Sort of Sicilian

Reading Giorgio Locatelli's book Made in Sicily this morning got me thinking about Sicilian flavours. This recipe is not his, or traditional Sicilian, but works with Sicilian reds or grenache. Try using a pasta like strozzapretti or casarecce with this sauce, or bigoli if you want something longer.

Get a pot on for the pasta. Soak some sultanas in a cup with half hot water and half marsala. Heat a frypan and then take a handful of pine nuts to light gold, before tipping them out to cool. Then gentle heat into the frypan and start melting butter (about 45g per serve). Toss anchovy fillets, sage leaves, garlic & a fresh red chilli (chopped) into the butter. Cook slowly while the pasta water is coming up and then the cup or so of strozzapretti (per serve) or similar is cooking. Gentle heat will break down the anchovy, cook out the sage and colour the milk solids, without getting too much bitter and colour with the garlic.

When the pasta is just short of cooked, add the soaked sultanas to the frypan and mix some pasta water into the soaking cup. Use this to thin the sauce out, shaking the pan to emulsify. Don't worry you are losing the crispness on the sage. All part of the plan. Drain the pasta and tip into the pan with the sauce. Add more of the pasta water/soaking liquid mixture if it needs it. Cook out for a minute or two to let the pasta take the sauce. Add the pine nuts and a little black pepper. The sauce should be salty from the anchovies, savoury from the herbs and garlic and a little sweet from the sultanas and marsala, with the nut brown butter pulling it together.

Serve with a good Sicilian red wine, or some McLaren Vale grenache. No cheese. Maybe a little breadcrumbs if you use bigoli. Resist the temptation to use lemon juice in the sauce - you want the wine to bring the acid to the table.

Isole e Olena Chianti Classico 2008 (Tuscany)

I cannot say I have my head around 2008 Chianti. Some big wines, some quite light & sprightly. No picture has gelled yet, so more shopping, tasting & drinking clearly needed.

Tonight, after a book launch and flying visit to Ainslie Cellars to taste Bryan Martin's new Ravensworth releases (including my second look at his 2011 sangiovese), it was time to grab a bottle and head to Pulp Kitchen for dinner. The bottle being the 2008 vintage Chianti Classico from Isole e Olena, one of my favourite Tuscan producers.

Deep, rich, dark. There are lots of purple fruits in this Chianti, with red fruits accents only to the main theme. But there is a beautiful wash of tannin; drying, ripe, nutty tannin, all through the wine. Ripe, but varietal. No loss of the sangiovese refreshment factor, even with the purple-fruited richness of the thing. Handled bread and oil, handled roast spatchcock, handled confit duck. Handled good conversation.

Not much more to ask of a Chianti, really.

$40, cork.

Yarrh 2004 sangiovese (Canberra)

The Yarrh vineyard is an attractive, gum-treed site wrapped around by bush and not far from Ken Helm's Murrumbateman cellar door. Sangiovese is a strict mistress in regions marginal for it, such as Canberra. Everything has to line up: soil, water, vine health, bud counts, shoot vigour, shoot length, fruit load, season. Bryan Martin, of Ravensworth fame (and a big part of Clonakilla) has shown how sangiovese can perform in Canberra, but this wine fleshes out that story.

Maybe a sign of the Canberra roots I've put down, I've been having a bottle or two of this most years for the past seven years. Like old jackets shift smells and change their fit over years, seeing and feeling the aging path of this wine has been a satisfying thing. Tight and red-fruited, with a hint of something dried-herb & tobacco as a younger wine, this has aged well (though my bottle before this one had largely fallen over). In it's old age, this has become more local and less varietal, without losing overall appeal. The wine now shows aged red fruit, a touch of leather & mint, and something elusive, nutty & sweet, like a toffeed hazelnut. A good showing, from what I think is my last bottle. Congratulations to the winemaker, Fiona Wholohan, and the site.

A satisfying, if surprising pairing for this: bucatini in a sauce of onion, zucchini dice, black pepper and gorgonzola dolce, thinned with pasta water. The aged, nutty, toffee character of the wine made an excellent fit with the sweet yet blue cheese of the sauce and the comparative bitter of zucchini skin.

Peposo

A Tuscan idea that works well with Nero d'Avola, spicy shiraz or a richer style of sangiovese.

Take a kilo of beef shin and dice it into cubes of an inch or bigger. Crush six cloves of garlic. Grind a tablespoon of black pepper. Mix that all together, then add some tomato puree (130 grams is good) and 250ml of red wine. Touch it up with a bit of sea salt, then transfer to a heavy-based pan. Pour in enough water to cover the meat and cook at a gentle simmer, uncovered, for three and a half hours. Or until it is very tender. Stir occasionally to stop it catching and top up the water from time to time. There should be almost no liquid at the end.

Goes well with bread and a green salad. The pepper is the key to the distinctive flavour of the dish. It's one dish that shows really well with low or un-salted bread in the Tuscan style.

This was an idea I got from a good book on artisanal businesses in Tuscany (including the potter for whom this dish goes with the hottest time in the kiln-firing): Lori De Mori & Jason Lowe, 'The real flavour of Tuscany: Portraits & recipes from 25 of Tuscany's culinary artisans'. Worth a look, including for portraits of two Tuscan wine growers (Contini Bonacossi & Fonterenza).

Bagna cauda & kangaroo

A simple idea, good with a barbera or spicy shiraz. A sangiovese could also work well, but not too light or too 'serious' a wine.

Marinate some kangaroo fillet in olive oil and quite a lot of pepper. You can't really overdo the pepper. Let come up to room temperature in the marinade.

Make a version of bagna cauda. A little butter, some olive oil in a small pan. Warm gently while you cut and crush 4 cloves of garlic & 4 good anchovy fillets. Gently heat both of these in the warm butter and oil. No colour. Break with tradition & finish with some capers and chopped parsley. Yes, veering to salsa verde. Hold off on thoughts of lemon zest. Rest off the heat, covered.

Take a barbecue grill up as hot as you can. Sear the roo, starting with the drier side. A minute and a half each side on a really hot barbecue, then a rest, should give you medium rare. As soon as the roo is off the heat, rest, bathed in the bastardised bagna cauda. A five minute rest, then slice across the grain to serve with the juice & sauce (and a bit of broccoli).

Tried with a barbera and also a spicy shiraz from the Adelaide Hills, with both working well.

Fiano & Malaysian food

A quick note on a surprising match (for me). Dinner for a birthday last night at Abel's Kopi Tiam restaurant in Manuka. Walking over from the bus, I go past Vintage Cellars and decide to duck in. Let's not dwell on the service, but I notice a bottle in the chill cabinet of the 2010 Fox Gordon Adelaide Hills Fiano for less than a $20 and decide to take it to dinner, along with the 2007 Lazy Ballerina McLaren Vale shiraz viognier from David Hook I was already lugging.

A large-ish group, so a banquet was the plan. Fried squid in spice, a good chicken satay, fresh roti, lots of vegetables, rich noodles, a chicken curry, beef rendang & rice... The fiano did a surprisingly good job against everything other than the rendang. The fleshy, candied-lemon texture and flavours, plus a touch of phonolic grip, all worked well with the moderately spiced food.

So, Fiano and Malaysian food. Worth a try, I think.

New friends, Italian & Sons

A nice night with a table of eight people at Italian & Sons where half the people are completely new to me and the venue.

We started with rosemary focaccia and a plate of mixed olives. The bread, fresh from the wood-fired oven, even a touch undercooked, had a beautiful light slick of crunchy, savoury olive oil, sea salt & rosemary. Some of us has beer (Menebrea for me), others most of a bottle of 2008 Anselmi Soave (garganega) ordered (well) by an American in the party.

After my beer, a glass of Orvieto for me while the table plowed through entrees in share mode of kingfish carpaccio, sardines in saor, whitbait fritters and bresaola with rocket. Lovely. Groans from the table, especially the first time visitors to Italian & Sons.

Then a bottle of the 2009 Pio Cesare Barbera d'Alba. Please don't tell me it's a typo on the menu when I have had the 2008 here before and you've clicked over but not changed the wine list. Not as richly fruited as the 2008, even a touch warm, but good drinking with the food.

Part way through the food (Wednesday night is tagliata night, of salt/pepper crust eye fillet cooked in the wood oven, served with a horseradish aioli on rocket), we have drained the Barbera and move to a beautiful bottle of Rosso di Montalcino. Close to Montepulciano (not d'Abruzzo) in flavour, this wine (I will have to check the maker, this was a Tony suggestion) had an astonishing fit with the acid tang of the fresh horseradish sauce that went with the thin strips of wood-fired eye-fillet. Newcomers to Italian wine got this, straight off the bat. Well done, sommelier Tony.

Then the dessert round. I had cannolli with quince marmeleta. Beautiful. And the gambit of a few Italian digestivo for the table. First, Cynar (artichoke liqueur) over ice with a wedge of lemon. Second, a deceptively complex limoncello, chilled and neat. Third, a nocello (disappointingly dominated by insipid sweet hazelnut, rather than complex green walnut flavours). And Vince pulled a good short black.

I suspect Italian & Sons got a few new repeat customers tonight, and perhaps some coverts to Italian wine, even if not Italian digestifs. And great conversation with people from around the world, pulled together at this impromptu table. Another reminder of how lucky it is to live in Canberra.

At the end, back home, time for a real digestif. A glass of my own nocello. Made from green walnuts, grown two suburbs away, redolent of cola, nuts, lemon & dry spice, it's better than what I had tonight, and a fitting capstone to a good evening with new and old friends.

Risotto, for dry white wine

I've been trying out some food combinations for the new 2011 Quarry Hill North Block dry white, which is a blend of savagnin and sauvignon blanc. This risotto worked really well - with the wine picking up the pea and pea pod characters in the dish.

Take enough fresh peas, in the pod, to produce about a cup of shelled peas. While shelling, soak a half-handful of dried porcini in hot water. Add the pea pods, the porcini and soaking water to some vegetable stock and simmer. While the stock is simmering, cut some pancetta into small pieces and sweat in olive oil until they have gone half-brown and a little crisp. Add rice (I used carnaroli, but arborio would be fine) and stir over heat for a few minutes until the rice has taken up the oil. Add dry white wine, bubble away and then start to ladle in stock, a ladle at a time, with a bit of stirring and shaking of the pan as you go.

When the rice is about 3/4 done, you'll have used most of the stock and can fish the porcini out and add to the risotto pot (keep the pods for the worm farm). Add the fresh peas for the last couple of minutes of the cooking time, remove from heat, stir in butter and grated parmesan, adjust the seasoning and let stand, covered, for five minutes. Stir and serve with a little more cheese and perhaps some flat-leaf parsley, and white wine.

This is a fairly robust risotto, with some brown colours from the porcini & cooking of the pancetta, that set off well against the green of the fresh peas. While a sangiovese could also pair up, a white wine with a bit of herb or grassy characters can pick up the peas and pea pods, as well as cut against the smooth, rich textures of the rice. A Soave, or other garganega based wine, would also be worth a try.

Fennel, for red wine

Here's a dish aimed at pushing florence fennel to red wine territory.

Halves, quarters, eighths, cut a fennel bulb, keeping some of the stem & core attached with each wedge. Marinate the cut fennel in salt, sugar, a little extra virgin olive oil and the juice of half a blood orange. Get a bbq grill hot and flash the fennel wedges for quick and deep colour. Back the bbq heat back to very low and slowly cook out the fennel.

As each piece (some will break up) cooks soft enough, drop back into the bowl of marinade and toss around to steam and soak. When all the fennel is cooked and in with the marinade, top the mix up with a very little bit of raw garlic, the juice of the other orange half and its zest, a touch more olive oil and some flat-leaf parsley torn up by hand. Toss it around and check the seasoning - you may need a splash of red wine vinegar to sharpen up the sauce, which should have taken on a beautiful caramel colour from the bbq.

Serve this cool. I had a slice of terrine (guinea fowl & orange), some sourdough bread and butter, a big spoonful of the fennel with some leftovers of pinot noir (2005 Williams Crossing) and 2008 Barwang Hilltops cabernet sauvignon. Both matched well with the game terrine and the fennel, including against the sweet/sharp orange & caramel of the sauce. A richer sangiovese or grenache would also have matched well.

Pork skin, meatballs, red wine

What to do with a small piece of home-made pancetta, some pasta and a bottle of red wine?

Take a piece of pancetta, rind-on, about the size of the back of your hand. Soak it in water for a while. During the soak, braise some finely-diced onion, carrot and celery in a little olive oil until soft, adding some bay leaves, thyme and garlic towards the end. Lift the heat, add some white wine, bubble it off for a bit then top up with stock and chopped tomato. Add the soaked pancetta and cook the sauce out very slowly for seven hours or so (try a simmer pad).

Make some meatballs. All pork mince is fine. Get some garlic into the pork mix plus seasoning and grated zest of a lemon. Work the mix until it sticks to the bowl. You are aiming for lightness of flavour here and a worked texture, not something loose and open.

When the sauce is ready, pull out the pancetta. Strip off the skin and cut into small strips. Break up the pancetta meat and return to the sauce. Fry off the meatballs and then give them a little time in the sauce while you cook off your pasta (spaghetti works well with this). When the pasta is just shy of done, add it to the pan of sauce and meatballs and finish it off.

What you should have is a depth of flavour in the ragu and a lightness (leavened by the lemon rind) in the meatballs. The thin pieces of slow-cooked rind and the pasta will have textures that play off each other too. You might find yourself wanting more rind next time...

And for wine? Try a bottle of Masi's Campofiorin ripasso wine, using rondinella and corvina grapes. It has depth enough to handle the sauce, without overbearing the other flavours. I opened a bottle of the 1995 Masi Campofiorin, which looked like a good, aged red underneath the oxidised characters. Thank you cork. A fall back bottle of Preston Peak 2008 Sagrantino from Queensland's Granite Belt did a fine job as a backup bottle.

Clafoutis, slow-cooked quince, scorched hazelnuts

Adapting a David Herbert recipe, via a tip from Bryan Martin, plus a bit more.

Take a couple of quinces, peel, core and quarter. Make a light sugar syrup, add a splash of vanilla, white wine vinegar and then the quinces (include the peels & cores). Put a round of baking paper over, then a lid, and bake at 120 degrees C for at least three hours until the quinces have developed full colour. Overnight at a lower temperature is also fine.

Cut the purple/red, cooled quince into pieces of about 3cm. Scatter in the base of a buttered pie dish, dot with a little butter and sprinkle over 2 tablespoons of brandy or liqueur. I used some cumquat brandy I've had on the go for a couple of years.

Now the batter. Take 250ml of milk, half a cup of sugar, half a cup of self-raising flour, a teaspoon of vanilla, two eggs and another tablespoon of brandy and add to a food processor. Process to a smooth batter then pour over the fruit and bake at 180c for 30 minutes or so until set and showing a little colour on top.

While the clafoutis is cooking, shell a couple of handfuls of fresh hazelnuts, scatter on a baking tray and the roast off briefly in the oven when the clafoutis has come out. Let them scorch just a little, then rub some of those scorched skins off in a towel. Serve wedges of the clafoutis warm or hot, with cream and the scorched hazels. A dessert wine with some age and cumquat marmalade characters goes well, such as a botrytised semillon sauvignon blanc, or try a Moscato d'Asti.

Cherry and prunes are two traditional clafoutis fruits. If using fresh cherries, roast them off in the buttered pie plate with a little butter, sugar and brandy (or kirsch) at 200 C for 5-8 minutes before turning the oven down, adding the batter and finishing the cooking as above. With prunes, try reconstituting them in some dry marsala before adding the batter.

To make cumquat brandy, take a good, solid and clean glass jar. Pick or buy enough good quality cumquats (not calamondins), give them a wash, flick off any stems, pack into the jar and add a decent amount of sugar. Fill the jar with brandy and seal. Keep in a cool, dark place, giving it a turn or two every couple of days over the first few weeks until the sugar has dissolved. Leave for a further three months then start to draw off the brandy or fruits. Will keep for years.

Ricotta

Made a batch of ricotta at home last night, for baking into a cake with quinces & hazelnuts today. Which would then be good with a bottle of Italian sweet wine, perhaps a passito from Pantelleria, or vin santo. Or a botrytised semillion.

Here's a simple method for making ricotta (recipe thanks to Bryan Martin):
- take 2 litres of whole milk and bring it up to 90 degrees, stirring so it doesn't catch (a jam or candy thermometer is useful here)
- when it gets to 90 degrees, add salt and the juice of a lemon, reducing the heat
- give it 10 minutes on lowish heat for the curds to form, gently scraping the bottom of the pan to avoid catching (but try to avoid stirring the curd too much)
- ladle the curds and whey through two layers of cheesecloth or muslin in a colander over a large bowl
- drain the curds for at least 20 minutes (overnight is also fine), pressing if you want a tighter cheese.

Eat the cheese, or cook with it, over the next couple of days. If you want a creamier cheese, add some cream to the starting milk. Vinegar or citric acid can also be used to curdle the mix.

Trio Italian

Three simple things, Italian and local, coming together well:

- fresh hazelnuts, picked myself from a planting close to the vineyard, including a couple of Italian varieties that have reddish skins or are flattened out and pointed, rather than round.

- fresh figs, from the coppiced tree at my back steps.

- nocello (or nocino), an aromatic liqueur I made from green walnuts picked two suburbs over, steeped in neutral alcohol with spices, lemon zest & balanced out with some sugar.

Makes a simple, local, Italian and good dessert. Bite of ripe fig, a hazel or two, then a sip of nocello.

Dinner with pecorino and barbera

A relaxed dinner with friends at Italian & Sons last night. Trapped into drinking Peroni by asking if it was local or not, but then into good wines and food.

With a dish of sardines marinated in vinegar, onion, pine nuts & sultanas - a glass of 2009 Caldora Colle dei Venti Pecorino. Recommended by the waiter as a good match for the sweet/sour/fish/onion challenge of the sardine dish, this turned out to be a good recommendation. Not overtly fruity of definitive in flavour, the wine's most obvious characteristics were a light gold colour and a line of oxidative flavour (in a good way) that really worked against the fish dish. Somewhat like how the oxidative line and weight of fino or manzanilla sherry is also so good with sardines.

Even better drinking was a bottle of the 2008 Pio Cesare Barbera d'Alba. While the rest of the table had a round of pizza, I had the Thursday night special of White Rocks veal with marsala and king brown mushrooms. Excellent, it was, with the veal tender, the marsala well-judged and the mushrooms inspired. The balance, poise and acid of the barbera sat well against and across the savoury and sweet of the veal dish, as well as the different pizza I may have helped myself to.

So a good, relaxed time of Italian food, wine and conversation. Even if no one agreed with my dislike of Mad Men's version of late-fifties and early sixties America. A good short black and a glass of Nocello get me over these things.

Learning

Two new discoveries for me:
- Using my pancetta and artichokes preserved in oil as a pizza topping (just a bit of cheese and tomato sauce underneath). A great combination of salt, oil and sharp from the artichoke brining, plus the giving texture of the artichoke against the chewy resistance of pancetta cut into batons. Went well with a Rockfords Moppa Springs grenache mataro shiraz blend. A sangiovese or barbera would have been a good match too.
- Hazelnuts in pesto instead of pinenuts. Dictated by the necessity of having run out of pine nuts and needing to make pesto to go with a pane di casa loaf I'd just baked. Usually, I have little time for pesto variants (especially commercial pre-mades that substitute many of the key elements that make fresh, traditional pesto so good). But this time, using good hazels with the skins on, the pesto turned out lighter and crunchier than usual. The skins gave the pesto a length of flavour (and tannin grip) that made it an excellent accompaniment to the fresh bread. Surprisingly good with a sparkling pinot noir from Adelaide Hills fruit (done as a white bubbles with the barest touch of bronze), but would have also been good with a prosecco or pinot grigio.

Matches

Wednesday night dinner was a visit to the newish Dieci e Mezzo (half past ten?) restaurant in the base of the new ACTEWAGL building here in Canberra. With a chef ex of Otto in Sydney and some cluey owners, Dieci stretches across breakfast, lunch and dinner services, with a largely Italian menu (though does not pass itself off as such).

There is some good Italian cooking, respectful and daring, going on in this kitchen. Some excellent marinated fish and gnocchi were had. After a Menabrea beer while looking through the menu and list, two other dishes stood out for me as interesting experiences with wine:
- A savoury pannacotta made with a deft loading of taleggio cheese sounded like a good chardonnay match to me. The chardonnay (from the good winelist, as this is not really a BYO venue) was a 2009 Oakridge. The matching did not work at all. Even though the food texture was light and creamy and the cheese flavour restrained, the chardonnay needed more weight, texture and generosity to complement (and compliment) the food. As it was, the wine looked thin, tinny and green-edged, all bone no curve, and exaggerated the mild fungal note of the taleggio.

Moving on...
- Veal stracotto with kipflers and quail eggs. Lots of soft, stewy, sweet-edged savoury textures and elements in the stewed and pulled-apart veal. The excellent service at Dieci included a suggested additional salad that provided a contrast of light, bright, crunch and acid: pea shoots, inner leaves of red radicchio, pickled red plums, pistachio. A winner of a salad, and exactly what the dish needed.
The wine I had was a glass of Nerello Mascalaese, a red wine from a grape often overshadowed by Nero d'Avola. A little wild, brambly spice (almost reminiscent of mataro), a pulse of ripe tannin and enough easy acid to balance the sweetness of the slow-cooked veal. Tenuta Della Terre Nere the producer, if I recall correctly.

So the unfamiliar Italian wine the better match with both the braise and the salad, while the pairing I thought most likely did not work at all. But definitely a restaurant to go back to. Very different to Italian & Sons, but a strong addition to Canberra's options.

Octopus, basil & white wine

Excellent fresh octopus are being fished out of Eden on the far south coast at the moment. Light braises and warm salads are some of my favourite late summer cooking and eating, and made with seafood can partner very well with pinot grigio, vermentino or Hunter semillon.

Take one medium-sized fresh whole octopus. Cut between head and legs, push out beak, slit down the side of head, trim membrane to remove guts, cut out the eyes and give everything a good rinse. Take care to not break the ink sack. You will end up with the head in one piece and the legs in another. Add to simmering water in which you have a bay leaf, some peppercorns and seed of wild fennel. Simmer, skimming to remove scum, until the octopus is tender. An hour is often about right.

While the octopus is simmering, finely dice onion and red capsicum. Sweat very slowly in olive oil with a little salt until very soft (as per a Spanish sofrito), adding chopped garlic near the end. When soft, lift the heat and deglaze with white wine, then back to a simmer.

Take the octopus from the water. Remove any skin you don't feel like eating, then cut the head and tentacles into bite sized pieces. Add these to the sauce and stir for a minute or two over low heat to get the octopus to take up some flavour. Add sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar to bring the sauce up to a balance of sweet/sour, check seasoning and remove from heat. Stir in a generous amount of torn fresh basil leaves and serve.

Good with bread and butter, and a glass of something white and fresh.

Primo Estate Joseph Moda 1998

My three favourite Australian red wines would be Penfold's St Henri, Tyrrell's Vat 9 and Primo Estate's Moda. St Henri is its own creature, but both Vat 9 and the Moda have something 'Italianate' about their tannin, acid and fruit profiles, while also being distinctly Australian.

Where Vat 9, at least in its traditional form, is all about Hunter shiraz in large format old oak, built for drinking from 10 years of age, the Moda tells a different story. The 1998 version says 'Joseph 1998 Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot' on the front label, 'Moda Amarone' only appearing on the back of the bottle. This was Jo Grilli's 13th vintage make of an 'amarone' style wine, and it is 90% cabernet, 10% merlot. Sources vary with different vintages of this wine, with the 1998 taking the cabernet from McLaren Vale and the merlot from both the Vale and Coonawarra.

The cork on this bottle had just started to seep and fail - the barest of stained creases under the foil. Unusually for a Moda, the merlot component showed through quite clearly, though the overall impression was of dust, olive, bitter chocolate and beautifully mellow bittersweet tannins, courtesy of the grape drying process. Still fresh and bright, across fruit and acid, with no real dropping off of colour or a thrown crust. Lovely drinking, a wine in a good window at thirteen years of age.

Drunk with a rack of free range pork, roasted in the Weber over stock vegetables and herbs, the pan deglazed with dry marsala. A gratin of organic Desiree potato, cooked in butter in the oven, with lemon thyme and golden marjoram went well with the pork and the wine. Aged Moda and salty, puffy, crunching pork crackling is a very good thing indeed.

Pancetta #3 - Amatriciana & pinot noir

Thinking about a good pasta dish to match with pinot noir? Recent experiments with the home-made pancetta included a good match between some young pinot noir (2008 Wickham's Road) and spaghetti all'Amatriciana.

While cured and dried pig cheek (guanciale) is my ideal meat for combining with tomato and chilli for making the Amatriciana sauce, home cured pancetta is a good variation. The sauce can be stripped back to olive oil, cooked-out pancetta, tomato and chilli. Or done slowly starting off with onion and pancetta in a little oil, braising over low heat for 20 minutes or so, before adding garlic, chilli, a little white wine, tomato and a touch of sugar. Cook out slowly until the sauce 'cracks' and oil starts to separate. Check for seasoning and serve tossed through pasta. Bucatini is traditional, but I also like this sauce with penne or spaghetti.

As much as barbera-based wines can be good fits for sauces using tomato, I find young, bright and brisk pinot noir can also have a fruit and acid profile that matches well with pasta and Amatriciana sauce.

Zucchini risotto and riesling

In honour of the summer of riesling, I matched up a good, young Australian riesling with some Italian cooking tonight. A simple risotto: sweat some proscuitto crudo off in olive oil and butter until starting to colour, add arborio rice and give it five minutes in the fat, stirring. Hit the base with some white wine (Tahbilk 2010 riesling from Nagambie Lakes in Victoria) and when taken up, start adding chicken stock with a small zucchini coarsely grated. Keep it just moist, stirring in more stock as you go. When the rice has nearly lost its chalky centre, take it off the heat, add a second grated zucchini, stir in some cubes of cold butter and grated cheese (a bit of pecorino tonight), touch up the seasoning and let the creamy, oozing rice rest for a few minutes. Serve with a bit more cheese and seasoning if it needs it, and a crisp dry white wine (like the 2010 Tahbilk riesling).

Much as we think about wines like riesling having different textures and qualities over phases of their lives, this dish gives you two cuts of zucchini. One cooks all the way out, losing colour and texture into the background of the rice. The second add barely cooks, giving youth, colour and freshness. And there is something about the taste and sweetness of just-picked young zucchini flesh and skin that works so well with the crisp and cut of young, dry Australian riesling.