Love, marriage and compatibility are on everyone’s mind, but must it all be quite so complicated? No, says chef Mark Hix and wine writer Malcolm Gluck, whose new cookbook, The Simple Art of Marrying Food & Wine, defines compatibility simply as finding something in one partner (food) that is improved by the second (wine). Or vice versa. They also claim that old-style European wines do not always accompany modern, ethnically influenced foods as well as New World wines do, something that much of today’s food and wine writing ignores. So Malcolm matches Mark’s pumpkin and ginger soup with a Western Australian verdelho, a Hawkes Bay chardonnay or an Alsatian pinot blanc. Which sounds fun, especially given that this happy marriage of food and wine is put forward by two divorced men. For me, good food goes with good wine. Any good food, any good wine.

Ingredients

Serves 4

Prep 15mins
Cook 30mins

1 small onion, roughly chopped
1 small leek, roughly chopped
30g root ginger, peeled and grated
Good knob of butter
1kg butternut squash
500ml vegetable stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1tbsp pumpkin seeds, toasted

METHOD

Gently cook the onion, leek and ginger in the butter until soft. Peel, seed and chop the squash and add to the pan with the stock. Bring to the boil, add salt and pepper and simmer for 20min. Blend in a liquidiser, then strain through a sieve. Reheat the soup and adjust the consistency with stock or water. Serve immediately with pumpkin seeds.

The Simple Art of Marrying Food & Wine, Mitchell Beazley, £20.

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