Recommendations

Cod and chickpeas with Osborne Sherry Fino

In the pan is desalted cod on chickpeas and spinach, bound with bread and garlic and topped with half a litre of fish stock. The fino sets a pale, young wine against it that picks up the salt of the fish without adding anything.

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From the shelf

The bottle

Osborne has its sherry bodegas in El Puerto de Santa Maria, one of the three towns of the sherry area. This bottle is a fino: made from palomino, biologically aged under the velo de flor and, in the solera y criaderas system, on average three and a half years old. That is short for a fino, and you can taste it: the wine is pale and straw-yellow with a mild finish instead of a long bitter one. During those years the flor seals the wine off from the air, converts alcohol into acetaldehyde and consumes glycerol and residual acids. The Consejo Regulador requires at least two years of ageing for fino and allows 15 to 18 percent alcohol; this bottle is at 15 percent and comes in 75 centilitres.

Osborne Sherry Fino

The combination

Why this works together

Desalted cod is never completely saltless: a core of salt stays in the fibre, and that is why this fish goes so well with sherry. The fino has no residual sweetness, so that salt does not disappear into sweetness but stays as salt on the tongue; research into taste interactions with sodium chloride shows that acidity lowers the threshold for perceiving salt, and so the acidity of the wine does here what a slice of lemon would do. The second is weight. A young fino of three and a half years is milder than a fino of ten years, and with this plate that is an advantage: the chickpeas and the spinach are earthy and soft, and a wine with a long bitter finish would sit on top of them. The third is the bond with bread and fried garlic, which the almond-like note from the flor links up with. The Consejo mentions salted fish with fino.

At the table

The dish

  • For 4 people
  • Ready in 50 minutes, after soaking overnight and cooking the chickpeas for two hours
  • Type main course

What you need

  • 200 g dried chickpeas (or 400 g from the jar)
  • 200 g desalted cod
  • 500 ml fish stock
  • 150 g fresh or frozen spinach
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 1 slice of white bread
  • 1 tablespoon sweet paprika powder
  • 1 tablespoon tomato purée
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 hard-boiled egg
  • extra virgin olive oil
  • salt

How to make it

  1. Soak the chickpeas in cold water for eight hours. Then simmer them for two hours on low heat, or nineteen minutes in a pressure cooker, until they are tender but not falling apart. If you use chickpeas from a jar, you can skip this step.
  2. Sauté the finely chopped onion with a clove of garlic in olive oil in a large pan.
  3. Stir in the paprika and the tomato purée and fry them briefly with it.
  4. Lay the cod fillets skin side down in the pan and sear them.
  5. Add the cooked chickpeas, the spinach, the fish stock and the bay leaf and let everything simmer gently.
  6. Fry the second clove of garlic in a small pan with the slice of bread until golden brown. Crush them together finely, mix in a little stock and stir the mixture into the pan; this thickens the sauce.
  7. Bring everything to the boil once more until the sauce is nicely thick, and check the salt.
  8. Divide the dish among deep plates and scatter the chopped hard-boiled egg over it.

In the glass

Serving

Serve this fino at 6 to 8 degrees; in its own guide the Consejo uses 5 to 7 degrees. Use a catavinos or white wine glass of about 200 milliliters, filled to a third. With a hot main course it is practical to keep the bottle in a cooler, because the wine warms up quickly in the glass. An opened fino keeps well only briefly: about a week with the bottle closed in the fridge.

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