Cracking Carignan

I picked up a bottle of Mont Rocher Carignan last week from Edinburgh Wine Merchants. It's a Vin de Pays De L'Herault from the increasingly hilly region of the Languedoc north-west of Montpellier.

Marketed as an old-vine wine, but made with grapes from a collection of different vineyards, I don't doubt that some of the vines are very old but probably not all of them. Not that this is a great problem. The balance of old and young vines is probably a major factor in the beauty of this wine, resisting the classic flaw of Carignan of being cheek-suckingly tannic. Instead, what you get is a velvety mouth-feel, drawn out into a plum fruit and delicate spice finish. The wine is eye-catchingly crimson and while light on the nose, not bland.

Mont Rocher
Carignan
£6.99
EWM

9/10 in it's price bracket

Manuka Mythbusting

Hold onto your purse! It took me a little while to sift through the plethora of (sales based) Manuka 'research' but I did eventually sniff out some independent stuff from The Telegraph with slightly more veracity.


Basically, Manuka is a species of Tea Tree, the flowers of which produce honey with a slightly better antiseptic or antimicrobial quality than other honeys (not a great susprise given what we know about Tea Tree). Remember however, that all honeys are slightly antiseptic. Additionally, any antiseptic benefit appears to be restricted to occassions when the honey is used externally rather than eaten. One of the main reasons for this is that, when applied to wounds, (any) honey's high sugar content provides an anaerobic environment in which any antiseptics are quite effective.

The University of Waikato have done the best research and their page is excellent but not great for the scientifically uninitiated. The evidence for any benefits when eaten is sketchy to say the least, but if you're buying it instead of elastoplasts, crack on! Interestingly, the oft quoted UMF is hardly present in the University research, go figure!

I would be inclined to buy it if it tasted great (I haven't tried it but apparently it's not a patch on acacia/apple blossom/heather) and buy savlon if I had a cut! Maybe I'm too cynical but this seems to be 80% gimmick!

Hollow Bones

The best ossobuco I've had was cooked by the good Dr's Grandmother in France. Somehow she managed to produce meltingly tender meat but retain the gelatinous glory of the marrow. I tried yesterday and while the result was good, I found most of the marrow had melted into the sauce.

I stewed inch thick slices of beef shin in equal quantities of beef stock, white wine and passata with stock veg, garlic and bay. I had a quiet day and the delightful opprtunity to leave it in the oven for a serious amount of time. About 5hrs at GM2 (Probably not much of a surprise the marrow left home!) actually. The higher marrow to bone ratio of veal might have been better for a purist's ossobuco but the flavour of mature shin is quite sublime.

Easy prep, great result, and perfect with a slurp of Carta Roja Gran Reserva 2001. 100% Monastrell grapes, a variety I don't know much about but which proved to be plummy, spicy and very drinkable. The result being that I'd dried up before QT came on, which was shit.

Cheers!

Meals On Wheels!

I took delivery of my first fruit and veg box from East Coast Organics on Wednesday. I've ordered a selection of seasonal organic veg and not-so-seasonal, organic fruit. Plus milk, cheese, eggs, bread, salad and herbs. I suppose if I were to buy the spearate products from the supermarket I could probably get them cheaper but then they wouldn't be organic and they wouldn't be covered in dirt. Something which gives me no little satisfaction in this age of sterilisation!

The jewel in the dirt was without a doubt the salad bag, containing as it did, land cress, mustard greens and something like baby choi-sum. Anyway, they held up admirably in a chicken stock and noodle broth with some chilli, ginger and coriander. Elsewhere there were parsnips, carrots, spuds, a January King cabbage, broccoli, onions, chestnut mushrooms and tomatoes. The fruit section comprised bananas, kiwis, apples and oranges.

I've paid for a month and in that time hope to see a decent variety of veg come and go. A real pitfall of the box scheme could be a lack of variety leading to a lack of inspiration and a nagging obligation to use all the produce. Watch this space...