Each week, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you a simple Chicken Liver Salad to see us through the summer.

Like other forms of offal, chicken livers languish on supermarket shelves largely ignored by soccer moms and dads doing the weekly shop and chosen only by the frugal pensioner and the odd foodie. (After all, we can’t eat at St. John’s every night or drag ourselves to Smithfield’s each morning.)

It’s a shame too, really; because far more than most any other offal, chicken livers are both delectable and versatile. Consider this: in the past four years, I’ve managed to have chicken livers on lemongrass skewers in a restaurant on the Kowloon peninsula of Hong Kong, in pasta at a little Italian eatery hidden on the first floor of a rather non-descript Melbourne side street, as chopped liver served al fresco at a kosher trattoria in the Jewish quarter of Rome, and with salad in a Spanish tapas bar in London’s Piccadilly Circus.

While my favourite method of preparation would most certainly fresh from the pan with a touch of salt and gently fried in olive oil, they are remarkably good served with a slice of orange or Mandarin and few choice leaves of salad, making them perfect for a light summer luncheon.

Most often, people will recommend pairing liver with a big tannic red wine, the tannins serving as a safe partner for the savour flavour of the offal; however, an occasionally considered alternative — especially in the case of foie gras — is Sauternes, a sweet and acidic French dessert wine made of botrytised white wine grapes.

As with the French Sauternes, the Hungarian Tokaji Aszú is another well known wine made of botrytised wine grapes occasionally matched with foie gras to excellent affect. Given Hungary’s culinary acuity when it comes to all things liver (many consider the country’s foie gras among the best in the world — even France imports it), I decided to pair the Simple Chicken Liver Summer Salad with its dry Tokaji Furmint cousin, hoping that the drier wine would better suit the flavours chicken livers and salad.

Although, not quite the perfect match that I had hoped, but still a very good one all the same, the 2004 Oremus Tokaji Mandolas Dry Furmint (13%), £13.50 from Planet of the Grapes, is honeyed and buttery with an strong citric edge and a bit too much of an oak-y aftertaste that clashes slightly with the strongly textured flavour of the liver. This is a very impressive wine, nonetheless, and a rarity to find most places outside of Hungary to boot. Those seeking a white wine outside the realm of the overfamiliar Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc could do a lot worse than this. It would pair nicely with soft, flakey fish and seafood or make an excellent wine to enjoy on its own. It also maintains its form once openned, its oak-y aftertaste only marginally increasing over a few days.

Now, because InterWined is sometimes asked to ascribe numerical value to the wines it tries like judges at a sporting competition, let’s give this one some sort of score that suggests an excellent near miss, close the bullseye — something like 8.whatever.

(For more on InterWined’s complex ratings system, be sure to visit the Ratings page.)

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Each week, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

Sticking with the bread theme from yesterday, why not start the week right with some Sun-blushed Tomato & Goat’s Cheese Rolls?

Sun-blushed tomatoes and goat’s cheese make another great match for the the 2005 Remole Frescobaldi (12.5%), £7.49 from Oddbins, made from a blend of 85% Sangiovese/15% Cabernet Sauvignon. The tomatoes and cheese provide a slightly savoury balance to the tannins of the Remole (especially if opened the previous day with InterWined’s Olive & Parma Bread).

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Each week, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

There are few things nicer than a warm slice of bread and a good glass of wine. So, this week, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you both with its very own Olive & Parma Bread.

I’ve made this bread several times and in many different ways, as a bâtard, as a baguette, and as a kind of stromboli. This recipe makes the stromboli-style.

Accompanying the stromboli is a simple glass of Italian wine in the form of the 2005 Remole Frescobaldi (12.5%), £7.49 from Oddbins, made from a blend of 85% Sangiovese/15% Cabernet Sauvignon. Oddbins describes the wine as a mini-Super Tuscan and it’s hard to disagree. The flavour is earthy and tannic with a nose that smells of cherries and summer fruits. Together, the two work well and find balance — the bread with its strong olive, salt, and cheese flavours smoothing the tannins found in the wine.

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Each week, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

Yesterday, it was Gingerbread; and today it’s Champagne-Vanilla Ice Cream, as ‘Blow the Bank’ returns a touch of class to the 4^th of July.

Sometime toward the end of last year, the great and always entertaining Rowena of Rubber Slippers in Italy and I were discussing the pleasures of foods and wines, when Rowena suggested wine ice cream. It had never occurred to me to add wine to ice cream, even though I had tried all sorts of other concoctions, from the very good addition of balsamic vinegar to the very bad addition of Tabasco sauce.

Why Tabasco sauce? Well, I love it — almost as much as I love ice cream. I’ve even been to the McIlhenny family’s Avery Island in Louisiana where it’s manufactured (with InterWined’s Jacob Gaffney, in fact). Seen the Buddha; seen the alligators; bought a t-shirt that was ruined when the city of New Orleans and my ground-floor apartment were flooded in the summer of 1994. So, why shouldn’t I add between 20 and 30 drops of Tabasco to my ice cream? Because the fiery flavour of each drop intensifies as it cuts straight through the ice cream like a blade through butter, that’s why.

Frankly, I blame all of it on those Tabasco adverts that ran on American television in the early 1990s with the likes of Dan Ackroyd daring you try Tabasco sauce with all of your favourite foods. “So what do you put it on?” Not ICE CREAM! Not ice cream…

So what about wine and ice cream? After all, alcohol and ice cream really isn’t anything new. There are many ice cream cocktails and several alcohol ice creams. But wine ice creams? Admittedly even though I was wary of a Tabasco-like fiasco, I was intrigued and found myself agreeing to make wine ice cream as soon as I purchased an ice cream maker.

Well, I bought an ice cream maker last week. And true to my word, one of the very first ice creams I made was Champagne-Vanilla with a bottle of Bricout Premier Cru Cuvee Prestige Brut, £13.30 per bottle from Tesco (available online by the case).

Unlike with the ice cream Tabasco sauce, this was a perfect match. The champagne works to enhance and sharpen the flavour of the ice cream, while the vanilla keeps the balance and helps prevent the champagne from becoming too strong or overbearing.
InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full

Champagne-Vanilla Ice Cream

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Each week, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week as part of a two-day 4^th of July spectacular, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you a bucket of Mostly-Organic Gingerbread Ice Cream.

“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream”. Sure, it’s a cliché; but one look in my freezer will prove that at least the first part’s true. Regardless of the weather or season, when it comes to my culinary affections, ice cream always reigns supreme and leaves me wanting more.

Need proof: on a recent trip to visit my sister in Rome, what was top of my list of things to do? See the Trevi Fountain? Tour the Vatican? Nope; it was find a gelateria. And, yes, I did see the Trevi Fountain and tour the Vatican, lest you think I’m some sort of cultural heathen. It’s just that I did both with a cono of gelato in my hand. (In fact, the best gelato in Rome comes from a gelateria very close the Vatican. Seek it out.)

From Japanese Yukimi Daifuku on the streets of London to a single scoop of vanilla pressed into the top of sugar cone and served my grandmother’s kitchen in a scene ripped for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, I love ice cream. I’ll scream it loud and scream it proud.

The Web is awash with quick and easy recipes for gingerbread ice cream. The problem is most involve simply adding a bit of gingerbread crumbs to some bog-standard brand of ready-made vanilla in a loose and free-wheeling interpretation of the word ‘recipe’ not even worthy of the back of a packet of Hamburger Helper and a Campbell’s Soup tin or whatever other cultural reference implies adding one ready-made food to another and calling it a quick and easy recipe for anything in the name of ‘fast food’. If you really want beef stroganoff and don’t have the time to prepare it, buy it ready made and order it from a restaurant. If that sounds somewhat unforgiving, it’s meant to do.

InterWined is all for quick and easy recipes — few of us have the time for anything else — when quick and easy means simple and straight-forward to prepare. Not fast for the sake of speed. Recipes shouldn’t be fast at the expense of quality or flavour. Without those, there’s little point in following a quick and easy recipe much less eating quick and easy food, outside of staying alive. And I, for one, have never been terribly keen on things that double as songs titles for the Bee Gees. Don’t even get me started on that joke that started the whole world crying. Seriously, how bad did that joke have to be? Can you even call it a joke if all it does it make people cry?

Not-entirely InterWined’s Own Recipe for Mostly-Organic Gingerbread Ice Cream is definitely no joke. Based on a recipe for gingerbread ice cream from KitchenAid, it might not be as fast as some on the Web, but it is certainly quick and easy to prepare without sacrificing flavour or quality. This is premium ice cream made with organic milk and free-range eggs and infused with freshly-baked gingerbread cookies from the start to ensure that the ice cream, not only took on the colour of the cookies, but evenly absorbed the full, rich flavour of the gingerbread. One bite of this and you’ll never do quick and easy ice cream for the sake of quick and easy again.

Not-entirely InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full*

Gingerbread Ice Cream

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Each Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

Just because UK food prices are their highest in more than a decade doesn’t mean that we can’t eat well. In fact, in some ways, it might mean just the opposite.

Here’s how: we all know that necessity is the mother of something, be it outright invention or the simply act of taking chances, as a quick search of Google will assure Mark Twain once apparently said; and when it comes to the kitchen that something is prized as culinary inspiration.

For most, if not all, of the world’s great culinary achievements – those techniques that transform ingredients into dishes that speak to our hearts as much as to our stomachs – were born of a necessary kind of culinary inspiration. From salting to smoking to pickling to stewing and offal to sausages to bean curd to…you get the picture…necessity has given us some of our most popular dishes and culinary techniques to help us see out the lean weeks and wait for the happy return of opulence and excess and imported non-seasonal fruits and vegetables.

So, in the spirit of the credit crunch, put down the ready-meal, unplug the microwave, and learn to re-embrace one-pot dinners and the hasty return of leftovers, as ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you its Slow-cooked Pork Tacos à la Olla Podrida.

And, sure it might cost more than a fiver (No offense Jamie; I’m sure shopping for spaghetti with you is very rewarding.), but it’ll definitely last a couple of meals.

Pork is a staple of the Spanish and Latin American diet, which dates back at least to the reconquista of Al-Andalus in 1492 — the year ol’ Cristóbal Colón went sailing to India and landed on the island of Hispaniola (the island divided by the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic).

The history of this dish isn’t that old, but it’s close. In Spanish, the words Olla Podrida literally refer to a rotten pot of meat. But names can be deceiving — especially when it comes to foodstuffs — because this dish is anything but rotten.

Cooked in a large earthenware pot, the loin of pork is slow-cooked for a couple of hours in a mix of water, roughly chopped onions, cut bulbs of garlic, and a touch of salt and pepper. Later, the pork is removed and the remaining water and ingredients discarded. In the same pot, mustard seeds, paprika, and cumin are heated in olive oil with onion. The pork loin is shredded and returned to the pot, along with a simple vegetable or wine stock, followed by red kidney beans, cannellini beans, and calasparra rice. Once the stock has evaporated, the pot is removed from the heat, re-seasoned and served on warm corn tortillas to become Slow-cooked Pork Tacos à la Olla Podrida.

A bottle of the 2006 Val do Sosego Albariño (12.5%), from Rias Baixas in Spain, available at Oddbins for £8.49, makes a wondrous pairing to this white-meat stew, its mix of apples and pears complimenting the pork as well as the corn tortilla. Pork and apples, like apples and maize are excellent pairing partners; and although there is a tad more of a floral sense on the nose and woodiness in the mouth than I would have liked, it remains light and well-balanced with a crispness that helps further perpetuate the sense of apple. That gives it a score of 8.3, based on the complicated but 100%-accurate ratings system outlined on InterWined.com’s Ratings page. Thing is, it was so close to 8.6.

(As most readers will know, InterWined’s rating system is somewhat arbitrary and largely tongue-in-cheek.)

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Each Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you two of InterWined’s favourite pizzas.

Pizza with Parma Ham, Basil, and Red Onion

Feta & Butternut Squash Pizza with Ricotta and Pine Nuts

The 2006 ‘Taste the Difference’ Primitivo del Salento, from Italy and available exclusively to Sainsbury’s for approximately £5, is made by Cantina Due Palme, an Italian co-operative from Apulia known for their award- winning Primitivo. So, it doesn’t disappoint. In fact, it slightly astounds. For £5, this is one of the best wines that I’ve had in months; it’s also great for pairing with all manner of foods.

This wine is rich and flavourful, with a complexion that’s something of a cross between black cherries and dried blood. Thankfully, you can only taste the cherries. But even if wine could taste like blood, this wine would pull it off brilliantly. There’s such a good balance to it.

It’s also the perfect mix of spicy and sweet to match both pizzas. The sweetness really marries well with the squash and adds a little bit of a zip to the mellower flavour of the baked feta. Likewise, the sweetness helps counter any saltiness from the Parma ham, while the fresh basil, red onions, and ample cranks of cracked pepper help compliment the spice. A perfect threesome: 9.1.

InterWined’s Own Recipes in Full

Pizza with Parma Ham, Basil, and Red Onion & Feta & Butternut Squash Pizza with Ricotta and Pine Nuts

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Each Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ ends its month-long celebration of some of American cuisine’s greatest dishes from classic comfort foods to the unsung greats of American soulfood, with a decidedly European-take on a well-recognised transatlantic treat.

One word describes the 2003 Château de Fesles Bonnezeaux (12.5%) from the Loire Valley and available from Oddbins in the UK and Wine Chateau.com in the US (with numerous vintages available in Canada, New Zealand, and mainland Europe): smooth.

Made from 100% botrytis Chenin Blanc grapes, the Bonnezeaux screams smooth operator…not unlike the way Sade used to do on the radio. It has a fine golden colour with a rich, slightly creamy fresh fruit flavour with a hint of vanilla or nutmeg thrown in for good measure and makes for a stunningly attractive match to the smooth and silky mix of cream and fruit found in InterWined’s Own Pomegranate & Blueberry Cheesecake.

Like the hamburger and countless other “American” foods, the American cheesecake is rooted across the Atlantic in the kitchens and dinning rooms of a host of different European traditions. So what makes a cheesecake American? New Yorkers and Chicagoans might tell you it’s the baking.

But it’s not.

It’s the cream cheese. Cream cheese is a wholly American invention. Not until William Lawrence invented his now famous Philadelphia cream cheese in 1872 on his farm in New York State and its eventual owners, Kraft Foods, managed to manufacture a pasteurised version in 1912, did any cheesecakes resemble the stuff of today, whether or it was cooked as the New Yorkers and Chicagoans would recommend, or uncooked as the British and many others prefer. Before then, all cheesecakes were made the European way with a filling made of ricotta, mascarpone, quark, or Neufchatel cheeses.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the American preference for baking doesn’t continue. Indeed, outside of perhaps only a handful of US restaurants and cities, the cooked cheesecake remains the more time-consuming norm. And while InterWined hates to pick sides in this most delicious debate (both are great!), for the sake of time and convenience, why not throw American preferences to one side and enjoy the speed and ease of a simple, smooth uncooked cheesecake, such as InterWined’s Own Pomegranate & Blueberry Cheesecake.

InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full

Pomegranate & Blueberry Cheesecake

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Ever ordered a dish off a menu at a restaurant or café and found yourself thinking, “I could make that”?

Well, InterWined did last weekend, while sitting outside Carluccio’s, the popular Italian café chain, and trying to make the most of the sporadic sunshine that fell along Market Square near London’s Oxford Street. The dish was a simple Emilia-Romagna-inspired serving of parmesan cheese with balsamic vinegar.

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Each Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ continues InterWined’s All American, a month-long celebration of some of American cuisine’s greatest dishes from classic comfort foods to the unsung greats of American soulfood, with InterWined’s Own Homemade Buffalo Wings with Lemon Parsley Dip.

You could write a book about Buffalo Wings…and, indeed, someone has. Two someones, if fact — Aaron Reynolds and Paulette Bogan. They are a children’s author and an illustrator, respectively, and the book is called — surprise, surprise — Buffalo Wings. It’s the story of a rooster and quest and a recipe by woman named Bellissimo and made famous by a guy named Frank at a place called the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York.

And, if a story about what must surely be a cannibal rooster hungry for some chicken wings doused in a sauce created by a woman named beautiful in a bar in Buffalo doesn’t mark out a recipe as an American classic, nothing will. Let’s be honest, shall we?

Now, controversial tales of cannibalising roosters aside, the story of Buffalo Wings still finds itself in the midst of a minor controversy. To bread or not to bread…

Breaded wings are able to absorb more of the sauce into the breading and maintain the fiery kick of the peppers; they are a little more civilised and only slightly messy to eat, the breading coming free on the tips of one’s fingers and easily picked away. Un-breaded wings somewhat prevent the sauce from fully absorbing into the meat of the wing; sauce drips from wings and stains the fingers and lips a bright orange. Given our rooster friend’s rather shocking predilections, this is surely his preferred method of feasting, feathers ruffled and orange stains everywhere.

Now, whatever your choice in all things chicken wings, InterWined is here to help. (I was going to write “swings both ways”, but was worried what kind of spam comments those words might generate. But, since I just wrote that I wasn’t going to write it, I’ll guess I’ll find out soon enough.)

Regardless of how you take your wings and which way InterWined swings, the Brown Brothers Non-Vintage Pinot Noir Chardonnay & Pinot Meunier (13%), £9-10 from Waitrose, is a treat. It’s not a sophisticated as a sparkling white wine could be; it’s not a dazzler to save for a special occasion — even if it did recently win the 2007 Yarden Trophy at International Wine and Spirits Competition in London. It’s a non-vintage, after all. It’s a sparkler to enjoy any day at any time for any occasion that I discovered in 2004, while looking for a bottle of wine to take to BYOB Vietnamese in Newtown, Sydney Australia. There’s a light, green-apple tinge perfectly in keeping with its pale yellow-green colour. It’s light and unfussy without being forgettable, fruity for a dry wine, and marked with a creamy sweetness to it. The creamy fruit flavour makes for an excellent balance to the spicy, hot zing of the Buffalo Wing sauce and the citrus and herb flavour of the lemon parsley dip. A winning wine for a winning recipe: 9.5.

InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full

Homemade Buffalo Wings with Lemon Parsley Dip

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Each Friday and sometimes Saturday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ continues InterWined’s All American, a month-long celebration of some of American cuisine’s greatest dishes from classic comfort foods to the unsung greats of American soulfood, with InterWined’s Own New Orleans King Prawn Po Boy.

The Po Boy is something of a culinary institution in the city of New Orleans. And whether you believe its name comes from the Franglish quip “pour le boy” or a bunch of striking streetcar drivers, two things are clear. You will find it on the chalkboards and menus of corner stores and cafes, bistros and banqueting halls, across the city of New Orleans and the southern United States, and it is definitely not a submarine sandwich, hoagie, grinder, or Hero/gyro.

Leaving New Orleans for London in 1997, there are few things that leave me with greater nostalgia than the simple pleasure of a naked Shrimp Po Boy with hot sauce. My favourite Po Boys, from which InterWined’s Own recipe derives, came from a small corner grocery on Magazine Street, where the Vietnamese shop owner served them naked, or dressed on French bread stuffed with a choice of shrimp, oyster, or roast beef and covered in sauce or debris. For those unfamiliar with the lingo of New Orleans, dressed means with salad, naked without, and debris is a kind of hot gravy for roast beef akin to that found on a drip beef sandwich. (For those unfamiliar with drip beef, we’ll leave that description for another day.)

The 2003 Ronco del Gnemiz Sauvignon from Friuli-Venezia Giulia in Eastern Italy, available through Cadman Fine Wines and reviewed here and here is the perfect companion, ably managing to match the heat of the chilli pepper, paprika, and hot sauce with its “kick-ass hint of jalapeño pepper” as well as subtly of the king prawns.

InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full

New Orleans King Prawn Po Boy

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Each Friday and sometimes Saturday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ introduces InterWined’s All American, a month-long celebration of some of American cuisine’s greatest dishes from classic comfort foods to the unsung greats of American soulfood.

First up is All American Meatloaf with Crème Fraîche Mashed Potatoes.

Whether its origins rest, as some varyingly contend, with the mogul invaders of China, Italian meatball-makers, German Hamburgers, British shepherd’s pie-bakers, or the recipe books of eager home-meat-grinder salesmen, there can be little doubt that the humble meatloaf is 100% American and 100% classic.

Just as its histories are numerous, its variations and varieties are both countless and unpredictable. So, while some recipes call for the inclusion of pineapples or scotch eggs — ingredients that would be anathema in others, still others quibble over the significance of using barbeque sauce or ketchup or Bolognese in the name of authenticity and correctness. In the end, like so much confort food, it all comes down to what you like and what you think is right.

Indeed, there is little doubt that many chefs (and many of their mothers) will find InterWined’s All American Meatloaf far from correct. For one, it includes a couple of rather unorthodox ingredients, such as cubed pancetta and stale sourdough bread. For another, it’s topped with streaks of bacon.

And, because one classic deserves another, paired with InterWined’s All American Meatloaf is the 2005 Château Amarande (13.5%) Grand Vin de Bordeaux. A mix of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, the 2005 Amarande has the familiar nose of a classic claret — a bit of eart, spice, and forest. On the tongue, it’s surprisingly soft, rich in fruit, and mildly tannic with a touch of pepper that marries brilliantly with the both the crusty edges of the meatloaf and its slightly fatty, chewy middle (thanks in no small part to the cubes of pancetta). At 13.5%, the wine is a tad too high in alcohol and, therefore, attention-seeking to be a perfect wine to serve with food; but it high-alcohol wines are all the rage these days and this one proves a superb match for the meaty ground beef, fatty pancetta, and crispy bacon all the same: 9.4.

InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full

All American Meatloaf with Crème Fraîche Mashed Potatoes

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Each Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you InterWined’s Own Pear Pithivier.

With so much religious observation last week, InterWined thought it was time for a little secular celebration and decided on the seemingly areligious little French pithivier. At least, that was the intention, until InterWined remembered its other name — la Galette des Roisor cake of the kings.

In other words, the exotic — indeed urbane and cosmopolitan sounding — pithivier is in fact good old, provincial, Catholic king cake made to commemorate three kings’ day and the epiphany.

And, while it might not look like the multi-coloured king cake of New Orleans’ Mardi Gras fame, the two are essentially one and the same.

So, so much for that idea…

The good news is, religious or not, InterWined’s Own Pear Pithivier is a great way to end the week, especially one marked by rain, cloud, wine, snow, hail, and a hint of sunshine. Who says it only rains in England?

Matching the weather and the pithivier is the 2005 Maculan Torcolato, made from 85% Vespaiola, 10% Garganega, and 5% Tocai, (13.5%), £16.99 from Oddbins. A mix of honey, fruit, sugar, acid and wood (thanks to French oak barrel aging), the wine is one of the prides of the Maculan winery, having won numerous awards since the 1970s. Like the best dessert wines, the Toroclato avoids any cloying or sickly sweetness. Exhibiting an excellent balance it’s simple, clean, and unassuming.

According to the Oddbins Web site, the Maculan Toroclato is perfect with almonds — and InterWined agrees. So, sit back and enjoy a glass of a great Italian dessert wine with a pear and almond pudding fit for a king.

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Each Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week is a busy one for the world religions, from Baha’i to Zoroastrianism and nearly every other alphabetically in between.

So, today, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings the world a little closer together with InterWined’s Own Rosemary Rack of Lamb with Dolcelatta Polenta.

Not only does Easter, Purim, and Mawlid an-nabi fall within the third week of March this year, but so too does the Vernal Equinox and a host of New Years and religious Spring festivals. And while there is no single food that could satisfy the observers of all of these holidays, there’s certainly one that comes pretty close — at least close enough to bring together Christianity, Judaism, and Islam — which on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq is surely no bad thing.

What is this miracle foodstuff, you ask? Well, thank Abraham; it’s the humble little lamb, of course, that delectable little animal so prevalent in Judeo-Christian symbolism and essential to Islam’s Eid Al-Adha celebration.

And interfaith reconciliation aside, it’s also arguably the perfect companion to the totally haraam and non-kosher Pinor Noir. The 2005 Hautes-Côtes de Beaune Clos Bortier (12.5%) from Caroline Lestime and Domaine Jean-Noël Gagnard, currently available in store only from Oddbins, makes for simply a great match to InterWined’s Own Rosemary Rack of Lamb with Dolcelatta Polenta — if only for the goyim.

There’s a great deal of subtly the 2005 Clos Bortier, with a touch of cherry on the nose and tannin in the aftertaste. The tannin in the wine marries very well with lamb, while its limited potency prevents it from clashing with the creaminess of the dolcelatta.

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Each Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you InterWined’s Own Seared Tuna Sweet Potatoes Anna.

For myriad reasons left unexplored here, potatoes Anna has something of a reputation for being a complicated dish. Yet, sometimes the most complicated seeming dishes are actually the most straight-forward to prepare. That’s certainly the case with InterWined’s Own recipe for Sweet Potatoes Anna.

Paired with InterWined’s Own Seared Tuna Sweet Potatoes Anna, the recently reviewed 2003 Ronco del Gnemiz Tocai Friuliano. While the wine received the poorest review of the Ronco del Gnemiz wines featured in January on InterWined.com, it proves a strong pairing partner to the seared tuna and sweet potatoes Anna. With its taste of honey, it makes a great partner for the sweet potatoes, while the flinty finish goes quite well with tuna too.

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