Tag: Beer and food

| Uncategorised

Beer and food again and again

And here’s me and fellow beer scribe Adrian Tierney-Jones at a very memorable beer and food matching event at the legendary Rick Stein’s seafood school in Padstow, Cornwall, courtesy of Cornish Brewer Sharp’s.

It was an awesome occasion.  The Publican write-up is here.

You might also like...

| Uncategorised

Beer and food again

I mentioned recently that I’d been doing a lot of journalism, and quite a bit on beer and food. Just discovered that a recent piece I did the The Publican magazine is available online here if you’re interested.

You might also like...

| Uncategorised

Foolproof beer and food matching – come on, it’s time to give it a go

Sorry the blogging has been a bit sporadic – very busy on work, finishing the book (almost there!) and an unprecedented amount of journalism.

Three of the pieces I’ve been asked to write in the last fortnight have been about beer and food matching, two of which were on the theme of if it’s so great, why is it not more widespread?  It’s a good question, and I think the biggest issue is confidence – it’s a very new idea for most people and in my experience they need to be shown, not told, that it works.  I’ve converted many people to the delights of pairing beer with food, but I’ve not convinced a single person simply by talking to them.  Cooking a meal for friends words every time.
So it got me to thinking that anyone who is passionate about beer and is not an absolute disaster in the kitchen should, if they want to convert people to beer and food, or even drinking beer in general, host a meal for the friends they want to impress.  You have a fantastic evening – the fundamental truth is that most people don’t really analyse flavour and think about pairings no matter what they’re eating and drinking – people usually find it a fun change to do it for once. 
So why does this not happen more?  If everyone who loved beer put their money where their mouth is and actually demonstrated to their friends the delights of beer and food pairing, eventually we’d convert the entire country.  But there’s that confidence thing again.  You may know what beers you like.  You may have been blown away at a tutored tasting event when an expert has put pairings together for you.  But it can be daunting to put your head on the line and try to create it yourself.  I know – I found it nerve-wracking when I first started doing it. 
So here is my foolproof beer and food menu for novices.  If you know a lot about beer and if you’ve ever leafed through Garrett Oliver’s or Fiona Beckett’s excellent books then stop reading now – you’ll only disagree with me and think I’m being too simplistic.  If you are Garrett Oliver or Fiona Beckett, please forgive me.   
But if you think the idea is fine in principle but you don’t know where to start, read on.  There’s no better time to do this – there’s a global recession and we can’t afford to go out to restaurants any more, so this is a great way to entertain friends at home.
For each course I’ve given suggestions for ideal beers if you have access to them, as well as beers you should be able to find in any supermarket or corner shop if you’re not near a good speciality beer shop.  Apologies to North American readers – the brands are different for you – but then you tend to have easier access to craft beers anyway.
The main principles are match light flavours with light, heavy with heavy.  And there’s a progression from light to heavier as the meal goes on.  It keeps your palate fresh. 
STARTER
A couple of options here, but wheat beer or lager is a safe bet for a first course.  How about a few salad leaves with either smoked salmon or goat’s cheese, all tossed together with a citrus dressing or just drizzled with a bit of lemon juice?  The wheat beer compliments the lemon, brings out the flavours of the fish or cheese, and cuts through the fattiness of the cheese.  If you can get a good German Weissbeer that’s the best thing to use.  The surprise hit of the last few years has been Grolsch Weizen, which is kind of a cross between german and Belgian wheat beer and matches with pretty much anything.  But if you’re dealing with a very basic beer selection, Hoegaarden is absolutely fine.
Alternatively, if you can get hold of a Kriek or Framboise – cherry or raspberry beer – a really surprising match is to simply put these with cured ham, such as Parma or Serrano.  There’s a fruitiness in cured ham that really gets brought out by the beer.  And in southern Spain, Serrano ham (or its local equivalent) is often served with cherries.  Put the ham on the plate and open the beer – foolproof.
MAIN COURSE
A good malty dark ale will go with any cooked red meat, because the caramelisation in the meat matches the caramel notes in a malty beer – roasts or pies are a no-brainer, even with something as basic as Newcastle Brown.  But it’s a bit obvious, and wouldn’t really change the perceptions of anyone who’s ever heard of steak and ale pie.
Something a little more refined and interesting is coq a la biere.  Cooking with beer is obviously one step on from matching with beer, but a great way of getting a match is to cook with a beer than serve the same beer with the meal.  It sounds like cheating, but it’s not.  If you’re a really crap cook, you can get a packet of coq au vin seasoning, follow the recipe on the back and use beer instead of wine.    
There’s a recipe for coq a la biere in every beer and food cookbook I’ve ever read.  Chicken thighs work best, because they have more flavour.  I usually leave them whole in a casserole and slow cook them with onions, garlic, celery, carrots, mushrooms, a coating of flour on the chicken pieces if you want the stew to thicken, and season with salt and pepper and herbs such as parsley and sage – fresh sage is a belter with this. 
This is obviously a French dish, and in parts of France it’s just as common to use beer as it is wine.  If you have access to speciality beer shops, try this with a French biere de garde or a Belgian saison – either gives a rich earthiness to the dish, and adds a little zing when you serve the beer with the food.  If you’re dealing with a basic supermarket range, pretty much any bottled ale is going to work fine, though I prefer a pale or amber coloured beer such as Timothy Taylor Landlord or Young’s Bitter – it just feels a little less heavy than dark brown beer for people worried about stodge – one of the main barriers you have to overcome.  If you fancy it a touch sweeter, Leffe is also fine.
DESSERT
If you’ve prepared the first two courses, unless you’re a real dessert fan I’d just buy your pudding.  Nobody will mind.  And here we can go for a match that veterans will say is far too obvious but soddit – when it’s this good, no-one’s going to complain. Get a melted chocolate pudding – like the ones in the M&S ad or the ones from Gu, chocolate sponge on the outside and melted chocolate inside – and match with a porter or stout.  Obviously if there are chocolate notes in the stout it’s going to go even better.  Meantime’s chocolate porter is a no-brainer.  But although this will upset some readers, it’s fantastic even with Guinness.  It may be mass market, there may be better porters and stouts out there, but if it’s all you can get it is by no means a compromise.  This is one of those dishes where beer and pudding merge until you can’t tell one from the other and the flavours just wrap around each other and merge, spiralling up to new heights neither is capable of on its own.    
CHEESE
If you don’t have a kitchen you could just do a beer and cheese tasting – in my view this is where beer shines the brightest anyway.  In order: a good pilsner lager like Pilsner Urquell or Budvar with goat’s cheese; pale ale (again Landlord would be good) with Brie or Camambert; a north American IPA such as Goose Island or an English beer like Worthington White Shield with a strong, mature cheddar (Mrs Keens if you can get it); and Stilton (preferably Colston Basset) with a strong barley wine style beer such as Thomas Hardys, JW Lees’ Harvest Ale, or Fuller’s Vintage Ale, or maybe a strong porter or stout.  Not everyone will like every match, but everyone will like at least one, including those friends who tell you they don’t like beer.  Fiona Beckett has a little more helpful advice on doing this, with a few alternative suggestions, here.
If you’re serving cheese at the end of a meal I’d keep it simple – mature cheddar and Worthington White Shield is the taste of the gods.
A tip for getting your guests on side – I always open a bottle of red and a bottle of white wine and place them in the middle of the table, and tell guests I’m just wanting to try this out, and if they really don’t want to play, or if they decide they don’t like a match, I won’t be offended if they switch to wine.  All I ask is that they try just a tiny bit of the beer with the food, and listen to me while I explain very briefly why I’ve chosen to put them together.  When you do this it takes the pressure off, everyone relaxes, and nine times out of ten the wine remains untouched. 
And serve the beer in wine glasses – it’s the easiest way to change someone’s perception and gets rid of the volume issue – a huge psychological and physical barrier for most beer rejectors, especially women.
So there we go – the only excuse you now have for not doing this is that you don’t have any friends.     

You might also like...

| Uncategorised

Beer at All Bar One

Another thing that was keeping me busy over the last couple of months is that I was helping All Bar One launch their new beer range. Each October they do a special push on beers and are trying to create a genuinely exciting collection of beers from around the world, not just the usual selection of overpriced lagers with obscure provenance and interchangeable product delivery.

This year, like last year, I wrote the blurb and tasting notes which is currently sitting in a very attractive booklet on every table in each of All Bar One’s 37 outlets.

OK so it was paid work and I’m bound to be positive, and while ‘the world’s best beers’ might be a bit of an overclaim, they’re doing some really interesting stuff – far more interesting than you’d expect from a chain like this. The highlight this year is the world exclusive launch of Duvel Green on draught. It’s 6.5%, and while it’s still definitely Duvel, it’s a little lighter, a bit more quaffable. Other beers include a keg version of Adnam’s East Green, which is jolly nice, Kasteel Cru Rose (not my cup of tea, but lots of people like it), Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Budvar Dark, Worthington White Shield and Meantime Chocolate. You can find out more about the full range with my tasting notes here: http://www.all-bar-one.co.uk/classics/index.htm
The new food menu is also genuinely excellent, and we did a bit of food matching in the back of the booklet. One that didn’t make the cut is Guinness with their melted chocolotae pudding. Truly awesome, and I guess Meantime Chocolate would go even better.
It’s well worth getting down there – several big chains are starting to look more closely at their beer ranges, and while they’re never going to break new ground for the hardened beer aficionado, it’s got to be a good thing worth encouraging.

You might also like...

| Uncategorised

This is a beer blog. Shall we talk about some beers?

I got a phone call a few weeks ago. “Hi Pete. We’re having a beer and food matching dinner, five courses with a different speciality beer matched with each. We’d like to invite you along to sit on one of the tables and just talk about beer to the guests.” How much better does it get than that? Oh hang on, what was that? “We’ll pay you for your trouble.”

And so last Monday night, deeply in love with life and wondering how, increasingly, I seem to be one of the most fortunate people in the world (to be honest, it is about time) I earned money by going to a free, beautiful dinner, and talking about beer, and drinking free beer.

But that’s not the only reason I was pleased the event was happening – the dinner was being organised by multinational brewing giant and brewer of Carling – Coors UK.

I did a bit of work with Coors about five years ago, and while we had some great conversations about beer, they guys from Coors eventually had to say, “Look, Pete, it’s great you feel so passionately about interesting beer, but the future is could lager and that’s what we’re brewing and that’s all we’re interesting in brewing.”

Since then ‘speciality beer’ (a sometimes frustrating term, because it suggests anything that’s not mainstream lager must necessarily be a bit – you know – “special”, but let’s go with it for now) has seen strong growth, admittedly from a tiny base. This has mainly been driven by Coors, with Hoegaarden and Leffe. They’re fine beers, but they could do with healthy competition from someone with similar distribution clout in the UK.

So Coors have assembled a very interesting line-up to enter the fray:

Kasteel Cru

Brewed in Alsace with champagne yeast instead of beer yeast, a light beer with a fruity character, like a sweeter lager. It has definite hints of gooseberries and lemon zest, and finishes with that biscuity champagne bite. Drink from a champagne flute, and coo at the lovely champagne style bubbles. Goes very well with seafood and classy hotel bars.


Zatec

Rolf Munding is a serial entrepreneur who has done a lot of work in the Czech Republic. Over the last fifteen years he felt the quality of Czech pilsners – the real best lagers in the world – was declining. Whether or not this was due to dumbing down after being bought up by big brewing multinationals is something I can’t comment on, but which Rolf does – often, and forcefully. So he went looking for a Czech brewery of his own and found it in the town of Zatec. Zatec’s German name is Saaz, and if that rings a bell it’s because the hops grown around Saaz make it a beery Bordeaux – these are simply the finest lager hops in the world. So with a brewery in the middle of the best hops, Rolf hired one of the best Czech brewers, and they created Zatec. Now, Budweiser Budvar is rightly recognised as a superlative beer, one I and countless other have praised to the skies. It has a long heritage and global reputation. Zatec is at least as good.

Grolsch Weizen

Hmm… a wheat beer to cash in on the trend begun by Hoegaarden, brewed under the auspices of a leading UK lager brand? Haven’t we been here before with Kronenbourg Blanc? Well, no, because while I’ve got a lot of time for Kronenbourg if you find yourself drinking in a place with a limited beer selection, Kronenbourg Blanc is virtually undrinkable. I was expecting something similar from Grolsch but, oh my, was I ever wrong. Half way between a spicy, lemony Belgian wheat beer and the heady banoffee character of a German Weissbeer, Grolsch Weizen knocks spots off the competition (if we define the competition as being wheat beers that are readily available right now in the UK). A perfect summer freshener on its own, like drinking a beer sorbet, and with food it’s like Daley Thomson (when he was winning decathlons, not now). The classic beer and seafood match, with the lemony creaminess of the beer complementing the food… check. The tricky match with hot, spicy food, assertive enough not to be swamped by your favourite curry and yet clean and refreshing enough to break down the heat… check. We haven’t found a dish yet that this beer doesn’t add something to.

Palm

An old, often overlooked classic from the Belgian ale stable. Antwerp’s de Koninck is better known by British beer buffs as a classic session ale, around 5%, to be drunk cool from a chalice glass on a hot day, brown and malty and slightly chewy but clean and refreshing too. Palm is very much the same. It went wonderfully with rich red meat. It’s a difficult one – I don’t have as much to say about it, but that shouldn’t make you think it’s not as good as the others – there’s just less of a story about it. But it is interesting about what happens when you put ale in a bottle and call it Belgian – people who would never drink a pint of real ale love Palm when they try it, which to me says they would also love real ale if they would give it a chance. Which brings us to…

Worthington White Shield

Not so much a speciality beer as a beer legend, WWS is now being promoted as part of the Coors speciality range. This is an extraordinary, complex, multi-faceted beer. There’s all sorts going on in there: bags of fruit, loads of spices, a hint of freshly baked bread, some treacle, caramel and toffee, all suspended in a fine balance, with no one flavour overpowering the other. We had this with a mature, assertive cheddar and people at our table who were not really beer fans were almost swooning with pleasure.

So if you see any of these beers, check them out. You won’t be disappointed. And bearing in mind that these beers are marketed in the UK by the same folk who bring us Reef and Carling, please remember you need to reward the things they’re doing well if you want them to shift attention from the things they’re doing that are – shall we say – not making such a vital contribution to the cornucopia of flavour and character available in our pubs.

You might also like...

| Uncategorised

Beer and Curry – even better together than you might think

How is that possible? I hear you ask. Surely this is already strawberries and cream, cheese and pickle, milk and cookies – the ultimate combination for the lad about town?

Well, think how good it goes together on a basic level – yer average high street after-hours curry house, a nice, saucy, spicy madras or balti with several pints of crisp, cool lager. And then, be honest – you know that’s not as good as curry gets. Anyone who has Indian roots, family or friends knows that what we get when the pubs are shut bears only a faint similarity to traditional Indian food. And you also know that while that lovely, cold pint of imitation-pilsner might hit the spot, and while it might represent the reality of nine out of ten pints of beer drunk around the world, it only represents a tiny sliver on the wheel of beer flavours that are out there. Just think what matching really good Indian food and really good beer could be like…
Today I finally cashed in my birthday present from last year – a half-day curry cookery course with Renuka Patel, who runs Ren’s Kitchen, where you learn how to cook Indian food, Indian style. Ren is full-on, totally passionate about what she does and will not let you out of the door until she’s sure you’re as keen and enthusiastic as she is. You spend a few hours cooking a menu that’s based totally on your likes and preferences, and leave laden with dishes to wow your expectant other-half or mates when you get home. Until today I always wanted to amke dishes that tasted as good as they do in a curry restaurant. Now I know how to make them taste better. If you fancy yourself as a curry maestro, you need to go on this course. However good you think you are, you’re not as good as you will be when you’ve finished.
And I’m not just saying that because we had a great conversation about beer and curry matching, and may be doing some work together in this area in the future. I’ve already done some work on this as part of a team at the Bombay Brasserie restaurant, who are introducing a beer list, and have been on UKTV’s much-missed Great Food Live talking about the same subject.
And it’s just fantastic.
Curry is not just curry – decent dishes don’t just work on a scale of heat; spices combine to create a myriad of complex, layered flavours that will constantly twist and turn and confound your taste buds. And the sheer variety of beer styles and flavours means the capacity for experimentation is endless, with the chance of finding something extraordinary only ever a sip away.
One unique aspect of beer and curry matching is the simple beauty of the fact that even your bog-standard pint of Carslberg or bottle of Cobra fits the bill. Beer is almost always served cool (not necessarily chilled) and the carbonation means it’s always going to refresh and revive your palate. With this as your baseline, the chances of something really not going are virtually nil. And you can build on this baseline by looking for flavour marriages and contrasts that change and enhance the flavour of the curry, the beer or both. The links two paras up give some indication of what’s possible.
And today, as I was making a mess of cooking my own chapattis and getting a scolding for not concentrating, we hit upon another very powerful reason why these two are made for each other.
What I’ve always loved about beer is that it is the most sociable drink in the world. All alcohol acts as a social lubricant, but beer is a leveller far more than any other; a democratic drink, both wherever you go around the world, and whenever you look at it in history. All the rituals around beer, all the baggage that goes with it, are designed to enhance sociability and sharing.
And Indian food is exactly the same – it’s arose out of the idea of huge family meals. It’s accessible and unpretentious. We don’t just go to curry retaurants after a few beers because they’re the only ones open – it’s also about the easygoing atmosphere, and the nature of the food itself – big dishes in the middle of the table, everyone sharing poppadums and tearing off chunks of naan, passing round, laughing and talking. I’d bet a year’s earnings that curry restaurants are noisier than any other culinary establisment, and rightly so.
And with that, I’m off to heat up my spicy lamb kebabs and try them with a Zatec pilsner; my gorgeous chicken with a Grolsch Weizen wheat beer, looking for a marriage with the heady, intense aromatics of both; and I might chuck in an IPA with the vegetable dish just because – well, you’d be stupid not to really.

You might also like...