, is located in the Khao Yai region, a two hours drive north of Bangkok, and offers both, white and rose.

Today I talk about their ‘2009 Spring Chenin Blanc’, a fresh and vibrant young wine, very well made with tropical fruit aromas. The grape variety is not my preferred choice when it comes to white wine but for the Gran Monte I make an exception. This Chenin Blanc is perfect for hot days and goes well with Italian and Asian dishes. The alcohol is 12.5% only which makes it also easy to drink in hot weather.

If you live in Thailand or visit Bangkok, try it out. It is worth the odd 500 Thai Bath you pay for the bottle if you purchase directly from the Gran Monte Bangkok shop.

PS: Gran Monte offers also a Syrah rose (the Sakuna rose) in a half bottle which I have tried as well. More about this wine another time.

Address in Bangkok:
Granmonte Co,Ltd.
17 / 8 Soi Sukhumvit 6, Sukhumvit Road,
Klongtoey, Bangkok 10110
Tel : 02-653-1522
Marketing@granmonte.com

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The ultimate Vietnamese cookery book

March 21, 2010

Unfortunately, during my recent visit to Hanoi and Saigon I had no opportunity to check out the various culinary highlights of these fabulous places. I was part of a large delegation and had no choice regarding the food, or almost no choice. Not that we had to eat bad food. However, I could not explore the local cuisine. There are some truly extraordinary places to be found, from traditional Vietnamese cuisine to all kinds of fusion cooking.

“The Songs of Sapa” is the title of a Vietnamese cookery book which is most amazing. Luke Nguyen an Australian from Sydney whose parents came as boat people and refugees, has produced a marvelous book summarizing his various travels to Vietnam. He collected many recipes and reproduced them in this book. The pictures are outstanding, really.

Luke is very well known in Australia. He runs Red Lantern, a Vietnamese restaurant in Sydney. I would love to taste his cooking. For the time being I have to be content with the cookery book and because it is so magic, it will do for me here in Bangkok.

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Dining in Hua Hin

March 20, 2010

There are plenty of good restaurants and fancy dining in Hua Hin, this seaside town about 3 hours south of Bangkok, which has become such a very popular destination for Bangkonians to spend the weekend.

During our recent workshop in Hua Hin we ate out a couple of times. I report about a not so famous place, called Pom Pom, where you can eat for very little money home cooked dishes. Some of the food is announced as “Italian”. The place was an insiders tip, which we could not refuse.

The participants of this dinner where divided as regards the quality of the food. Some thought it was awesome, other were appalled. There were few guests that night, a weekday, but the staff was very friendly and we remained seating and drinking wine for a couple of hours after the meal had ended.

We consumed many bottles of wine. Nothing fancy. Some of the wines were re-bottled and re-blended as the label in full honesty proclaimed. We drank “our way up price’wise” and did not regret it: We woke up the next morning without hangover. We had a jolly good time.

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Gérard Eyraud – Domaine de Rapatel

March 17, 2010

My newest treasure

When I got home the other day from a week long business trip, the two boxes of wine by Gérard Eyraud were already waiting for me.

I told you that we had attended a wine tasting at Lake House and that we just loved the wines presented to us by Gérard.

Grand Signature de Rapatel – the Roussanne – Bourboulenc blend.

The Syrah, Grenache and Mourvèdre blend

The Syrah – vine de table/table wine

More about these wines later, maybe even some tasting notes. Stay tuned.

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Sunday lunch in March

March 14, 2010

Since the beginning of this year, we have a new rule as regards the family cooking: every Sunday another member of our family is preparing the family feast. It was my turn last Sunday (more about this another time) and today my daughter Lucy (15) took on the role of the chef.

She presented us with salmon with salsa and a guacamole. In addition we had a fresh salad which is very nice in 35 Celsius heat. Mama helped a little but not much. It was delicious, as you can see from the photos below. What a great lunch this was.

The recipe came from the delicious magazine (December 2005/January 2006): Cajun salmon with corn salsa.

One mixes a table spoon each of coriander, dried tyme and oregano, cumin, and dried garlic, adds two table spoons of pimento (sweet smoked paprika) and olive oil and mixes this in high heat in a pan. The salmon fillets are rubbed with the mix, then cooked for about two minutes on one side and one minute on the other. After that you transfer them to a heated oven of about 180 Celsius where they are cooked for about 3-5 minutes. Serve with the salsa and guacamole.

The salad

The wine, however, was my department. Thanks to Mathias and Beatrix we still had a bottle of ‘2007 altenkirch Rieling, trocken’ by Friedrich Altenkirch in Lorch, Rheingau, Germany.

The wine is German Riesling at its best. With only 12% alc. vol. it has zest and finesse and the typical citrus flavours. It is a blend from different locations and made to be enjoyed young. The single vineyard wines from very steep slopes the winery produces are regularly awarded all kinds of medals. Altenkirch is worth a visit if you are visiting the Rhine river.

Address:
Winery Friedrich Altenkirch
Binger Weg 2
D-65391 Lorch /Rheingau
Germany
Tel: +49 67 26 / 83 00 12
Fax: +49 67 26 / 24 83
www.weingut-altenkirch.de
www.altenkirch-winery.com

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Jamie Oliver in Marysville, Victoria

March 12, 2010

I am ready for bed here in Siem Reap in Cambodia. Before hitting the hay, I checked the internet for a last time and what did I find? The celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in Marysville. Can you imagine?

The Worlds Longest Lunch was held in this small town, in the Northeast of Melbourne, savaged by the bushfires in February 2009. The event is part of the Melbourne Food and Wine festival.

Have a look at the little video depicting the star cook addressing the participants, many of them victims of the ferocious fires which destroyed so many lives.

I would have loved to be there.

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Wine tasting at the Lake House in Bangkok

March 7, 2010

The bottle of red by Domaine de Rapatel at Lake House

In the morning when we drove past Lake House on our way into town, we decided spontaneously that we should go there for dinner. Margit had seen a review about the place in the Bangkok Post. Of course we had to check the place out ourselves.

It was already dark when we arrived but the surroundings of the lake were very romantic. My camera, however, could not cope with the conditions. We choose a small table in the garden and had just ordered our food when an excited waitress came and invited us to a wine tasting. Surprise surprise, we thought, why not taste some wines.

In a small room in the main building, we met the winemaker, Gérard Eyraud, his daughter and grandson, and some more French people from the wine importer. We tasted four wines, three from Gérard, one from another producer from Southern France (Domaine Bouche Red, Cote du Rhone). I had nothing to write with, took no notes and also forgot completely to take a picture of the winemaker and his family.

The white from Domaine de Rapatel was a blend of Roussanne with Bourboulenc with a taste of apricots, one red was a blend of Grenache with Syrah and the third one was a blend of Syrah, Grenache and Mourvèdre (14.5% vol. alc.). The last one I know for sure, because we could not continue to drink the wine I had ordered earlier, after we had tasted these wonderful fruity wines made by Gérard. In the process we got to know Matt, one of the three co-owners of the restaurant, from Melbourne and established that his brother Dan is an old mate of my nephew Nik Meinhold. How small the world is.

Gérard and Christine Eyraud have about 15 ha under vines southwest of the city of Nîmes. Gérard sells most of his wine as Vin du Pays du Gard, the grand cru wines are labeled “Costières de Nîmes”, a wine region in the Carmargue, in the South of France. I have visited the city and its surroundings but had never tasted wines from there before. I loved the fruitiness which reminded me of Australian wines and not necessarily typical for French wines.

We had a jolly good evening. The tapas we had ordered were delicious, the wine was just superb. The staff was very friendly. We went home with the sincere intention to come back and taste some more wines. By the way the wine list of Lake House is quite extensive, and the prices are the best I have seen in Bangkok so far.
Needless to say that we ordered a couple of dozens of the wines the next morning by e-mail. More soon about these wines maybe with proper tasting notes.

PS: During the wine tasting we also learned that the house used to belong to Tiziano Terzani (14.09.1938 – 28.07.2004), an Italian journalist and writer, and a native of Florence. He stayed there for about two years. The house was called “the turtle house”. He also had lived in Beijing, China for a while where he was the correspondent for the German magazine Der Spiegel, until he was thrown out. I red his book “Behind the forbidden door: travels in unknown China” in 1986.

Address:
Lake House
http://www.lakehousebkk.com
18 Soi Prommitr, Sukhumvit 39
Bangkok, กรุงเทพมหานคร 10110, Thailand
+66-2-662 6349

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A wine blogger’s weekend

March 6, 2010

Flower on my terrace garden in Bangkok

Finally, the weekend has arrived. I am stuffed today: boy what a week that was. I have not produced a single blog entry, which has not happened for a long time in my three years as a wine and food blogger. I thought of myself as having developed the discipline and technique of writing and uploading a piece every two/three days. I was always full of stories, which waited in my head to be written down. But not this week, this week my tank was empty. During the last week I felt chased. Not even the few bottles of wine I drank with my meals could relight my desire to write a blog entry. But today is Saturday, the sun is shining and my terrace is laughing at me.

Of course I have a few draft stories on my computer, but most of them require some further research, and somehow one has to be in the right state of mind to write them up and load them on. And the prospects for having enough time are not too good. Next week I am off to Vietnam and Cambodia. After that I have some intensive workshops in Thailand. The two-week holiday for Songkran, the water festival of the Thais, I will spend on my vineyard in Glenburn, Victoria. I will be busy doing post-harvest stuff, working the land on my new tractor, celebrating with family and friends, therefore, no time for writing. And after that I am off to Germany for 10 days meetings and consultations. March and April will be two lean months as far as blogging is concerned, I guess. And sure enough, this will give me a vast cornucopia to draw on, and the energy to regale you with stories from the vineyard.

I hope you stay tuned and continue to visit the “Man from Mosel River”. Cheers!

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