One of the hardest desserts that you will ever have to make is a soufflé but we have cracked it and made a super simple recipe here. If you are panicking about making a soufflé and that you will see it collapse, don’t worry because you are not alone, as every chef in the world holds their breath as a soufflé comes out of the oven, even if they have made them 100 times before.

I am guessing that the Curious boys will be able to match this up with dessert wine perfectly as it is light and pretty neutral in flavour which should work with a sweet dessert wine. Over to you boys……

Mike’s wine match:

Classic dessert and spot on Niall in terms of made for a lovely dessert wine.

I still think dessert wines are one of the world’s best kept secrets. Yes, you generally pay a bit more in terms of cost per litre - many half bottles are considerably more expensive than a regular bottle of decent table wine - but the experience can be close to heavenly, and there’s no better way to cap off a fine meal.

There’s still a consideration to be made in terms of the dessert and the sweet wine to match it, mainly around the sweetness and flavours. Basically a super sweet dessert needs a super sweet dessert wine.

The sweetness and strength of flavours in Niall’s soufflé don’t demand a supercharged wine, rather something more subtle, so I’m immediately drawn to our Keith Tulloch Botrytis Semillon. Semillon’s not renowned for it’s expression but the effect of the noble rot on these Hunter Valley grapes produces the most incredible butterscotch and honey flavours, along with ripe apricot and orange peel. I’ve recommended it before with dessert pancakes and I think it’d just be superb with this.

While the concept of Curious Wines was a mere twinkle in Michael’s eye, I was fortunate to be traveling around the world with my mad girlfriend. Visiting some of the most famous wine regions, I was without the knowledge that just over a year later I’d be sitting at the front line of the industry.

After the most incredible few months traveling through South East Asia, and south down Australia’s eastern coast, we arrived in Newcastle, just north of Sydney. This is where Australia’s enthusiasm for food and wine really became noticable and with Hunter Valley being only an hours drive away, it didn’t take us long to decide what we were going to spend one of our days doing.

Our expectations were only heightened by the beauty of the region, and we weren’t let down by our first stop at Lindemans, where we enjoyed our first taste of Hunter wines, before heading to Sobels, where, as well as being overwhelmed by their range and St. Bernard puppy (pictured), I was impressed with their 100% Semillon. This grape variety possesses prominent citrus flavours, which you’ll notice also comes to the fore when blended with its usual partner, Chardonnay.

We all love small, homely boutique wineries, and Hanging Tree has to be one of my favourites, alongside Huia of New Zealand, visited a few months later. The grounds, the interior and the wines were tantalising, the sparkling Shiraz being my pick. Keith Tulloch was next on the list, with no idea that Michael would select them for our list! I was delighted when I heard, because like some of the wineries before, you could really tell that the Tulloch family were steeped in the proud tradition of creating handcrafted, characterful wines focusing on quality as opposed to quantity. Despite reaching as far as Ireland, they still maintained that family-owned, boutique feeling.

I won’t mention their name, but the last winery visited was a little disappointing. It was one that you would know, a big international brand sold in nearly every supermarket in the country. I wouldn’t say the wines were disappointing, they just didn’t stand out. It was over-crowded, impersonal and more like a trip to Disneyland than a quality-focused, proud and humble producer. Saying that, it was part of the experience and didn’t stop us having a brilliant day.

I’ve heard of wine snobs who say that Hunter Valley is now more of a tourist attraction than a world-class producer of wine. All I can say is as long as there are those smaller producers, such as Sobels and Keith Tulloch, Hunter Valley is in no danger of becoming just another tourist attraction.

Click here for our range from Keith Tulloch, and if you would like to see an earlier post on my time in Marlborough, New Zealand, click here.

For me, dessert wines remain the wine world’s best kept secret. For many people however, I suspect sweet wine brings back bad memories of Concorde and Blue Nun. (For those born after 1980, no I’m not referring to supersonic aircraft or Mother Theresa telling dirty jokes, but the cheap and sickly sweet wines that attracted, then quickly repelled, so many novice wine drinkers in the 80s).

The reality today is that some of the world’s finest, and correspondingly expensive, wines are the highly specialised, super-concentrated and exquisitely-balanced dessert wines of Sauternes, Tokaji, or even the depths of the Canadian winter.

Fine dessert wines are typically made by one of the following methods:

• Botrytis or ‘noble rot’: a rare condition requiring a series of specific conditions in which the fungus botrytis cinerea attacks healthy and fully ripe grapes. The resulting rot causes the grapes to shrivel and produce the most incredible concentration of sugars and acids. Botrytised wines such as Villard’s El Noble Sauvignon Blanc and Keith Tulloch’s Semillon show that critical balance of sweetness and acidity referred to in last week’s post on the tasting senses.
• Late picking: often labelled ‘Late Harvest’ as in Tabali’s Muscat, and in the right climate rivalling botrytised wines for sheer concentration of flavour, grapes are left on the vine for as long as possible to concentrate the grape juice naturally.
• Drying the grapes: in the same principle as late harvesting for concentration of juices, Italy’s sweet red Recioto wines are produced by picking the ripe grapes and drying until shrivelled before pressing.
• Freezing the grapes: Canada, Germany, Austria, and most recently New Zealand all produce the incredible delicacy of ice wine (or Eiswein), with New Zealand’s Siefried and Canada’s Inniskillen proving stunning examples in recent personal tastings.

Good dessert wines don’t tend to come cheap, and that’s mostly down to the labour-intensive processes outlined above, and the often tiny yields that get produced. Inniskillen as an example claim that each frozen grape contributes just one drop of grape nectar to the finished wine.

But trust me as I let slip our best kept secret, these dessert wines have to be experienced. And if you’re struggling to justify a little luxury in the current doom-and-gloom, let me pass on the advice of a more experienced work colleague on the birth of my first child: “From now on Mike”, he said, “always fly First Class. Because if you don’t your son-in-law will.”

Dessert anyone?

Ok, so we’re jumping on the Great Pancake Bandwagon today. One day of pancake-mania where you’d swear you couldn’t get a pancake the rest of the year.

They’re actually a Saturday breakfast staple in the Kane household, where all three of our munchkins line up along the breakfast bar, patiently waiting their turn. At the ages of 3, 2 and 1, you’ll get patience isn’t generally a virtue, which shows how quick this recipe really is.

The recipe I’ve always used is Delia Smith’s, from the still inimitable Complete Cookery Course. (30 years old it may be, but if you want to know how to make good mashed spuds, or what a roux is, there’s still no-one does it better.)

The difference between Delia’s method and most others is the lack of standing time required - there’s none. The ingredients take about 3 mins to weigh, measure and mix, and you’ve the first one coming from the pan 2 minutes later.

For 8-10 pancakes, you’ll need:

• 4 oz (100g) plain flour
• 2 large eggs
• 7 oz (200ml) milk mixed with 3 oz (75 ml) water (the secret to the instant batter bit).

Now get your pan on the hob while you’re making the batter - standard frying pan on about 75% heat. To make the batter, it’s as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Put the flour in a large mixing bowl and make a well in the middle.
2. Break the eggs and put them in the well.
3. Start mixing with a hand-whisk whilst slowly adding the milk/water to create a smooth batter.

By now your pan has heated. Throw a knob of butter in and swirl it to coat the bottom of the pan, and ladle in enough batter again to cover the bottom. Now wait about 30 seconds, then start agitating the pan - just gently sliding back and forward on the hob to loosen up the pancake. If it sticks, give it a hand with a spatula just to loosen.

Now don’t panic on the flipping! It’s a matter of trial and error to get the technique but (a) if you mess it up you’ll often be able to recover the pancake, and (b) your kids will think you’re great when you master it. It’s all in the wrist, a quick sharp flip of the pan, ensuring you get a bit of spin to the pancake. If it’s cooked properly on one side (about a minute on the pan), it should hold it’s shape while flipping over and landing cooked side up.

Now whilst taking the plaudits from your admiring public, wait 30 more seconds for the underside to cook, tip it onto a plate, and get coating or filling. For breakfast we drizzle on Lyle’s Golden Syrup (they do a pouring version now, as well as a gorgeous maple-flavoured one) before rolling up and cutting into bite-size pieces. Alternatively you could go with the classic sprinkling of sugar and lemon, or maybe a drizzle of honey. The fact is pancakes are SO adaptable you can add whatever takes your fancy.

If filling, try fresh fruit, or for a dessert, ice-cream, fruit, honeycomb, chocolate, marshmallows, crumbled meringue… ohhh! (Sorry, I’ve actually just drooled on my keyboard now.)

Now I’m afraid even I can’t advocate a wine match for breakfast pancakes, but if you’re doing the dessert version in an evening I haven’t tasted a better match than our Keith Tulloch Botrytis Semillon. It’s not lusciously sweet like many great dessert wines, so retains an element of savouriness, and just oozes butterscotch and honey to compliment the sweet filling suggestions listed above.

So, apologies for jumping on the pancake bandwagon, but do remember, unlike sprouts at Christmas, pancakes really shouldn’t just be for Pancake Day.

Save your cheesecake and Banoffee pies ’til St. Stephen’s Day. This heavenly dessert is best enjoyed on Christmas Day with Keith Tulloch’s critically acclaimed Botrytis Semillon.

Christmas Pudding

Makes 4 small puddings, which serve about 4-5 each

½ lb / 225g beef suet
4oz / 115g breadcrumbs
8oz / 225g raisins
12oz / 340g sultanas
4oz / 115g currants
4 eggs
4oz / 115g plain flour
2oz / 55g glacé cherries
¼ tsp salt
¾ lb brown sugar
1 dessertspoon mixed spice
1 large apple, peeled and cut into chunks
1 lemon, finely grated rind and juice
4oz / 115g mixed peel
2oz / 55g shredded almonds
1 measure (about 35ml) rum or whiskey
½ × 330ml bottle stout

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large basin and then add the lemon rind, juice and apple.  Beat the eggs well and add with the rum or whiskey.  Add the stout and mix well again.  The mixture should be of a consistency that drops of a spoon easily, add a little more stout if necessary.

Fill 4 bowls ¾ full with the mixture, to leave room for swelling.  Cover the top of the mixture with greased greaseproof paper and top the bowls with another sheet of greaseproof paper and a pudding cloth.  Secure these tops with string, leaving a loop for easy lifting.  Put the bowls in a pot of boiling water that comes half-way up the bowls.  Boil steadily for 3 hours and keep adding boiling water in case the pot goes dry.

These puddings will keep in a dry cool place for up to 12 months.  To re-heat, boil again for 3 hours, or microwave until completely heated through.