Saturday Kitchen 12.1

(by peter)

What is it about me and boats on Saturday Kitchen lately?

I seem to be a sucker for jumping into speedboats on my quest for great Saturday Kitchen wines – although this time, in Lymington, the dry suit & helmet was a novel touch…

It’s all in a good cause, anyway – and thanks to the fine volunteers at the RNLI at the same time.

This week culinary maestro Adam Byatt was serving up a beautiful coq au vin with parsley mash, which I paired with the delightfully toothsome and rustic Gaillac Galien 2009, Domaine de la Chanade (£7.49 down from £9.99 on offer, Marks & Spencer).

Adam liked its muscular charms, terming it, ‘really great, full bodied’ while studio guest Michael Vaughan agreed with James Martin: ‘a bargain’, he said.

Peter Lloyd, of the Spice Market restaurant in London’s W Hotel, rustled up a flavour blockbuster in the form of prawns and pineapple in a peppery, soy sauce.

This was a challenging one – green tea, kumquat mojito (which is served in Peter’s restaurant) and pale ale all sprang to mind – but in the end I plumped for the reliably great value Cono Sur Viognier (£7.99, Waitrose).

Peter confessed to liking a Vouvray with this dish but was full of praise for this supple number, describing it as, ‘perfect’.

Adam chimed in, saying he, ‘loved it: full of fruit, great with the prawns’ while Michael simply said, ‘cheers!’

Summing up at the end, James kindly described my wine choices as ‘brilliant’.

It was another delicious show – which, incidentally, had great viewing figures, attracting more than one quarter of the entire British viewing public. The fabulous team at Cactus TV deserve great credit for their fantastic work on the show – and not just this one, but week-in week-out their work is tip top.

The show is available to watch for the next week (ie until 19.1.13) via iplayer. The show also features archive material from Rick Stein, Celebrity Masterchef and Raymond Blanc.

You can also find all the recipes from this show on the BBC Food site. These include James Martin’s lamb tagine – a fabulous dish, one we cooked up at home, and paired with the ‘cracking’ (James’ word) Yalumba Bush Vines Grenache (from £9.99, Majestic, Tesco and independents) – plus orange panna cotta with mint roasted rhubarb and beef and ale pie with mushy peas.