Match of the week

Hake with cream and anchovy sauce and cava

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on February 5 2018 at 13:14

It’s a pretty safe bet that if you have a wine-based sauce that an accompanying glass of the same type of wine will pair well with it so I was confident of ordering a glass of cava to go with a hake dish cooked with a cream, cava and anchovy sauce last week.

The restaurant was Rambla, a small Catalan restaurant in Dean Street in Soho which has been attracting a lot of favourable comment lately. Weirdly the dish was billed as ‘velveted’ hake which I suppose is an accurate description of the rich opulent texture of the sauce. It didn’t look much as you can see but the flavour was amazing - if you like anchovies which I most certainly do. The accompanying morel mushrooms were an extra bonus.

The cava which was made by Mirame wasn’t an exceptional one - no reason to expect more at £6.50 a glass - but it would interesting to try the dish with one of the new high quality caves de paraje - a new classification for top quality wines from the region. They do have Gramona by the bottle if you're in the mood for something a little flashier.

It would be well worth trying something similar at home to show off a good cava - or a bottle of champagne for that matter.

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