Vinoteca Opening For Sunday Lunch

We are delighted to announce that Vinoteca will open for Sunday Lunch as of March 8th from 11am – 4pm.

In addition to Vinoteca’s usual lunch menu, we will also be offering a handful of delicious brunch dishes, along with Bloody Marys and Mimosas from the bar. Sundays at Vinoteca will also include mini wine tastings in our wine shop, featuring wines from our list.

If you would like to book a table for Sunday lunch please call Vinoteca, or e-mail Aby at the address below.

tel: 020 7253 8786 | e-mail: aby@vinoteca.co.uk

German Dinner In Pictures

Thursday the 12th of February, we held our first ever Vinoteca dinner, which we plan to hold monthly, each one with a different theme. As I mentioned in my last post chef Jürgen Bircks came all the way from Germany, to create a very authentic German evening for all of our guests. A great time was had by all, and to show you what great dishes we enjoyed, I have posted pictures of each course, which were paired with some fantastic German wines.

NV Sekt Riesling Brut, Dr.Baumann (Württemberg)

I love Sekt, so delicious and refreshing, perfect aperitif!

Laugenbrötchen & Bärlauchbutter

These were amazing little pretzel rolls, I ate about four of them with loads of ‘immature garlic butter’.  Some people liked them so much that a few went home in handbags.

Clear Soup & Maultaschen

This was a delicious consomme, with lots of fresh parsley, and stuffed German dumplings.

2007 Weisser Burgunder Kabinett Trocken, Bercher (Baden)

2006 QBA ‘St Veit’ Trocken, Hans Wircher (Franken)

Deciding which wine went with the soup better than the other was impossible.  They were both a good match.

Red Mullet Savoy Cabbage Cream, Schupfnudeln

This dish was a delicious dish with simple flavours in perfect harmony.   It was also a great conversation piece considering Schupfnudeln means little boy’s penis, which no doubt they do resemble.

2006 Sylvaner Trocken, Villa Wolf (Pfalz)

2007 Riesling ‘Castle Label’, Schloss Vollrads (Rheingau)

Sauerbraten Spätzle, Apple Red Cabbage

This was my first time having spaztle, and I love it!  Each table had a big side dish of spatzle, with delicious fried bread crumbs on top.  The cut of beef was ‘top rump’, which has been marinated for 5 days in spices that were sent  over from Germany by Jürgen.  The sweet spice, and the sour flavours from the cabbage worked well together, it was a great dish.

2005 Spätburgunder ‘Q Sonnett’, Heger (Baden) (Pinot Noir)

For me this was the best wine match, the sweet spices in the wine were complemented perfectly by the spices in the dish.  The wine also had great ripe fruit flavours, and high enough acidity to stand up to the richness of the sauce.

Walnut Parfait Hot Rose Hip Sauce

2001 Riesling Auslese “Birkweiler Kastanienbusch”, Hansjorg Rebholz (Pfalz)

To be honest this match was not quite right, the dessert was slightly too sweet and overpowered the wine, however I don’t see this as a bad thing, I think even if a match is not quite right, it at least shows how wine and food matching can be quite tricky, and next time you can try something else.  However, the wine and the dessert on their own were stunning.

Monk’s Head Cheese Quince & Pepper Relish

You can see here how the cheese is shaved off with a wire into oyster mushroom looking pieces, very cool!

This cheese was excellent, not too strong, with a great texture.

2007 Spätburgunder Auslese, Schloss Affaltrach (Württemberg)

This was another spot on food and wine matching, the bright Pinot fruit, was delicious and worked well with the cheese, which is not alwasy easy to match with red wines.

Overall, the dinner was a great success, and everyone here at Vinoteca enjoyed having Jürgen and Gretel as guests, many thanks to them for all their hard work, and an unforgettable meal!

Caitlin

Chef Jürgen Bircks Arrives From Germany To Cook Up At Vinoteca

Tonight we’re having our first ever Vinoteca Dinner in the private room, which will have a German theme.  The menu has been put together and prepared by our guest chef Jürgen Birks, who arrived yesterday with his wife Gretel after an impressive 12 hour journey from Baden Württemberg in South West Germany.  Our head chef Ross tracked down all sorts of specific cuts of meat and fish for the dinner, whatever Ross couldn’t find Jürgen brought with him!  It has been an amazing collaboration between two chefs who don’t even speak the same language!

Tonight I will be dining with Krista author of the well know food blog Londonelicious, it’ll be good fun to dine with a fellow foodie, and see what she thinks of Jürgen’s German fare. I’ll be sure to get some photos , and of course some videos of the evening.

Caitlin

All the way from Germany

Marko In The Morning

Today we received our new Flip video, which is quite exciting.  I took a little video of Marko, which clearly annoyed him.  He wanted to know what I would do with the video?  Well, I put it on our blog!

More exciting videos to come!

Caitlin

We Won! Wine Bar Of The Year 2009

This year Wine & Spirits magazine has launched their first ever the Drinking Out Excellence Awards – “an awards programme to celebrate achievement and honour establishments and professionals in the UK’s dynamic on-trade”.

Last Tuesday night, Brett and Charlie headed to the awards ceremony, where Vinoteca was on the shortlist  for ‘Wine Bar of the Year’ along with three other fine establishments dotted throughout England and Scotland – Green and Blue, East Dulwich, InVino Veritas, Brighton, Le Di Vin, Edinburgh.

We are happy to announce that all of our hard work at Vinoteca has been recognised, and we have been awarded ‘Wine Bar of the Year’!

If you can’t make it down to Vinoteca to check out our award, then no worries, because I took the time to have a little photo shoot with our trophy, which was a challenge, but quite amusing.  On top of being ‘Wine Bar of the Year’ we also have a new item kicking around for Brett to “polish to a high luster”.  Who by the way was the runner up for ‘Wine Personality of the Year’.

Caitlin

Our big beautiful paper weight!

Brett (second from left) and Charlie (third from left) accepting the award

Charlie Young A Wine Hero

Well, It is official Charlie Young will be wearing his cape around Vinoteca from now on.  He has  finally had his secret identity revealed, and will be appearing on stage at the Wine + Pure On Trade Show February 3 – 4th at Olympia London, as a Wine Hero.  He was interviewed a few weeks back, and even was out of the office at a photo shoot last Friday!  I hope he won’t take it too far and start wearing spandex to work!

All jokes aside, it is a very good interview, and anyone looking to start up a wine bar or restaurant will surely find his advice very useful.

Caitlin

Recipe Box: Sticky Toffee Pudding

In December last year we put the very British Sticky Toffee Pudding on our menu, and like the previous winter, were bowled over by its popularity. Our recipe has been at the restaurant since its opening, and has been tweaked slightly from the original, and does not, like the traditional version, contain dates. We made a whole new pudding with that idea, one thats even sweeter, if that’s possible, but every bit as good.

I checked out the background on this dessert, and like many other über popular dishes, many claim to have invented it – although most arrows point towards a hotel in the Lake District, called Sharrow Bay. Its their ’signature dish’ and their recipe seems to be such a secret that it has spawned spying efforts of Sachertorte proportions. Currently, only the pastry chef who prepares it has the keys to the safe… Serious stuff. I believe however, that when chefs refuse to share recipes, its rather selfish and stunts their own creativity, and as any cook knows – give five different people the same recipe, and you end up with five different versions of the same dish.

Here’s our recipe, I eventually tired of writing it out on scraps of paper during a busy service! Serve with the toffee sauce below, and good vanilla ice cream. Then have a nap and try not to think of your next gym session…

Sticky Toffee Pudding

100g  treacle

85g     butter

85g    golden syrup

110g  demerara sugar

50g    stem ginger, chopped finely

1         egg

225ml   milk

225g     plain flour

5ml        ground mixed spice

15ml      ground ginger

7,5ml    baking powder

3,5ml    bicarbonate of soda

2,5ml    salt

Grease and line a  40cm baking tin, it should be about 10cm deep to allow for the pudding to rise. Melt the treacle, butter, syrup, sugar and stem ginger together until the sugar is dissolved, remove from heat and cool down slightly.  Mix the egg and milk together and beat into the sugar mixture. Sift all the dry ingredients together and sift onto the sugar mixture whilst whisking to prevent lumps. Pour into baking tin and bake for 40 minutes at 180°C. Insert a skewer in the centre, if it comes out clean the pudding is ready.

For the Toffee Sauce, boil 100g butter, 120g soft brown sugar and 150ml cream together and serve hot with the pudding.

Tallchef

Menu For Hope

I was reading the londonelicious blog today (as I do most days), and  Krista happened to write about A Menu For Hope.  It was the first time that I have come across this charity, created and fronted by Chez Pim along with the help of other food bloggers all around the world.  Last year they raised over $90,000, which will go towards the United Nations World Food Programme, and more specifically to buy breakfast and lunch for less fortunate school children in Lesotho.

What they have created, is an online raffle, where people can purchase virtual raffle tickets for $10, and then bid on loads of great food realated prizes.  This is the kind of thing that is just up my alley, I love food, and I love winning!  I plan on donating later today and bidding on some prizes, I am not telling you which ones, because I want to win them.

Vinoteca will also be helping the cause by donating a prize, which I hope lots of people  will bid on (in the London UK area).   Please see below for our prize.  Also, go and read through the master list of prizes on Chez Pim’s blog, and start deciding what you would like to bid on.  For anyone in the EU or the UK, please check out the EU & UK specific prize list on the Ms.Adventures in Italy.

Vinoteca Prize (code EU24)
2 tickets to one of our monthly Specialist Wine Tastings, where guests join us in our private room between 6-9pm on the chosen date to taste up to 20 wines, in a relaxed and fun environment. The tasting themes change monthly.

To make a donation:

Donation Instructions:

1. Choose a prize or prizes of your choice from our Menu for Hope at  http://chezpim.com

2. Go to the donation site at  http://www.firstgiving.com/menuforhope5  and make a donation.

3. Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a prize  of your choice. Please specify which prize you’d like in the ‘Personal Message’ section in the donation form when confirming your donation.   You must write-in how many tickets per prize, and please use the prize code. For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for EU01 and 3  tickets for EU02. Please write 2xEU01, 3xEU02

4. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box
and fill in the information so we could claim the corporate match.

5. Please allow us to see your email address so that we could contact  you in case you win.  Your email address will not be shared with anyone.

Thank you & Good luck!  Caitlin

Did you know Sterling Airlines went bust?

Well, I didn’t…Ross and I headed to Gatwick early on the 21st of November to fly out to Copenhagen, to celebrate his 31st Birthday. Little did we know that Sterling (an Icelandic company) went bankrupt more than a month ago! You would think there would have be an e-mail sent out or something. We had booked our flight and hotel back in July, we even had a table booked at the famous restaurant Noma, which our Danish chef friend Chris (owner of Fig restaurant here in London) had recommended. We were seriously depressed by this news, but we dealt with it quite well. We dealt with it so well that we hopped on a plane to Madrid! This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We spent an amazing weekend in Madrid eating and drinking our hearts our, at a fraction of the price we would have paid in Denmark (they have high alcohol taxes). One of the places we visited that could be considered a distant Spanish cousin to Vinoteca was Taberna Tempranillo. This place was rammed every night ( I think we went 3 times!), they have great tapas, and lots of lovely Spanish wine to choose from. We had everything from Cava to Riesling to one of my favourite whites of all time, Valdeorras – I love Godello, I love it oaked or not oaked, it is such good value and delicious ( Vinoteca has one on their list, if you are interested in trying one). We were also impressed by their Iberico ham slicing techniques – they had hams of all different ages and qualities hanging from ropes on the wall, where they were sliced from directly. I wonder what health & safety here in London would have to say about that? Needless to say we turned our first run in with the credit crunch into a memorable weekend, in one of the coolest cities we have every come across. Upon our return I had to ask Alvaro (my Spanish colleague), what exactly is he doing here in London, when he comes from a country where they eat Jamon Iberico morning, noon & night? His response was “Good question…” Caitlin

We forgot our camera that weekend, so thanks to Flickr I found the perfect shot of the Iberico techniques.

Blood Pudding appreciation society

Last year I had the priviledge of learning how to make blood pudding from Carol Craddock, and was fascinated by the process and the technique.

We had some trouble procuring blood, understandably, as the commercial market’s demand therefore is not large, and strict hygiene controls ensure any blood sold has to be safe to use. (Pigs urinate when they are slaughtered, which contaminates the blood). Dried blood is deemed safe by health authorities, but this affects the final product, and is not an ideal ingredient. Ox blood is often used nowadays as well.

Anyway enough rambling: two containers of blood appeared in the fridge one dark winter morning, and we set to work, possibly enjoying ourselves far too much with the bloody mess, but enough of that. Lardo, pancetta, oats, onion, various herbs and spices were gently sauteed, the blood added and slowly congealed on a low heat before being poured into a tray. After being gently baked, we chilled it for about a day to set before cutting squares. Crisped in a pan and warmed though in the oven, we served it with an piquant apple and sultana relish; fresh apple salad; and a fried duck egg.  Beautiful, simple British cooking, who said only the french employed fine technique?   tallchef