Baked Tomato and Bocconcini sandwich paired with James Squire Golden Ale.
I’m often accused of letting my tastebuds dictate out family holiday plans, but you can learn a lot by how other people approach their food. Many nationalities traditionally accompany their meals with different types of alcohol and sometimes the more unusual combination can work surprisingly well.
For example, I’m not a huge fan of heated rice, as I find it quite acidic, but it’s this astringent quality that makes it complementary to a lot of flavours in Chinese food. Similarly, it was only after an enormous meal in Italy once that I truly appreciated grappa, which the Italians drink to aid digestion. Watch out though, grappa is pretty fiery so my advice it to stick to one glass….
Trips to Italy have inspired quite a few recipes of mine, including my Baked Tomato and Bocconcini Sandwich with bagna cauda. It’s a really simple sharing dish with a twist - bagna cauda is a rich sauce traditionally served as a dipping sauce for raw vegetables, but here you serve it as a dip for the sandwich. It is a brilliant combination of textures and flavours - if you only try to cook one new recipe this year let this be it. Tip: if your tomatoes are not perfect, wait until they are.
The juicy yet sweetly nutty roasted flavours of this sandwich work fantastically with the stone fruit aromas and the restrained bitter finish of the James Squire Golden Ale.
