Match of the week

Baked celeriac and blanc de blancs champagne

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on September 22 2021 at 16:59

Not many producers take food and wine pairing as seriously as champagne house Gosset which sponsors an annual ‘Matchmakers’ competition for young sommeliers and chefs which was held at the Cordon Bleu's Cord restaurant in Fleet Street

The winners were Matthew Davison and Adam Eyre of Fischer’s at Baslow Hall in Derbyshire whose winning dish was an umami-rich dish of Orkney scallop with nori salt, baked celeriac, fermented ceps, XO sauce, umeboshi furikake, sliced nori and a reduced celeriac stock.

Scallops are a given with blanc de blancs champagne but it was the other elements that were particularly intriguing - the savoury ceps which had been foraged the previous year, the salty XO sauce but above all the rich, sweet earthy flavour of the baked celeriac and celeriac stock which was made from the celeriac peelings.

The teams also had to produce a dish to match the 2012 Grande Reserve based on a shopping basket of ingredients including Berkswell ewes' milk cheese. Fischer’s turned it into a an unctuous Berkswell and champagne sauce which was served with a mushroom and bean fricasée and again went brilliantly with the champagne.

Goes to show you don’t have to have meat in a dish to create a stellar champagne pairing.

I was invited to the competition by Gosset champagne.

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