The Bath & Wiltshire Parent’s wine columnist, Ben Franks FRSA, shares his favourite Novel Wines pairings for those easy midweek favourites
While I’m not yet a parent – I’m still waiting to attend my own wedding that was due to happen in 2020 – I do serve a lot of parents at Novel Wines, and I know how important it is to make the most of your time. Easy midweek meals have been written about in every corner of the internet, and while you can whip them up quickly, actually eating them is one of those rare moments to savour, so why not pair them with a good glass of wine?
Creamy white wine with a good prawn curry
Prawn tikka masala is a hot favourite on BBC Good Food, and apparently takes just 10 mins of prep before you leave it to cook away on the hob. Tikka masala is a lighter, sweeter style of curry sauce usually made with cream, fruity chopped tomatoes, sugar, ginger and a helping of curry paste. It’s softer spicing is one reason it’s a household favourite in the UK, but it’s also why prawns work so well in the dish – and why you can get away with pairing a wine alongside.
Don’t be fooled though, spice needs body and sweetness in your wine, too. Go for something like our Benedek Old Vine Harslevelu (£11.99, Novel Wines) from the Matra mountains in northern Hungary. It is bursting with stone fruits, sweet red apple, bittersweet pink grapefruit and smoky buttercream. Serve lightly chilled and it’ll match perfectly.
Soft, warming red wine with this quick and easy pasta dish
A firm midweek favourite I’ve enjoyed from Olive Magazine is its fettuccine alfredo, a pasta dish sitting in a warm bed of double cream, butter, parmesan cheese, black pepper and parsley. Super simple to serve up and so satisfying, whether it’s wet and drizzly outside or when you’re spooning down forkfuls of the stuff on the patio in the sunshine.
Typically you’d think creamy pasta dishes should mean white wine, but when you have fat (butter, cream, parmesan), tannin is a good thing. Try a medium bodied red with elegant tannins, such as Chianti, or my pick is the delicious Georgian red wine Tbilvino ‘Iveriuli’ Saperavi (£12.99, Novel Wines). A melody of red cherries, mulberries and soft, warm spice makes this delightful with the Fettuccine alfredo.
A proper pink wine with stuffed peppers
One of Tesco’s top 10 midweek meals is a recipe for ‘Sloppy-joe stuffed peppers with wedges’, which sees herby turkey mince topped with melted mature cheddar in a roasted bell pepper, served with potato wedges. It’s a big, heart-warming dish that’s surprisingly easy to prepare as you fry-off the essentials and then bung it in the oven to bake.
For something like this that’s both summery and filling, you shouldn’t ignore the beauty of a good rose. A dish like this would shine next to a chilled glass of Colomba Bianca Lumari Nero d’Avola Rose (£9.99, Novel Wines), which balances red plum, strawberry and cherry notes with rosewater and whipped cream. Dry but ripe with Mediterranean fruit, the rose works well with the peppers and the cheese, and those wedges are going to make it even more mouth-watering.
Silky-smooth, Portuguese red wine with this banging traybake
The excellent Easy Peasy Foodie blog has an Easy sausage traybake on its popular list of midweek meals. Simply made thanks to a roasting tin, your favourite bangers, new potatoes, onions and peppers (or anything else you want to throw in), it’s just a case of laying it out, oiling it up, and sticking on the heat.
All the same, the flavours are juicy and rich and cry out for a glass of something special. This is Merlot thumping ground, but if you want to try something new, sausages love American oak notes in wine (think sweet vanilla and coconut tones). Try the excellent Fontanario de Pegoes ‘Palmela’ Tinto (£9.99, Novel Wines), a Portuguese red wine from the talented winemaker Jaime Quendera just south of Lisbon. I think you’ll love it.
Try this sparkling fajita fiesta!
Last but not least, there’s fajitas. One of my all-time favourite speedy meals. A good recipe can be found on Delish for its chicken fajitas, with the chicken marinated in a mix of oil, lime juice, cumin, chilli, and black pepper. It’s served in soft tortillas with fried-off bell peppers and sliced red onions. You can swap out the chicken for what you like, but I like to use chicken thighs as they’re packed with flavour perfect for tacos.
While this meal is super-easy to make, it can be properly spiced up in the wine pairing. Here, you can swap out the classic cold lager for a glass of Champagne – or, if you like your fajitas particularly spicy, opt for my Istenic Barbara Sec NV (£16.99, Novel Wines), a semi-sweet sparkling wine from Bizejsko in eastern Slovenia. This soft, smooth, peachy and lightly toasty sweet sparkling wine offsets the spice of the dish and sets your mouth on fire, getting the fiesta started in no time. Give it a try! Cheers!
You can find more recipe and wine pairing articles over at www.novelwines.co.uk, along with over 300 truly unique wines sourced by Ben and his team.