April: Our recommendations on the menu this month

What we’ve been eating: Lemon namelaka, honey, 35% Callebaut white chocolate

Sweet and decadent – this fine creation cooked up by our chefs is a lemon namelaka, invented by Japanese pastry chefs at L'École Valrhona in the early 1990s. A sweet cream like a ganache, a namelaka is airier and lighter, like mousse or whipped cream.

While both are made with chocolate and cream, instead of butter and sugar, a namelaka is finished with milk and gelatine, giving it an even lighter taste and texture.

We’ve made ours even more delicate and buttery by our use of white chocolate and added a bit of citrussy lemon zest. To serve, we’ve paired it with poached lemons and honey, as well as a honeycomb tuile you’ll have to break to get through to the dessert!

What we’ve been drinking: Bachelder ‘Wismer-Parke’ 20 Mile Bench Niagara Pinot Noir 2021, Canada

Since 2009, Thomas Bachelder and his wife, Mary Delaney, have been producing high-quality, cool climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, using wild yeasts and minimal intervention. Wismer-Parke is a single vineyard in the Twenty Mile Bench subregion of Canada's Niagara Peninsula.

The cool climate and limestone soils of the area are extremely well suited to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, producing rich wines from grapes that are hand harvested and gently pressed to retain the aromatics.
 
This wine has a plush richness, tight minerality and wild, iron-grip of red soils. With a pretty, savoury mouthfeel, and a long, iron, chalky minerality, we recommend pairing this with our Norwegian halibut with white asparagus, or winter truffle with agnolotti.