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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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 Monkfish Mexican Rice (Arroz con Rape).

For those whose experience of Mexican rice is limited to Old El Paso and Taco Bell, InterWined’s Own dish might seem more accurately described as Spanish paella. After all, when was the last time that you saw monkfish on the menu at a Mexican restaurant in the United States? Even Wahoo’s Fish Tacos — regardless of its name might suggest ‐ serve relatively little fish.

But, fish is an integral part of much Mexican cuisine — how could it not be with nearly six thousand miles of coastline. And, while that figure might only be half that of the United States, it’s a pretty big number when one considers that the United States is nearly five times the size of Mexico.

What makes this rice dish Mexican rather than Spanish is the same thing that makes a Pinot Noir from Burgundy a Côte de Nuits or Côte de Beaune and not an Italian, New Zealand, or Oregon Pinot Noir. They share the same ingredients but result — sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically ‐ in different things.

The central difference between InterWined’s Own Mexican rice and Spanish paella is that paella is most often made with calasparro rice, rarely found in the UK or US outside of specially shops. (InterWined used a simple long grain.) A further one comes in the use of the main ingredients. Whereas paella begins with the meat, fish, and broth, InterWined’s Own Mexican rice dish begins with the rice and the spice.

Paired with the Monkfish Mexican Rice is the Catalan 2002 Xavier Clua Vindemia (13.5%) from Terra Alta in Spain, currently on sale at Cadman Fine Wines for £13.99 (original price £18.99). Made from Chardonnay (15%), Sauvignon Blanc (10%), and Garnacha Blanca (75%), the Vindemia smells like candied apples and caramel, making it seem like it might be better suited as an aperitif. However, once it reaches the tongue, the wine reveals as an intriguing blend of high-acid and oaky complexity reminiscent of the Sherries found in Jerez. This is a very good wine for food, with both the acid and oak sit well with the monkfish, prawns, squid, and cubed pancetta found in the Monkfish Mexican Rice.

InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full

Monkfish Mexican Rice

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Every Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine that exceeds its normal £10 ($20) threshold with one great meal, prepared following the instructions of some the Internet’s best food blogs.

This week’s ‘Blow the Bank’ continues to take a departure from the norm and comes courtesy of its own recipe for Cod Saltimbocca with Butter Bean Arrabiatta.

InterWined’s little sister Kathy moved from the States to Rome last month, where she rents a very smart little flat in the centre of the city with all the modern amenities save for an oven. Never the best cook, she turned to her elder brother InterWined’s ‘Blow the Bank’ scribe Sean for help devising recipes and meals for hob and microwave. As the phrase ‘fresh from the microwave’ is close to oxymoronic and less likely to parse the lips that the ever-popular two-finger salute to detente ‘I nuked it’ in reference to results of microwave cooking, this leaves the hob and a bevy of fantastic dishes such as InterWined’s own Cod Saltimbocca with Butter Bean Arrabiatta.

As searches on Google and the Wikipedia will no doubt confirm, saltimbocca and arrabiatta are Italian approximations for the more mundane ‘bacon-wrapped’ and ‘spicy-sauced’, both names are far more exotic and impressive in Italian than they will ever be in English. So, when in Rome do as the Romans do; and when in London or wherever you might be reading this, do as the Romans do too.

The 2006 Cuvée Pierre-Louis Pouilly Fumé makes a stunning match to the Cod Saltimbocca. Its slight acidity and lemony flavour adds a gentle zing to the fish and speck, while its crisp aftertaste and freshness nicely compliment the spice of the butter beans.

A Loire Sauvignon Blanc, the Cuvée Pierre-Louis Pouilly Fumé perfectly suits its £10 price tag (£9.99 from Sainsbury’s), even if, it was ultimately unsurprising. This isn’t wine to inspire friends or verse; however, it is a wine to enjoy and buy more than once and perfect for pairing with food — especially when you wish for the dish to steal the show.

Pouilly Fumé is famed for its dryness and minerality, with wine critics often citing the Loire’s unique terroir and chalky soil as the source of its minerality. And while, the 2006 Cuvée Pierre-Louis is characteristically dry, it’s not very or chalky. Which is no bad thing, simply worth noting: 8.5.

InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full

Cod Saltimbocca with Butter Bean Arrabiatta

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Every Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine that exceeds its normal £10 ($20) threshold with one great meal, prepared following the instructions of some the Internet’s best food blogs.

This week’s ‘Blow the Bank’ comes courtesy of Son, the Single Guy Chef, and his delectable Scallops Wrapped with Serrano Ham and New Baby Potatoes with Paprika Vinaigrette.

At the beginning of August, InterWined questioned the overproduction of Sauvignon Blanc, noting that both New Zealand’s Oyster Bay and California’s Berigner seemed disappointingly samey. Given the profound affect that geography (soil, sun, climate) has on wine grapes, wines from New Zealand should not naturally taste like wines from California. It asked readers to venture beyond the global brands and seek out less predictable examples of one of the world’s most popular grapes.

Thus, when InterWined chose to prepare one of the Single Guy Chef’s favourite recipes, it decided to follow its own advice and chose 2005 Santa Rita Floresta Sauvignon Blanc from Leyda in Chile (£9.99 at Waitrose/$25 online at Primo Vino.net).

While Chile might be the world’s 5th largest wine exporter with big brands like Concha y Toro and Cousino-Macul to wave its flag, it is not yet one of the top producers. For the 2003, it ranked bottom of the top 11 wine-producing nations, just behind Portugal, Germany, and — surprisingly — 6th place China. (Santa Rita ranks somewhere in the middle in terms of production and export; its 120 label its most ubiquitous.)

Fortunately, InterWined’s fears were largely unfounded. Straw in colour, the 2005 Floresta has a gentle nose of fruit and blades of grass making it seem fairly typical of French Sauvignon Blanc and less citric than New Zealand ones often taste. InterWined might almost be forgiven for saying that it tasted of gooseberry — a long-time signature of classic Sauvignon Blanc that seems to be slowly being replaced by a more acidic, lemony flavour; and a fruit with which only celebrity wine tasters seem adequately familiar. InterWined certainly isn’t. However, what made this Sauvignon Blanc special was its bizarre after-taste: juicy, green grape skins the likes of which you play with on your tongue when peeling grapes in your mouth. A perfect partner to the fleshy deliciousness of the scallop.

The Single Guy Chef’s Recipe in Full

Scallops Wrapped with Serrano Ham and New Baby Potatoes with Paprika Vinaigrette

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Every Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine that exceeds its normal £10 ($20) threshold with one great meal, prepared following the instructions of some the Internet’s best food blogs.

This week’s ‘Blow the Bank’ comes courtesy of Emma at New Zealand’s The Laughing Gastronome and a scrumptious Fish Pie originally served as part of this year’s annual Pie for Pi Day celebrated each…March 14th or 3.14.

Red wine and fish can often mix about as well as red wine and Coca Cola. And unless you’re Basque or from northern parts of Spain, where the people, in fact, do mix red wine with Coca Cola, assume it’s true – at least for most flaky white fish. The tannins in red wine cause white fish to take on a metallic quality that ruins its flavour. It’s not pleasant and will most certainly ruin your evening meal, if not also your evening. However, red wine with red fish (think tuna steak) is an altogether different story, which InterWined will reserve for a different ‘Blow the Bank’.

Where the French have bouillabaisse, the British and their former colonial descendants have Fish Pie, a mixture of white fish in a cream sauce with a crust made of mashed potatoes and cheese instead of pastry.

A French chef working in London once told InterWined that British cuisine would rank alongside French, if only the British had the mind to hold their regional dishes in the same regard as they hold French and cook it with care. Case in point: while the French esteem their fish stew as Provencal cuisine, few English-speaking people rate fish pie as anything other than old-fashioned comfort food.

So to rectify this injustice, InterWined forewent the pairing of Emma’s Fish Pie with a New World white wine and paired it with the 2006 Domaine Lafran-Veyrolle Bandol Rosé, from La Cadiere D’Azur on the southern coast of Provence and £13 from Philglas & Swiggot.

Due to the small size of Domaine Lafran-Veyrolle, this wine might prove difficult for readers to find outside of the UK or New Zealand, where it is available online from Caros wines. In which case, InterWined would recommend other Bandol Rosés. The key is look for a rosé low in tannin and alcohol. (Alternately, a Spanish Albariño or New Zealand Chardonnay would also make very good matches.)

The 2006 Domaine Lafran-Veyrolle is almost apple-juice in colour with a light bouquet and, perhaps unsurprisingly, a flavour reminiscent of currant. A rosé might at first seem a strange and unorthodox choice to pair with a fish pie, given the inclusion of cream in the recipe. (As with salt, wine often struggles with cream.)

Fortunately, the cream sauce included in Emma’s recipe is light, soft, and, due to InterWined’s mistaking a teaspoon for a dessert spoon, wonderfully akin to a cream-based version of the thin and delicate sauce found in bouillabaisse.

Emma’s Recipe in Full

Fish Pie
(makes 2 generous individual portions)

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