Wine- Chateau Laffitte-Teston, Pacherenc du Vic Bilh Sec, Ericka 2010

Chateau Laffitte-Teston, Pacherenc du Vic Bilh Sec, Ericka 2010

Coming from the southwestern appellation of Madiran in France at the foothills of the Pyrénées mountains. White wines from this region can be made of Petit Courbu, Petit Manseng, Arrufiac, Gros Manseng and Sauvignon. The wine is often sweet but this particular example is "sec."

Cuvée Ericka is made up of 70% Gros Manseng and 30% Petit Manseng.


Look- Lightly golden, pale straw, bright and clear

Bouquet- Notes of vanilla, lemon, pink grapefruit, pineapple and spice

Palate- Good balance of fruit and acidity, suggestions of lemon rind and possibly pear, good depth of flavour


Would make a great companion particularly with fish and crustacea. I think it would also work nicely with chicken and possibly has enough depth to work with pork too.

I picked this up from The Sampler in South Kensington (there is another branch in Islington). They have a marvellous selection of wines and I was lucky to be able to try a sample of this before I bought it from their famed sampling machines.

Chateau Laffitte-Teston- http://www.chateau-laffitte-teston.com/
The Sampler- http://www.thesampler.co.uk/store/


GastroTom

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Recipe- Chocolate Fig Bonbons

After having tried two different types of chocolate-covered figs over the Christmas period, I was inspired to try making my own simple version. These are rum-soaked chocolate fig bonbons and delicious they are too.

To make 10:

10 large dried figs
250ml golden rum
125g chocolate

Try and find the biggest, highest-quality dried figs that you can. The juicier they are, the better.








Place the figs into a bowl, preferably wide based enough so they are not all sat on top of each other.

Take the rum and pour over the figs so that they are completely immersed in the liquid.

I used Mount Gay Rum. This golden rum is distilled in Barbados by the Mount Gay Distilleries which has a surviving deed dating from 1703. This makes it the oldest rum brand in the world.

It has a rich, golden colour and has a very clear caramel nose. There is a reasonably sweet flavour on the palate which balances out the high alcohol content (40%, 80 proof) which is standard in rum.

Don't worry if you feel like you're using too much, because you'll be left with a fig-infused rum at the end, which would be perfect for cocktails (a suggestion will follow soon).



It is best, both for the figs and the rum that you will have left behind, to leave them soaking at least over night so that the flavour of the rum can fully infuse into the figs and plump them up nicely. Cover your dish with cling-film to prevent evaporation of the liquid.

Take a pan and a glass bowl that is large enough to sit on top of the pan.

Fill the pan with water, ensuring the water will not touch the bottom of the bowl, and bring to a gentle simmer before switching off the heat. Sit the glass bowl on top.




I used half 40% cacao and half 70% cacao chocolate to create a balance but some people are very purist about using solely chocolate with a very high cacao content and there is no reason not to stick by this. If you're completely averse to dark chocolate, you could feasibly just use milk, but I personally wouldn't recommend anything weaker in cacao than the combination I used.

Break up the chocolate into small pieces and place them in the bowl. Allow the chocolate to melt slowly being careful to not get the water too hot. While the chocolate is melting, drain the rum from the figs and pat the figs dry.

Carefully cover the figs in the melted chocolate. I found the best way was to put a fork through the stem of the fig before dipping it in the chocolate and then pouring more chocolate over the top to ensure full coverage.

Now place the figs onto a greased plate or greased parchment paper and place in the fridge to set.

After a few hours, the figs should be fully set and ready to eat. You should find when you bite into one that the figs are juicy, rehydrated by the rum. They will also have a reasonably strong flavour of the rum meaning that these bonbons are certainly best eaten as an after-dinner treat.

All in all, they make a delicious, boozy chocolate that's really easy to make. Give them a try and tell me what you think.

GastroTom

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Saturday Breakfast- Playful Presentation

Sometimes it's fun to turn the mundane into something pointlessly playful and fun. Well, it is for me at least. Some might say it's a sign that I have too much time on my hands that I felt the need to present my smoked streaky bacon and mushroom sandwich in such a manner. But I say, what are Saturday mornings for, if they're not for enjoying having a little too much time to spare.

I guess this is quite a light breakfast (by weekend standards anyway) and that's because later I'll be heading out to Meat Liquor, an all-American style burger diner. No doubt you'll hear more about that soon.

GastroTom

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The Post-Christmas Chocolate Haul

I love it when the food gods offer you up a lovely treat in the most unexpected places. I came across a box of Charbonnel et Walker Violet Creams in the post-Christmas sales shopping in Leeds in, believe it or not, discount retailer, TK Maxx (I believe it is known as TJ Maxx in the States).

Charbonnel et Walker are the luxury British chocolatiers, founded in 1875 when the then Prince of Wales, Edward VII of England encouraged Mme. Charbonnel of the Boissier chocolate house in Paris to move to London and go into partnership with Mrs. Walker.

These chocolates are so delicious, with their lovely, firm fondant bursting with the perfumed flavour of English violet. Each is daintily decorated with a crystallised violet petal; perfect to round off a meal, maybe with coffee, but personally I'd rather just enjoy them all on their own.

Thanks to TK Maxx, I'm enjoying these on the cheap, but even at full price I'd recommend them.

And the good luck continues. After the mad flurry of activity that is Christmas, I seem to have emerged out of the other side in possession of a large box of Pink Marc de Champagne Truffles from the very same chocolate merchant.

These truffles have a elegant pink shell, dusted with icing sugar, that melts away to reveal a wonderfully rich milk chocolate, butter and Marc de Champagne truffle centre which is satisfyingly strong in the latter.

Both of these chocolates come, like all Charbonnel's products, beautifully packaged and so they are an ideal gift. I think most people would thank you more for a smaller box of these than an epic tray of some more mundane varieties.

All you have to decide is who is going to be the recipient of this first-class confectionary. May I suggest, yourself would be as good a choice as any.

Charbonnel et Walker- http://www.charbonnel.co.uk/

GastroTom

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Balik Salmon

I've got this lovely Balik Sjomga salmon fillet sitting in my fridge, waiting to be enjoyed. It's lightly smoked before being marinated with ginger, honey and orange.

I was lucky to try some of this in the Caviar House and Prunier Restaurant on Piccadilly, central London as part of a tasting plate and I'm even luckier to have more to try at home.

No doubt, more will follow...

Caviar House and Prunier- http://www.caviar-house.ch/united-kingdom/en/index__25_83-1

GastroTom

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The End of a Baguette

That old problem of opening the kitchen cupboard and discovering the pesky little end of a baguette. The bread is too good to just throw away but what can you quickly do to it that will make you a tasty light lunch?


How about toasted sourdough baguette with goat's curd and pea shoots, drizzled with Kalmata extra virgin olive oil?

Well, as simple as this solution might be, I just enjoyed it myself for lunch and I certainly wasn't left wanting.

Take the end of your baguette (or indeed a middle part if you're lucky to have more left) and slice in half. Place under the grill until lightly toasted.

Spread the goat's curd liberally onto the bread.

Season with sel de Guerande and black pepper.

Top the bread with a sprinkling of fresh pea shoots.

Finally drizzle with an extra virgin olive oil.

I was lucky that my end of baguette was more specifically a delicious white stick from the St. John Bakery who have their bakery just down the road from me on Druid Street, Bermondsey. I was similarly blessed that my goats curd was produced by Neal's Yard Creamery, an independent dairy producer based in Dorstone, Herefordshire.

I also used a PDO Kalmata Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Waitrose which was golden and peppery and added greatly to the overall balance of the dish. And my pea shoots, I was pleased to see, were grown in my home county of Yorkshire and tasted fresh and sweet. Perfect to cut through the goat's curd and bring a bit of balance and green vibrancy to the dish. I suppose some would say you should really remove the stems from the pea shoots but with this, I enjoyed the crunchy element that they brought and so left them as I found them.

Ready in five. Enjoy!

St. John Bakery- http://www.stjohnbakerycompany.com/
Neal's Yard Creamery- http://www.nealsyardcreamery.co.uk/index.html

GastroTom

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Christmas- a time for Fig Bonbons

Well, I say it was a time for Fig Bonbons, but in truth, I hardly mean that you couldn't move for them in the shops. However, in both Carluccio's (the chain of cafe/delis founded by Antonio Carluccio which needs little introduction) and Brindisa (Spanish food specialists), you could find two lovely variations on what you might call collectively a fig bonbon.

But don't be fooled, these are no bonbons like the lemon or strawberry chewy, marble-sized sweets dusted in sugary powder that you used to see sitting in big jars on shelves on the wall of the village post office. In fact, the term "bonbon" probably more generally describes something sweet, often enrobed in chocolate.

And enrobed in chocolate they are.

These are rabitos royale, what the Spanish call bombón de higo which you've probably realised translates to fig bonbons.

These delightful little sweeties are composed of three separate layers almost like an mini-globe with a thin, brittle milk chocolate coating that breaks away to reveal a juicy yet crunchy (thanks to the seeds) Mediterranean dried fig which bursts under minimal pressure to reveal a rich chocolate truffle and brandy filling has somehow found its way to the centre.

They are delicious and a triumph of the "la higuera" company which created the recipe for the rabito royale in 1989. The company is still family owned by the children of the original creators, Senador Valero and Felipa Nieva.

Exhibit B are Fichi Ricoperti from Carluccio's which was part of their Christmas offering for 2011. Unfortunately, at the time of this post, all of these delicious Calabrian delicacies have been hastily consumed and I'm only able to give you an idea of the traditional style packaging that they came in. Not exactly the visual impact I would ideally want to make but hopefully conveys just how irresistible they were.

This time, the figs are stuffed with walnuts from Sorrento and orange peel from Reggio Calabria before being drizzled in the finest dark Belgian chocolate. The quality of the figs really shone through on these also, it being clear that producers Roberto Aloisio and family have gone to great lengths to ensure you only get the very best Italian fichi.


After all, for everything that these talented producers do to them, these bonbons are all about the figs.

For a recipe for a simple rum fig bonbons, click here- http://gastrotom.blogspot.com/2012/01/recipe-chocolate-fig-bonbons.html

Carluccios- http://www.carluccios.com/
Brindisa- http://www.brindisa.com/
http://bombondehigo.com/en/index.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/8936590/Pastries-from-Calabria-to-Carluccios.html#disqus_thread

Gastro Tom

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