October: What’s been on the menu recently

What we’ve been eating: Bread pudding, roasted vanilla ice cream, Victoria plum

Bread pudding – but not as you remember it. Still just as comforting as the dessert our parents and grandparents enjoyed, served with roasted vanilla ice cream and Victoria plum, ours has been given a fabulous glow-up by our creative kitchen team.
 
Bread pudding has been traced to the 11th century as a way for English cooks to repurpose leftover stale bread. The dish became known as ‘poor man's pudding’ because of food scarcity. You won’t feel hard done by with ours though – we soak a rich brioche in a spiced mixture of eggs, sugar, milk and cream. We then add Bacardi and Sangria just before baking to give it a boozy edge.

What we’ve been drinking: 2022 Focara Pinot Noir ‘JNOIR’, Fattoria Mancini, Colli Pesaresi, Italy

Fattoria Mancini is a family-owned winery, established in 1861. The vineyards in the San Bartolo Park, at the very north of Italy’s Marche region, sit above the spectacular cliffs of Focara on the Adriatic coast. The cool microclimate of this stretch of north orientated coast and the calcareous sandstone soil produces long-lived wines with a great balance of structure, depth, freshness and elegance.
 
This wine has creamy strawberry and redcurrant aromas, seamless balance on the palate and a real elegance – it’s a great and individual expression of Pinot Noir from Fattoria Mancini’s junior vineyards, hence why it’s vinified and bottled separately as ‘JNOIR’.