Bringing home the bubbles
Christmas 2022 is about reviving the joys of home entertaining and affordable bottles of bubbly are the order of the day; Roz Crowley pairs three sparkling wines with irresistibly simple nibbles.
So here we are, another Christmas: hopefully a more sociable one than the past few years. A time to celebrate surviving the year and toast the new year with hope. Bubbles can be our prompt to cut loose for a few hours.
What do we want of our bottle of bubbly? Are bubbles enough to make us feel festive? Does taste matter? What should we expect to pay for our pleasure without maxing out our credit cards?
The basics:
There are plenty of cheap bubbles available and if you like your bubbles foamy, go for a label with ‘spumante’ on it. It will be cheap, sweeter than Champagne or Cava, and fine for one glass for a toast. Spumantes can be good with sweet dishes, even a light pudding.
If you want to drink more than one glass, you need persistent bubbles. Even cheap ones should last for at least an hour while you get through the bottle, and good ones will keep going overnight, and as long as five days. Champagne and Cava get their secondary fermentation in the bottle so they generate fizz, which provides the celebratory pop.
The mushroom-shaped cork is held in place by a wire cover (muselet) to withstand the pressure of the fizz in the bottle – a good sign. Some Prosecco has a mushroom-shaped cork, but not usually the muselet, as the pressure is less as one fermentation only happens in a tank. This saves time and money and is why it's often cheaper. Prosecco frizzantes have regular, cheaper, wine corks that don't need anything to hold the cork on as the pressure, and consequently the bubbles, are not strong. After that, you pay for more flavour. You may need to upgrade if you want both bubbles and flavour. Our three choices today have plenty of both.
If your fizz has lost its exuberance, or you don’t want to finish the bottle, pour it into freezer bags and use to flavour sauces.
Cava served with foolproof focaccia
Marks & Spencer Vintage Cava €18
Available from Marks & Spencer stores
We tasted cheaper cavas from this store and elsewhere, but this was more interesting with good bubbles, fresh and dry, yet nicely fruity. Lively and moreish.
Try this with cheese such as Durrus, which you can buy in a large round for a crowd. Warm the cheese gently at 130C in the oven for 15 minutes when it will soften and become easy to spoon onto bread. Delicious with focaccia.
Focaccia
This flat bread makes for an impressive display with drinks. What I like about focaccia is that it really can’t fail. If it doesn’t rise a lot, it will crisp up in the oven like a pizza base and you can call it a flat bread or pizza.
For dinners, I leave it whole on the table for people to break bread. For hand-arounds, cut into squares, with whatever decoration and flavour you choose on each one. Olives go well with wine, sparkling or still, but pieces of anchovy, ham, a sprinkle of thyme, rosemary or sage, or cooked onion are all delicious.
Use the best flour you can get – I use Doves Farm organic or Italian Caputo 00 (€2/kg which makes 2 flatbreads from SuperValu and Delitaly, Marlborough St, Cork).
Ingredients:
500g strong white bread flour
1 x 7g sachet dried yeast
350-400 ml lukewarm water, not hot!
3- 4 dessertspoons olive oil
1 teaspoon fine sea salt, plus salt flakes to finish
Method:
Mix all the ingredients, except half the olive oil, holding back 50ml of the water until you see the texture when mixed. Use a blender or the dough hook on your mixer for 2 minutes. You can also work the dough by hand until you get a fairly loose but cohesive ball. It will seem too wet for a while, but will come together as the gluten develops.
Turn into a clean, lightly oiled bowl. The oil will stop it from sticking as it rises. Cover with a tea towel and leave until doubled in size or looks lighter and more spongey.
Tip onto an oiled board or work surface. Knead for a few minutes to make it more elastic. It will be ready when a finger print bounces back: 3 - 10 minutes. If you don’t have time for this stage, you will still get a good result.
Set the oven to 220C/200C fan/Gas 7.
Place the dough on an oiled baking tray and use your fingers to gently spread it out to a square/rectangle shape for easiest cutting.
Make indents with your fingers. Sprinkle with olive oil to coat it lightly: 1 dessertspoon might be enough to half fill the dips.
Sprinkle with sea salt flakes, around half a teaspoon.
This is the time you can add optional sprigs of rosemary or fresh sage, little tomatoes, fried onions, flecks of ‘nduja (pronounced endooiya), or anchovies. But the basic is perfectly fine. Once in the oven, scatter about a dessertspoon of water over the bread to keep the air in the oven moist.
Bake for 18-20 minutes until risen and golden. Turn onto a cooling rack.
Eat the same day, though next day it will be delicious warmed in an oven or air fryer for a few minutes. Microwaves are not good for bread. It freezes well.
Cut into squares enough for a polite bite and a half, and serve with aplomb and wait for the applause. For the photograph I used a blob of mozzarella topped with halved olives and cherry tomatoes. A sprinkling of Parmesan cheese is good too, while the bread is still warm.
Crémant de Bourgogne and mushroom crostini
Crémant de Bourgogne Cave de Lugny, €18.95.
O’Briens Wines in Douglas, and online at obrienswine.ie. Reduced from €21.45 until the new year.
This is a good sibling of Champagne, made near that region, with similar weather and soil conditions, from Chardonnay grapes from which Chablis and many Champagnes are made. Don’t be afraid of Chardonnay, not all of it is oaked – even New World wines are dialling back and becoming more refined.
This Crémant comes from the Mâconnais southern part of Burgundy delivering warm, richer flavours than those further north. A good buy. Particularly delicious with Hegarty’s Templegall cheese and with oysters. Or pair with my mushroom crostini, below.
Simple Mushroom Crostini
Ingredients:
This recipe is a moveable feast and quantities are not precise.
I used large flat mushrooms from SuperValu: €1.49 for four, which is enough for a full baguette. Wild mushrooms are even tastier. I often buy at the organic stall at the Coal Quay Market on Saturdays. Watch for Ballyhoura Mushrooms at other markets. They grow mushrooms which are like works of art.
Cut a baguette, which is a good shape, or other bread into bite-sized portions.
Fry sliced mushrooms in half olive oil, half butter so they are well coated. Once you get them going, add a few cloves of garlic, sliced so they keep their shape.
Toss around on medium heat until cooked through. Remove the mushrooms from the pan and replace with the bread slices to fry in the oil that is left; you may need to add some more oil. You just need to heat the slices, but they look and feel good when browned at the edge.
Add crunchy salt flakes to taste, and a flourish of chopped fresh parsley adds colour. A drizzle of olive oil to finish is good if you are serving with plates to catch the drips.
Organic Penedès with quick and easy vol au vents
Albet i Noya Petit Albet Brut Reserva 2019, €24.70
Available from Mary Pawle Wines marypawlewines.com. Also Quay Co-Op, Wunderkaffee in Farran, The Olive Branch in Clonakilty, Organico in Bantry, Manning's in Ballylickey, Taste in Castletownbere, Harrington's in Ardgroom and other outlets nationwide.
Not classified a Cava but a Penedès wine, Albet i Noya ceased putting the word Cava on their bottles a few years ago, as did some other Penedès producers. That region in Catalonia, southwest of Barcelona, is the designated home of Cava, but some years back it was felt that the name was associated with a lot of cheap Spanish fizz.
I’ve been a fan of Albet i Noya for years. They went organic in 1978, and it’s comforting that, as well as wonderful winemakers, they are not massive sprayers of chemicals.
For this festive season you can expect loads of warmth from the climate with a generous amount of orchard fruit flavours, and yet freshness, from the three grape varieties in the blend: Macabeo, Xarel.lo and Parellada.
This one has the best characteristics of a Cava which in turn is made the same way as Champagne. The bubbles race to the top of the glass, as they should. With a full flavour and creamy texture from ageing for 15 months, it’s good all rounder, one that could take you through the turkey dinner. Definitely a bottle for more than one glass.
Crossover Vol au Vents
I put together a crossover of traditions in these easy to make and hand around vol au vents. I bought a box of 18 Jus-Rol frozen medium sized oven-ready pastry cases in SuperValu (€3.25) and created a filling to suit them.
Ingredients:
18 ready made vol au vent cases cooked as instructed on the box for 13-15 minutes.
Half butternut squash
Pinch grated/powdered nutmeg
Half ball/100g mozzarella (or cream cheese or mascarpone)
Salt & pepper
*Optional: Sliced salami/dried or fresh ham/chorizo
Method:
Peel and cube the butternut squash and roast at 180c Gas 4 until soft – 30-40 minutes. An air fryer is most economical for this.
Mash/blend all the ingredients together and fill the vol au vents.
Top with curls of salami or cooked chorizo and serve cold or gently warmed.
A bonus recipe: Arna’s crisped-up Kale
Arna Runars Crowley styled the food and took the photographs that appear with this article. Her kale recipe is hard to beat for a light bite with drinks. The saltiness, light spices and texture of the vegetable has the added advantage being green and maybe even healthy. The amount in the recipe will serve at least 20. At €1.50 for the kale, this is a good budget snack option.
Ingredients:
250g fresh kale
4 dessertspoons olive oil
2 teaspoons za’atar or sumac
1 teaspoon crunchy salt flakes
2 dessertspoons chopped garlic.
Method:
Strip the kale leaves of their stalks and biggest veins.
Mix with the rest of the ingredients, making sure all the kale is coated. Both spices are excellent – I can never decide which is best.
Divide between two roasting/oven trays so the mix is well spread out. If it doesn’t crisp up, it will be tough.
Bake at 130C/ gas ½ for 30 minutes until the kale is crisp and still green. It may need another 10 minutes, but keep an eye on it, as it turns black quickly.
Serve in bowls with an extra sprinkle of the spice.
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Thank you, Marie. Glad to be of service!
Brilliant and substantial article. Waiting for more
MC