Episode 282 - Charlotte Kristensen on food and wine pairing

What other bending the rules pairings do you enjoy? You've mentioned a recent one there, burgundy, red burgundy and chocolate buttons.

What else do you do that's a bit outré?

Well, red wine and fish.

I've got a couple of recipes in the book.

So I have one that I discovered actually when I was in the Rhone.

And it was a sort of a lighter style of grenache paired with cod with a tapenade.

So the fish dish is a little bit richer.

And we've got that sort of nice sort of salty edge from the tapenade.

But then we've gone for...

A Grenache, which has slightly softer tannins, a lot of red fruit there.

And there's just a really nice balance between the two.

Tannins can have a horrible reaction with fish.

But when you go for something soft like Grenache, it works wonderfully, especially when it's a little chilled as well.

Yeah, go on, inspire us with another one, because that certainly sounds good to me.

I'm not sure about your red burgundy and chocolate buttons, to be honest, but the card, the Grenache, the tapenade doing its bit, that sounds great.

So tease us with another.

I also love a rich style of white wine with some meat dishes, especially sort of more maybe slow cooked aromatic meat dishes.

So one that stands out to me in particular is something like a rich oak aged white Rioja, with a sort of slow-cooked, maybe saffron-infused shoulder of lamb.

So

here, we don't have necessarily a big competition between flavours between the wine and the recipe because white Rioja is big, it's bold, it's had oak ageing, so it's got texture as well.

And then when you slow-cook something like lamb, it has a much more sort of subtle and softer texture.

So again, you know, there's not a competition in flavours.

So something like that, I like.

I love the fact that I always think of you as very classy.

So I love the fact you go quite trashy as well.