5 minute read
Drink Bill Knott
with the Calabrese. My best dinners this autumn were at two Calabrian restaurants: Il Cavaliere, in Finsbury Park – which doubles as The Oldie’s Huon Mallalieu’s dining room – where Antonio was both chef and waiter; and Il Vicolo in St James’s, where the late owner’s three daughters take it in turns to do the waitering single-handedly. Both have been going for 30 years and they spit on pandemics.
They share the Italian South’s dislike of a prescriptive menu. ‘That’s for tourists,’ as they always say before listing what they have in the kitchen. Antonio produced some enormous ceps. ‘Did you bring them back from Cropani?’ besought journalist Robert Fox, in his Mediterranean reverie. ‘No, I picked them in Aldershot,’ said Antonio.
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And so the feast entirely of his choosing began: bistecca porcini and saltimbocca with chard and beans from his allotment. And to finish? Not limoncello, but his own Christmas Pudding Liquore. Robert says he’s most famous for his lunch buffets when Arsenal are playing at home, but I could sit there every night.
When some fellow Mezzogiorno fans treated me to Il Vicolo, exactly the same thing happened. As soon as the waitress/ owner saw we knew our Tropea onions, she snatched our menus back. Another feast washed down with Puglian Chardonnay. All the pressure of choosing evaporated under the mezze of antipasti, the two pasta dishes and calves’ liver. Don’t leave without Torta della Nonna, lemon custard with pine nuts and almonds.
And, of course, we couldn’t refuse yet more home-made liquori.
DRINK BILL KNOTT TEA COCKTAILS
Eat, drink and be merry, for ‘Dry January’ is just round the corner. Were I ever forced – heaven forfend – to forswear alcohol, I think I would drink a lot of tea, and probably become very boring on the subject at dinner parties.
Tea and wine have much in common. Most production is cheap and industrial. But there are also speciality teas grown in manicured gardens, picked and processed by hand and displaying a huge range of aromas and flavours. And some of them are even more eye-wateringly expensive than great Burgundy.
Take Long Jing (Dragon Well, in English): a green tea grown on the beautiful hills that surround the West Lake in Hangzhou, China. I went there in late April some years ago. Earlier that month, just before the Qing Ming festival, the first Dragon Well had been picked and dried – simply but expertly – in a hot wok.
My host reverentially weighed out a few of these bright green needles, put them in a small pot and poured water at 85˚C over them. It made a very fine cup of tea: vegetal, sweet, silky in texture, with a distinctly nutty flavour. It was only later that I found out that pre-Qing Ming tea commands prices that occasionally exceed the price of gold.
Since then, my palate and my pocket have had to make do with Dragon Well, picked later in spring, from less auspicious gardens – but it is still a lovely drink. Both Jing Tea (jingtea.com) and the Rare Tea Company (rareteacompany. com) will happily sell you Dragon Well and a host of other single-garden teas at prices that might seem hefty compared with PG Tips, but won’t break the bank, especially if you are on the wagon for a month. Both websites are windows on a whole world of pu’erh and matcha, white teas and oolongs, with names like Phoenix Honey Orchid, Iron Buddha and Sichuan Dew.
For me, one major difference between tea and wine is that I actually enjoy a mug of builder’s tea whereas I find most cheap, mass-market wine utterly undrinkable. And, while I would never dream of adulterating the finest Longjing with alcohol, humbler teas are very good in cocktails – but not, of course, Long Island Iced Tea, which is supposed only to look like iced tea.
Brew double-strength lapsang souchong or Earl Grey, then mix with a little sugar and use in an old-fashioned instead of the bitters and sugar. Just put a tablespoonful of the tea syrup, cold, into a rocks glass with a strip of orange zest and gradually stir in ice cubes and bourbon. Or do the same with jasmine tea (the jasmine silver needle teas from Jing and the Rare Tea Company are excellent; supermarket tea will do at a pinch) and use with gin, lemon and soda for a long drink over ice.
There are more tea cocktail recipes at Simon Difford’s encyclopaedic diffordsguide.com. For those of you, like me, whose Januarys will not be noticeably drier than usual, I commend his English Breakfast Cocktail: 30ml gin, 30 ml St-Germain elderflower liqueur, 20ml cold English breakfast tea, 10ml lemon juice and 15ml chilled water.
Shake all the ingredients over ice, fine-strain into a chilled Champagne coupe, and enjoy … although perhaps not for breakfast.
This month’s Oldie wine offer, in conjunction with DBM Wines, is a 12-bottle case comprising four bottles each of three wines: a terrific vintage cava that gives many Champagnes a run for their money; a fragrant, very well-made Viognier from the south of France; and a Côtes du Rhône that would complement the Sunday roast admirably. Or you can buy cases of each individual wine.
Wine
Cava Brut Reserva, Bodegas Sumarroca, Spain 2018, offer price £13.49, case price £161.88
Elegant, pear-scented cava with a persistent, mouth-filling mousse and a long finish.
Viognier, Waddesdon Rothschild Collection, Vin de Pays d’Oc, France 2020, offer price £9.99, case price £119.88
Crisp and gently aromatic, with typical Viognier notes of apricot and citrus. Excellent value.
Côtes du Rhône Rouge ‘La Borde’, Le Plan des Moines, France 2019, offer price £10.99, case price £131.88
Old Grenache and Carignan vines co-star in a modern, unoaked, fruit-forward style of Côtes-du-Rhône.
