HB&B Blog — Austria

Wine & Food Killers: Summer Tomato and Nectarine Confetti Salad and Christina Rosé 2022

Austria Claire Bullen Natural wine Natural Wine Killers Rose wine

Wine & Food Killers: Summer Tomato and Nectarine Confetti Salad and Christina Rosé 2022

I am a creature of habit. When July comes, I know it’s time to eat as many tomatoes and peaches and nectarines as I can. The opposite of a squirrel hoarding acorns for winter, I bring home bushels to devour as quickly as possible, savouring the short-lived bounty before it disappears again. Maybe that’s why I keep making tomato salads – like last year’s, accompanied by fig-leaf-wrapped goat cheese, or one from years past with strawberries and mojama. Then there were those in our cookbook: a caprese salad with burrata; nectarine and panzanella. But this one, which feels like a synthesis...

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Wine & Food Killers: Tomato Curry with Roasted Paneer and Johannes Zillinger Revolution White Solera

Austria Claire Bullen Natural wine Natural Wine Killers White wine

Wine & Food Killers: Tomato Curry with Roasted Paneer and Johannes Zillinger Revolution White Solera

For many, January is a time of deprivation, of restoring a lost balance thrown off by those prior weeks of feasting and merrymaking. I, too, feel a pull towards asceticism at the start of the New Year. It’s understandable, but so often framed as punishment. Times are hard enough right now – our resolutions don’t need to be. Instead, I’ve found there’s more power in positive aspirations than framing my goals from a negative vantage. Yes, I want to find innovative, satisfying ways to eat more vegetables. Yes, I want to experiment with new flavours and recipes. Yes, I want to...

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Wine & Food Killers: Feta and Herb Borek with Fennel Salad and Matthias Warnung Basis Nobody Rosé

Austria Claire Bullen Natural wine Natural Wine Killers Rose wine

Wine & Food Killers: Feta and Herb Borek with Fennel Salad and Matthias Warnung Basis Nobody Rosé

Seasonal transitions are my favourite time of year, and I love it as spring slowly and inexorably flows like warm syrup into the humid and fecund days of June. The still-cool nights are punctuated by washes of sun, and everywhere I go I’m overwhelmed by musky elderflowers and the pollen that collects in the back of my throat. All I want to eat is dribbling peaches over the sink and buy punnets of cherries to pick at, but seasonally I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s just that when summer arrives, I just want to unhinge my jaw and take it...

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Wine & Food Killers: Cherry Tomato Tarte Tatin and Arndorfer Schlehe Amber Wine 2020

Arndorfer Austria Claire Bullen Natural Wine Killers Orange Wine

Wine & Food Killers: Cherry Tomato Tarte Tatin and Arndorfer Schlehe Amber Wine 2020

I’m writing to you from the middle of the late summer coda it didn’t look like we would to get this year – September ablaze with sudden sun that has us all pouring out of our houses, blinking in disbelief. In the past two days I have decorated my shoulders with mosquito bites and garlanded my neck and arms with faint sunburn. There is a bittersweetness to this moment and its brevity, but for now, the only thing there is to do is to soak it all in one last time. That’s just as true for what’s on your plate....

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Wine & Food Killers: Spiced Spinach and Wild Garlic Soup with Poached Haddock and Matthias Warnung Whitey Weisswein

Austria Claire Bullen Gruner Veltliner Natural Wine Killers White wine

Wine & Food Killers: Spiced Spinach and Wild Garlic Soup with Poached Haddock and Matthias Warnung Whitey Weisswein

“Y’all, I need to tell you about this soup I made last night.” My phone lit up with a message from my friend Jess, quickly followed by a photo of rustic ceramic bowls filled with an extravagantly green liquid. “First, I don’t get excited about soup! I certainly don't get excited about spinach,” she wrote. But this spinach soup was unexpected. “Not since spinach and artichoke dip has spinach ever been this irresistible.” It was honestly the best thing she’d made all year, she said. Spinach soup wasn’t exactly on my list of go-tos either, but like most, I find rave...

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