Warm Summer Pasta

The recipe for February in my lovely De Bortoli calendar is a beautiful tomato pasta. This dish couldn't have come at a better time for us, given the hundreds of tomatoes our little plants are producing at the moment!

I often make tomato based sauces for pasta, but I've never made one using balsamic vinegar as the main sauce ingredient. I thought it might have been a bit too acidic, but combined with the sweetness of homegrown tomatoes and the spicy salami, it was absolutely delicious.

Marinating the tomatoes in the vinegar, gave it a lovely intense flavour and made the whole dish very easy to put together. For an easy weeknight dinner, this was perfect.

This pasta will certainly become a regular in our household. My fruit bowl is still full of our ripe, red tomatoes, so I have a feeling I'll be making this one again very soon.

Warm Summer Pasta

5 tomatoes, chopped

8 semi dried tomatoes, sliced

60g pitted black olives, halved

3 Tbs basil, chopped

2 Tbs balsamic vinegar

300g fettucine or long pasta

1 Tbs olive oil

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 Tbs fresh sage, chopped

6 slices of spicy salami, cut into strips

Pepper to taste

Parmesan cheese to serve

Place tomatoes, olives, basil and vinegar in a bowl and stand for 30 minutes.

Cook pasta in boiling water until tender, drain and keep warm.

Heat oil in a large pan and fry garlic, sage and salami until golden.

Remove from the heat and toss through the pasta with the tomato mixture.

Season to taste with pepper and serve with parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!

And To Drink....

The wine matching suggestion for this pasta dish is the De Bortoli Yarra Valley Estate Grown Chardonnay. The grapes from this wine come from the Dixons creek vineyard, which is a cool climate region of the Yarra Valley. These vines are low yielding older vines and so produce wines with a beautiful complexity and richness. 

The wine is made with minimal intervention to ensure that the true Chardonnay flavours shine through. The grapes are hand picked, whole bunch pressed and then fermented in French oak barrels.

This Estate Grown Chardonnay is a light yellow in colour with aromas of stone fruits and brioche. To taste, it is lovely and rich with a slight butteriness, a little minerality and acidity and beautiful fruity freshness. It was a perfect match to the sweetness of the tomatoes in the pasta. I thought that the vinegar might overwhelm the wine, but it was complex and bold enough to stand up on it's own.

The De Bortoli Yarra Valley Estate Grown Chardonnay was beautiful drinking as a current vintage, but would further develop over another couple of years. I might just have to go out and buy another bottle to try again in a few years time!

Zucchini Salad

Late last year I was given a copy of the De Bortoli Wines 2015 Food and Wine Calendar. It is a lovely calendar with each month showcasing a particular wine from their range and a recipe to match it. There is also a little paragraph about the history of the recipe from the De Bortoli family and why the particular wine was made in the style it was.

Given how lovely the recipes are, I have decided that each month I'm going to make the dish and blog about it. I won't always necessarily match it to the wine, as some are not so readily available in bottle shops.

The recipe for January is a lovely fresh zucchini salad, perfect in the hot Melbourne weather that we're having at the moment. This salad is in memory of Vittorio De Bortoli and his young wife, Giuseppina, who were married in 1928. They had a collection of fruit trees, vegetables and grape vines and cooked with what was available in the garden at the time. With zucchini in season during summer, I'm sure this salad was a regular feature on their table.

Zucchini Salad

3 small zucchini, cut lengthwise into thin ribbons (I used a vegetable peeler)

2 Tbs white wine vinegar

2 Tbs olive oil

1 Tbs Dijon mustard

1 clove of garlic, crushed

1 Tbs tarragon, chopped

1/2 a small red capsicum, thinly sliced

150g semi dried tomatoes, thickly sliced

A few olives to garnish, thickly sliced

Salt and pepper to taste

Place the zucchini ribbons in a colander and toss with plenty of salt. Leave to sit for 20 minutes, then rinse well and pat dry with paper towel.

Combine vinegar, oil, mustard, garlic and salt and pepper to taste in a small bowl.

Place zucchini, tarragon, and capsicum in a bowl and toss with the dressing. Allow to sit for 1 hour for the flavours to infuse.

To serve, toss the tomatoes through the salad and garnish with the chopped olives.

Enjoy!

And To Drink....

The wine matched to this salad is the De Bortoli La Bossa Sauvignon Blanc. Bossa is the nickname that was given to Giuseppina by her husband and childhood sweetheart. This range of wines also includes a Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Merlot, Shiraz Cabernet Merlot and Pink Moscato. For approximately $10 a bottle, these wines are great value quaffers. The grapes for the Sauvignon Blanc are sourced from the Riverina and King Valley.

The Sauvignon Blanc is beautiful and aromatic, with green apple and passionfruit on the nose. It's not quite as full on as a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, but still very fruity. There is a nice acidity, which helps to balance the wine, and a touch of sweetness. It was deliciously moreish!

The wine was a perfect match with the salad and a great choice to have on a hot night when you need something refreshing. The sweetness of the red capsicum and semi dried tomato, the saltiness of the olives and the acidity in the dressing made lovely friends. Certainly a wine to enjoy when you want something light, fruity and delicious!

After the success of January's food and wine match, I can't wait for the rest of 2015!