Rioja Grande

Top 5 food related things from the a weekend in Northern Spain:

1. A sidestreet bar in Bilbao serving perfect pata negra ham, dinky fillet steak pintxos and La Rioja Alta Gran Reserva 904 1995. Awesome. We knocked off several raciones of ham, drank half a dozen brilliant bottles of red, kept the bar staff back an hour with our enthusiasm and walked out for 20 euros a head. Ridiculous.

2. Tortilla. The best thing to drink before, during and after a night on the Vino Tinto in Logrono. Eggs, potatoes and onions never tasted so good.

3. Creamed rice and goose liver at Dinastia Vivanco's restaurant in Briones. It didn't reach the heights of the foie gras risotto at Cambol Zero in July but it was still the best thing on the menu. Disgustingly rich.

4. The rain in Spain falls mainly in San Sebastian. The antidote to a very wet Monday morning in SS? A coarse fish broth in a rustic pintxos bar. A thin, brown, fishy gruel full of the flavour of the sea. Delicious.

5. Jen's chicken soup spiced with the Thai paste from the fridge and full of green noodles and even greener pak choi. If the fish soup warmed the cockles in San Sebastian this washed away the Stansted experience and told me I was home.

Soda Bread

An idea that has been playing on my mind for a while. I’ve been looking for an easy midweek loaf, something that can be knocked up quickly after work when we’ve run out of sourdough but still need to eat tomorrow morning. Two recipes have caught my eye - both for their serving suggestions. One advises Guinness and oysters. The other butter and Marmite. Great breakfasts both.

Two hours after coming through the door, the bread is mixed, baked and cool enough to slice. It tastes nutty and wholesome. Not dense, but not light either; a substantial, winter loaf. But Today is a school day, the oysters will have to wait for a lazy weekend a trip to Borough to see Mr Hayward. The only black stuff on the table was Marmite - though it was the new fangled Guinness variety.

Making Do

Wiser cooks than I have mused that most of the best dishes use only three or four ingredients. Simplicity rules. A dish of fried sardines and the day before’s ratatouille cooked in the South of France and gobbled down with cold rose is Exhibit A. I don’t need to tell you the success lay in shimmering fresh fish and vegetables that had grown juicy in the heat of the sun.

Last night was an attempt to relive the summer. We put the heating on for the first time since last winter and put a dish of fish and tomatoes in the oven. Hardly Provence but heartwarming all the same.

It’s an easy dish. Waxy potatoes sliced thin and baked until they threaten to turn golden. Cherry toms halved and thrown over the top, the dish returning to the oven until the skins are shrivelled and the sugars sweetened. Some herbs - thyme and bay - have gone in to, along with a few slivers of garlic and a slug from the good olive oil bottle. Finally, it’s the fish. Yesterday bream, on another day it might be a couple of red mullets. When all is cooked some rocket and basil complete the tricolore. The result is a dish of artificially created sunshine. The epicure’s tanning lamp.

A fantastic food and wine match

A lot of hot air is spoken about food and wine matching by winos and foodies - and I include myself in the guilty parties - and, in my saner moments, I am a firm believer in the "drink what you like school of thought". I remember watching my friend Jon devour Dover Sole with a huge Chilean Merlot, just because he loved both fish and wine. Who am I to tell him he is wrong?

But occasionally, you stumble across something genuinely brilliant, where the wine becomes an extra flavour, an integral part of the dish. I say stumbled, in this case I salute the chef/sommelier team at Mu (pronounced Mju) who matched Boudin Blanc with Celeriac Puree & Muscat Grapes with Alois Lageder's wonderful Lagrein Rosato 2006 at a recent wine dinner. The rich, soft boudin and fruity grapes were lifted by the soft, bitter-edged fruit of the wine with the acidity cutting through the fat. The wine benefitted from this gastronomic symbiosis too - becoming slightly more serious and focussed, like it it had thrown off the shackles of being a frivolous pink and joined the proper wines at the big table.

Pig's Head & Rabbit

A treat. Arbutus with Ayo was an alliterative joy. For those of you who have been living on Mars for the last eighteen months, Arbutus is an award winning London restaurant that shocked many by winning a Michein star in its first year despite its unpretentious style and food. And for those of you who have never met him, Ayo is the best dressed HR professional ever to pour over the Sunday Times best companies list.

The food was very good. I knew what I was eating before I got there. As long as they were on the menu - and they usually are - it would be Pigs Head followed by Rabbit. The Pigs Head arrives as a deep oblong block. A perfectly ordered geometric shape containing a messy mosaic of porky goodness. The head is slow cooked then picked, shaped and finally, roasted. The crisp, brown outer hiding melting fat and sweet, juicy meat. Porcine heaven. If you have never eaten Pig's Head - or just the cheek, or Ox cheek, or tete de veau - then you must.

The rabbit dish is a modern London classic. The slightly roasted saddle comes stuffed with the kidney, with a 'shepherds pie' made from slow cooked shoulder served in an individual casserole on the side. The hint of offal adding richness and depth to the soft, subtle white meat of the saddle. The side dish pie adding an all important degree of fun as well as a more rabbity element to the dish. It really is very good.

We drank exceptionally well too - Paillard NPU 1990, Giaconda Roussanne 2004 and Ornelleia 1999. All utterly delicious - thank you, Ayo - dining out with such fine wines is a rare exception to the norm.

On this occasion Arbutus was excellent, but it is not perfect. It has won many of its plaudits for the way it serves its wine. All (or nearly all) are available by the glass, carafe or bottle. It is a great idea. When we first visited we ran through half the list between four of us, tasting 8 or 9 250ml carafes over the evening. But there is little point having such innovative wine service, if the wines themselves do not match up. The pricey gems from the top of the list we drank on Thursday apart, too much of the list is just boring. The owners may know how to sell wine. They need to learn how to buy it.

Daily Bread

I wanted to call this blog Daily Bread but the name had gone. Hopefully to a devotee of Dan Lepard rather than any higher powers. One of the world's greatest pleasures is baking bread. It gives a warm, false aura of self-sufficiency, even in a South London flat where the nearest edible animal is probably at Vauxhall City Farm. Our sourdough starter, Beast, is the third member of the family. It needs to be fed and nurtured. Just as it feeds and nurtures us.

Sunday's loaf was our first with spelt. Coarser but lighter than the usual rye. it has produced a wonderful bouncy, open loaf with a sweet, nuttiness to balance the inherent sourness. Cut thick and covered in Marmite, it made a frugal but delicious supper. Two days on and it is approaching the watershed when it becomes slightly too stale to eat as it is, demanding a burst in the toaster before the thick layers of butter and marmite are spread on. No matter, it makes world class toast and by Thursday, it will be gone.

By the weekend, there will be a new loaf: warmer, fresher and more satisfying than any from a bakery.