Couple of Crackers from the Co-op

The price of everything is hyper inflating these days, except interest rate linked mortgages. I should be rolling in it, the amount I pay out each month to pretend to own a flat has halved in recent years. Yet, I'm not. Somehow the cost of nice stuff- wine, food, travel, central heating- has rocketed. I'm not one for conspiracy theories but it seems remarkable that every penny I've saved on a mortgage has been divided up so thoroughly between utility companies and supermarkets. Here's a graph. Proof if proof be need be.

There's no point in switching supermarkets or utility companies. They're all charging more or less the same. There's just the illusion of choice camouflaging a modern day Zaibatsu. So all I can really do is trade down on the non-essentials, and sadly, mid-week wine falls into that category. On the plus side I've been discovering some remarkable value white and red wines. These two come from the Co-op and are widely stocked.

First up a Chilean Chardonnay for only £4.29. Fresh, buttery, no oak and a fascinatingly spicy palate. This works tremendously well with tomato sauces and spicy ones too. Particularly good with a quality kebab.

Next up a cracking Californian shiraz. This one's quite spicy on the nose has a lovely juicy mouth feel and a lick of liquorice on the tongue. Incredibly it's only £4.99. Remarkable value.

One for sipping while wondering... why, in every other branch of journalism we question why we're being told something, yet when it comes to financial markets, we just accept what we're told?

Barbecued Bison

There I am, on an Italian hillside in the middle of no-where, sipping wine and contemplating tomorrow's lunch, when up pops this. An emergency situation had arisen. So, within 12 hours of being back in Glasgow, I'm offering assistance while sitting in the epitome of a Glasgow West End tenement garden.

The only downside of these marvellous old tenements is if you happen to stay on the top floor and forget something for the BBQ.

Claire's mother farms bison along the coast near Aberdeen. Bison are the animals I always thought were buffalo. Anyway, we had some steak and sausages.

Truly delicious. Like a cross between beef and venison.

The Saumur's on offer in Waitrose just now. Suits chilling and is a slurpy, fruity refresher. Well worth it's offer price of just over a fiver. Click here for the offer online where it's even cheaper.

Red Wine Bargain of the Year

This Marzemino is spectacularly good. Best drunk after 30 minutes in the fridge when pure luscious berry fruits come bursting from the glass. As the label says, plenty of cherry and violet flavours too. I bought it because I was skint, hoping for something wine like and not too nasty. What a shocker! Of course when I went back the next day there was none left.

Managing to overcome the initial suspicion of two Sainsbury's chaps in the wine aisle I put in a request for 6 bottles and left my phone number. The call came within 24 hours, just in time for the Bank Holiday.

The first bottle was consumed with a spaghetti carbonara. Another near an open window grabbing bursts of sunshine between torrential downpours. Both matches worked a treat.

This wine is normally sold for the bargainous price of £5.99. At the moment, incredibly, it's just £4.49. Fill your boots! And, if there isn't any left at your local store, risk a "Code 99" on the wine aisle and order some. Wine this good at this price is unique.

Marzemino della Venezie 2010: down from £5.99 to £4.49: Sainsbury's

Phwoar! Would you look at the legs on that.

Big, brash and leggy and I just can't get enough of this swirling, whirling Dervish of liquorice, smokey bacon and hedonistic fruit that just explodes in the mouth. This is an awful lot of wine for £6.49. A French red for people who think they don't like French reds.

Chateau Bois Pertuis 2009: Waitrose: on offer just now down from £9.99 to £6.49. An incredible bargain.

Revelation

Picked this up in Oddbins tonight because it was new and I was curious, although I suspected it would be a rotten match with what I'd bought for dinner. Turned out to be a light, nicely acidic rustic drop of grog with a dusty aftertaste, not unlike the aftermath of cycling accidents when you end up with a mouthful of grit. Reminded me of the wines you can buy from the barrel in French campsites. In fact, I'm pretty sure a wine very similar to this came out of a fountain all night during a village fete once. Messy.

Lupe Pintos sell really good tortillas... in overly generous packs. Having bought some for my previous post I'll be eating them for a week. So tonight I decided to try a trick learnt from my friend Jo... tortilla pizzas.

Preheat the oven to as hot as it goes with the baking tray in. Smear the tortillas with some passata and a splash of habenero sauce. Sprinkle some precooked seafood and sliced spring onion onto the sauce. Top with torn up mozzarella. Into the oven for five minutes.

Then came the revelation.

While the 'pizzas' cooked I nibbled some of the left over seafood then had a slurp of wine. Unbelievable. A perfect match. That strange dusty gritty flavour and the wine's lightness were a perfect match. Just to make sure I tried another mussel followed by another a slurp of wine. Yup. Better try a cockle with the wine... yup, that works too. Mmm, what about prawn... yup. Squid... just in time the cooker beeper sounded.

So the first red wine I've ever had that really, properly goes with seafood. It's high acidity worked a treat with the tomato, chilli and cheese on the pizza too. Remarkably unexpected. I'll definitely buy it again to serve with a seafood platter to freak people out. Otherwise, as a wine, it's a tad overpriced.

Domaine Mas Theo's organic Coteaux du Tricastin: £8.99 Oddbins.

A red wine for seafood.

Vive Le Difference

We got it bad, you don't know how bad we got it. You got it easy, you don't know when you got it good...

Wouldn't it be good to be on your side, even if it was for just one day...

Actually the French know they've got it good, even to the point of smugness, but why not? They're living in a country boasting every desirable form of terrain and have mastered the art of getting the best out of it.

There are however, a few achilles 'eels... the French get a bit embarrasing when drunk, they're crap at pop music and most of them can't dance.

French people tend to drink a lot without getting drunk. In fact they're so good at it, if you're a cirrhosis doctor you'd be daft working anywhere else. It's a long term soaky sort of boozing, not the binging variety at which we excel. When the French binge, the rest of the world cringe... you can almost guarantee they'll start trying, and failing, to pull each others pants down just before flinging themselves into the nearest fountain.

Now it's not like other countries don't behave abominably when drunk, it's just that normally the French are so bloody schwet, seeing them drunk, or dancing, or best of all, both, is to realise that there IS much justice in the world.

Anyway, I'd better stop now, before an angry mob from the Larzac turns up to blockade my street and set fire to cheese outside the window.

Here's a wine even the French recommend drinking to excess and after a few nights of experimentation, I can vouch for their advice. It came as part of a mixed case from Yapp.

Saint Pourcain 2009 is, to pinch a word they're fond of in the Yapp catalogue, a 'judicious' blend of Pinot Noir and Gamay. I'd say it's glugalicious and versatile. So far it's gone well with garlicy chicken, a nice tuna steak and it also goes down rather too easily on it's own. Oh well, if you can't beat them join them... but never mind the trousers, make sure it's the blinds you pull down before attempting the lastest refreshingly cool French dance craze Tecktonik...

New french dance craze - Watch more Funny Videos

Saint Pourcain comes as part of a mixed case from Yapp costing £85 including delivery. Well worth it.

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS

Robbed of My Senses

My cold came back to bite me on the arse... or rather, the nose. For a week I've been unable to smell or taste anything. It's a very strange sensation, losing such a fundamental sense. Smell can trigger so many happy memories, but just try remembering a smell when it's no longer there.
Well, Chinon's more than just a smell, it's a town in the Loire. I'm fairly sure it's still there and it's pretty hard to forget.
The attractive vineyards slope gently towards the enormous nuclear power station by the river. In the local Musee du Vin, nestling among the old wine presses and casks, there's a wax effigy of a local poet proclaiming something utterly bizarre about his 'apres toilette' technique. The chap's name is Rabelais.
So, how much pleasure can a wine I know, from a town I've visited, give without it's bouquet?

Charles Joguet trained as an artist in Paris before returning to the family domain after his fathers death in 1957. 40 years later he went back to painting, by then he'd made a big impact in the region and the domain still carries his name. This 'young vines' cuvee often has a piercing streak of blackcurrant fruit with a whiff of green pepper and a nice, complex, mineral taste. This one probably did, I kept trying to remember what it was like a few weeks back. That bottle had too much sulphur on the nose but tasted great. I've no idea if this one did too. Instead of breathing in sweet vapours, I just kept worrying that my sense of smell would never return, while thinking of Chinon and the extract from Rabelais I'd read in the museum...

"Afterwards I wiped my tail with a hen, with a cock, with a pullet, with a calf's skin, with a hare, with a pigeon, with a cormorant, with an attorney's bag, with a montero, with a coif, with a falconer's lure. But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains." (Gargantua, 1534)

Rabelais didn't mention quail. I decided to eat mine, smeared with a paste made from allspice, crushed garlic, paprika and lemon juice then roasted... they may have tasted divine, they did last time.

Charles Joguet, Les Petit Roches, Chinon 2007, £9.99 Waitrose... probably worth every penny.

You're Unbelievable

I've mentioned this wine before but fear it may have been undersold. Just to make sure I don't make the same mistake again: this is UNBELIEVABLE value for money.

As the label says, morello cherries, if you don't like them, don't buy it. If you do, or even if you're indifferent, buy it. In fact buy loads of it, because just now M&S are offering 25% off any 6, bringing this one in at the frankly incredible price of £2.99 a bottle.

Tonight it went with Caponata, however, as a result of extensive testing, I can also confirm it goes with: pizza, pasta, crisps, dips, cottage pie, chilli con carne, stuffed vegetables, roast chicken, duck, and mystery fridge stuff on crackers. Cin cin.

One word of caution. M&S do other wines in this range with similar labels. They are definitely NOT in this league.

I ain't yellow, I ain't mellow

I've always hated mellow. Even the sound of the word. It's so wet, stoned, passionless. What use is mellow? "This is your Captain speaking, if there are any mellow passengers on board could they please make themselves known to the cabin crew immediately". I don't think so.

But age distorts so many things and the black dog currently nibbling at my shoulder is the terrifying realisation that I'm mellowing. Take this one time Christmas stocking filler.

Written as a series of letters to a daughter just off to university. Snippets of a family's history intertwined with recipes and signed off 'Mummy'. Excruciating. Everything about this book got me ranting and raging. It seemed the embodiment of conceited middle class smugness writ large. Even the title was embarrassing. So it sat in a darkened cupboard for years, in case anyone thought I'd bought it.

I can't remember when exactly, but gradually, bit by bit, I started dipping in. A pasta recipe here, a risotto recipe there. I still couldn't go the 'letters' but it quickly dawned on me that the food was good. Many books claim to reveal family recipes handed down through generations, most are either lying or their family's food must have been a bit shit. This book was the real deal.

It's the subtlety of the tastes that really impresses. Little techniques that impart so much flavour. Combinations that compliment and never overwhelm. Do not be fooled by the apparent simplicity. One of my favourites is 'Poussin with an Orvieto style stuffing'. I eat it once a week. This is all you need. Plus some rosemary.

First bash two unpeeled garlic cloves with a heavy knife. Let them gently fry while chopping the roasting potatoes and fennel bulb.

Pop them into the pan once the garlic is golden. Fry for 10/15 minutes till they colour a bit. I always find they stick, so just before finishing add a little water and scrape up the tasty brown stuff.

Fish out the garlic and add a tablespoon of chopped olives, the dry 'stone in' ones are best, salt and pepper. Stuff the birds, pop in a sprig of rosemary season and rub with a little olive oil.

Into the preheated oven, 220c for 25 minutes. Remove, baste, pour in a glass of white wine and add any left over stuffing to the roasting pan too. Then put everything back in the oven for 15 - 20 minutes. It's divine.

White wine probably suits this dish best, I guess something from Orvieto would make sense. But I fancied red wine.

£7.99 from Sainsbury's. Made utilising a technique developed in Beaujolais to extract all the nice things from the grape and less of the difficult stuff.

It's now used to great effect in the Languedoc when some of the rougher grapes need, err, mellowing. Oh hell, why fight it? I may even try reading those letters.

'Dear Francesca' by Mary Contini

Ebury Press. First published 2002.

If you see it, buy it.

Or just visit her family's original 'Valvona & Crolla', 19 Elm Row, Edinburgh EH7 4AA

Pricey, but by some way the best Italian deli in Scotland.

The poussins came from Sainsbury's: £4.50 for 2.

Real pleasure

Another exceptional present from Gordon for looking after Archie. "It's seriously yummy", he said, while gathering together his dogs increasingly odd toys. He wasn't kidding!

It smells smokey and creamy with a whiff of dried herbs and, to me, an unmistakable blast of 'forest fruit' squash. You almost expect it to be sweet.

At first it tastes of red fruits like cherries but that develops into darker fruits, reminiscent of creme de mure. There's also white pepper and a hint of eucalyptus. All beautifully integrated with that fabulous tannin / acidity mix which makes slurping such a pleasure.

It came in an Oddbins bag, but was a present, so I didn't check the price. Frankly anything under £30 would be good value, it represents what wine drinking's all about, a real pleasure. 

Now here's a thing. This is Chateau La Nerthe's second wine, I've had their first wine a few times too, but it was never so enjoyable to drink. Yes, it was more concentrated, more age worthy and undoubtably more "serious". But even if it had been left to mature (not much chance right enough) I'm not convinced it would ever be more enjoyable than this. More cerebral yes, more pleasurable? 

Archie numbers among his toys a large polar bear, an increasingly disheveled Dennis the Menace and various purpose bought items that squeak....for a bit..... but the one that gave him most pleasure this time around......

Can you guess what it is?