Curried Dunkelweizen Lamb Chops

The smoking lamb chops of Whitechapel curry houses are legendary because they are so delicious. And as many of the better places are bring your own, you can eat them while drinking delicious beers. Wanting to recreate that at home, I cooked these lamb chops after brining them in Dunkelweizen and curry spices, where the brine makes them incredibly tender (like I said here, brining is a very good thing when Cooking with Beer…)  – something important when you don’t have a searing flame grill to cook them on and you don’t want to chew on spicy boot soles. I used Dunkelweizen here because it has a sweetly toasty malt depth and also some complementary spices for those used on the lamb.

Serves 4

8 Quality Standard lamb chops (at least 8... these are addictive things)

1 bottle of Dunkelweizen (dark lager or Saison also work)

3 tablespoons of salt

3 tablespoons of sugar

1 whole chilli

1 onion, quartered

5 cloves of garlic

1 tablespoon of curry powder

1 teaspoon whole coriander seeds

Dry rub: 2 teaspoons of coriander seeds, 1 teaspoon cumin seeds, ½ teaspoon of fennel seeds. Warm these in a dry pan then grind into a fine powder. Add ½ teaspoon turmeric, ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper, a pinch of cinnamon and lots of salt and black pepper.

In a large plastic container with a lid, make the brine by mixing the beer with the salt and sugar and stirring until it’s all combined. Add the other ingredients and then top up the container with cold water. Put the lid on and place in the fridge for 8-24 hours. When ready to cook, remove from the brine and dry on kitchen towel. Cover in the dry rub and leave for 1 hour. Grill or fry on a high heat for 5-10 minutes (or until cooked to your liking).

These are a brilliant beer snack or starter and I wouldn’t bother serving them with anything other than a cold glass of good beer. Dunkelweizen is clearly a good match here, or go for a good Oatmeal Stout with a nice nutty, liquorice depth as that’s great with the spices and meat char.

The meat for this was provided by Simply Beef and Lamb. Look for the Quality Standard Mark in independent butchers and selected supermarkets to be sure that the beef or lamb is quality assured and responsibly produced by people dedicated to producing great food.

The Session #47: Cooking with Beer: Scotch Eggs and Beer Mayonnaise

I love cooking with beer so couldn’t resist this month’s Session with the topic chosen by David Jensen of Beer 47. My Imperial Chilli is one of my greatest culinary creations, made awesome by the addition of a bottle of imperial stout; these beer ribs are fantastic; beer ice cream is very cool, my favourite so far was made with BrewDog RipTide; malty ale in macaroni cheese adds a brilliant depth; and my Barley Wine Cupcakes passed the ultimate test: my girlfriend liked them. And there’s more I want to do with food and beer: a carbonnade challenge of a few different beers; roasted garlic IPA mashed potatoes; beer and cheese soup; spaghetti bolognese made with rauchbier; ice cream made with rauchbier (why not?!); beer jelly; a curry made with Mongozo Coconut… I could go on.

Some people seem to think that cooking with beer is a terrible waste, but I’m not one of them. I love how it adds a different depth to food, how parts of the beer’s make-up come through in unique ways. Plus, I like to experiment with flavours, regularly turning my kitchen upside down with wild ideas of faux culinary genius.

I also love eating with a beer on the side and this is the perfect condiment and snack which also includes beer as an ingredient and has the ability of throwing you up in the air and down on a street somewhere in the middle of Belgium (albeit inexplicably with a delicious meat-wrapped-egg in one hand).

Scotch Eggs and Beer Mayonnaise

I have a weakness for scotch eggs. Not the mini ones which taste like cardboard and egg mayo and not the big chewy, dry ones with taste like sulphurous breadcrumbed pulp, I’m talking about hot, fresh, crispy-on-the-outside-and-soft-in-the-middle-ones. A scotch egg fresh from the heat of the oven (I’m in the baked camp of the baked vs fried argument), cut into quarters with a pile of ketchup/mustard/mayo on the side. They are rightly near the top of the beer snack hierarchy; an all-day breakfast of sausage, egg and bread neatly rolled into a palm-sized ball.

Ketchup is my condiment of choice. A red splodge was on almost every plate of food as I grew up and, while it may now have been gradually made redundant, it’s still very important to some foods, especially sausage-based ones. But through curiosity I tried out beer mayo for this snack.

Like custard, it’s a food which comes with a police tape block of fear around it from the worry of it splitting and ruining, but do it right and there’s no fear of oily egg yolk sick. The recipe I used was from Richard Fox’s The Food & Beer Cook Book and it worked perfectly, leaving a thick and delicious mayo with just a hint of beer (I guess you can use any beer or cider you want; I’d like to try one with lambic next instead of lemon juice).

Scotch eggs are easy to make, even if they do take a few processes. First, soft boil an egg, run it under cold water to stop it cooking in its shell, peel it (peeling eggs sucks; how do they do it in scotch egg factories?! My job from hell would be an egg peeler), and roll a little flour around its quivering white exterior. Then get some sausage meat, either a block of it or take some sausages and remove the meat from the skins. Add any seasoning you want – salt, pepper, fresh or dried herbs, spices, chilli, even a few drops of beer, if you want – and then shape a handful of meat around the egg, making sure there are no gaps. Get three bowls out: one for flour, one for beaten egg and one for breadcrumbs. Roll the ball in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs. Put on a baking tray and bake for 30-40 minutes until it’s crispy and cooked.

For the mayo it’s one large egg yolk, two teaspoons each of beer (whatever you’ve got open or whatever you want to use) and lemon juice, one level teaspoon of Dijon mustard, up to 200ml of light oil (the lighter the better so it doesn’t overpower the taste of everything else), seasoning. Mix the yolk, mustard, beer and lemon juice in a bowl and then add the oil a little drizzle at a time, whisking (by hand) constantly. Keep whisking and slowly adding oil until it’s the texture you want it to be. Word is that says that if it splits then add a drop of warm water and whisk like a maniac and it’ll come back together.

As beer snacks go this is one of the best; made with beer and best enjoyed with a beer on the side. Now I’m craving a huge bowl of fries with a slick of homemade lambic mayo and a nice glass of cold beer.

Cooking with Beer: Imperial Chilli

This chilli is like all the other chillies out there, only it’s much better. It’s made with a bottle of imperial stout and loaded with fresh chilli peppers, including a couple of searing scotch bonnets, hence the Imperial name it’s been given.

Looking through recipes online, a number are cooked with cans of Budweiser (seriously) and occasionally a slug of bourbon. Taking this up a few levels of awesome led me straight to a chocolatey, full-on imperial stout aged in whisky barrels – BrewDog’s Paradox Isle of Arran (an extra step up would lead you to adding Tokyo*). The beer adds depth, richness and a sweetness that can’t be added from elsewhere in the food world. Just be careful not to get a stout that’s too bitter as the last thing you want is a loser-takes-all battle between Scoville and Lupulin.

No recipe for this, just a list of ingredients laid out around the kitchen like a flat-pack cupboard ready to be assembled without the instructions. The only important information: add the beer after the tomatoes but before the stock (you don’t want too much liquid and it’s better to have more beer) and cook it for a few hours in the oven, if you can. This serves about four, even though I was cooking for one.

Pork mince (about 400g). Two big onions. Finely chopped carrot. Four cloves of garlic. Lots of fresh chillis (I also added chopped scotch bonnet, plus a whole scotch bonnet to the pot). Paprika and smoked paprika. Turmeric and cumin. Salt, pepper and sugar/honey. Tomato puree. Tinned tomatoes (maybe two tins). A bottle of imperial stout (less a little for the chef). Beef stock. Kidney beans.

It’s worth cooking this for hours rather than minutes. I cooked mine for two hours, removed it from the oven for two hours and then cooked for another hour before serving. It was the most delicious chilli I’ve cooked which I can only credit to the beer adding a chocolate and booze depth that worked so well against the different levels of spice and heat. It also works really well with a beer but go for something dark and smooth like an oatmeal stout or a milk stout, something that perfectly fits the deep tomato and savoury flavours but has a cooling quality (I served mine with Meantime Chocolate but it didn't quite have enough body to hold it all together - the flavour worked well though).

Chilli: How do you make yours? Beer in it, with it, neither or both?

FABPOW! Jerk Chicken and Founder's Centennial IPA

Sitting at work on a Friday afternoon, having just finished what is always my busiest and most stressful period, and watching the Brazil-Portugal game on iplayer, my thoughts turn to my soon-to-be-growling gut. I’d already filled the fridge with the beers that I wanted to drink but I had no designs on the dinner yet. The beer was Founder’s Centennial IPA so I worked back from there.

Jerk chicken is something I’ve never cooked before but it’s easy: blitz up spices, marinate chicken, cook. Classic jerk contains allspice and scotch bonnet chillis, wikipedia tells me. In my marinade I used: fresh thyme, lots of garlic, thumb-sized lump of fresh ginger, a couple of chillis (I’m not brave enough for scotch bonnet), juice of a lime, paprika and smoked paprika (I love paprika and the smoked one is there to reenact the BBQ’d quality of classic jerk), fresh coriander, all spice, salt and loads of black pepper, oil. An hour to marinade left plenty of time to make coleslaw, something else I’d never made before – grated carrots, cabbage and onion mixed with mayo, mustard and lemon juice. Easy. I fried the chicken to get it going and then put it in the over for 30-40 minutes. When it was done, as I left it to cool for 10 minutes, I sorted myself some corn on the cob to make my dinner as close to a Nandos as possible.

Founders’ Centennial IPA is 7.2% and 65IBU, so it was primed to stand up to the heat of the chicken. It’s overflowing with floral aroma, the orange blossom, a little caramel, sherbet and some over-ripe strawberries but it’s the body which makes this FABPOW work – it’s full and smooth, mouth-filling but not sticky – it carries the hops all the way through with plenty of pithy orange and floral fudge. With the chicken it set off in a new direction: the caramel body loved the charred, crispy chicken skin, the hops and the spice were pitched right at the same level and the floral, herby quality in the beer was emphasised by the earthy hops in the rub (the coleslaw acted as a cooling extinguisher to the heat, while the charred, nutty sweetness of the corn makes it a great beer snack). It’s messy, it’s finger-licking, it’s spicy, it’s delicious, it's food and beer at its simple best, it’s a FABPOW!

Anyone had any good food and beer combos recently?

After this I had a Captain Lawrence Captain’s Reserve IIPA and it probably would have been even better with the chicken. It stands out as one of the best IPAs I’ve had this year: peaches, apricots and mango bursting out in all directions, it’s never too bitter nor too sweet nor too floral nor too citrus, just dangerously, wonderfully drinkable - I didn’t want the bottle to end. I bought it from beermerchants and I’ve just checked the website – sold out. The Centennial is still there though, for now.

Welsh Rarebit

I have no idea how I lasted so long without making Welsh Rarebit - it’s delicious! Struck with no inspiration for lunch but having a kitchen filled with all the important ingredients, last weekend became the perfect opportunity to try it out. Plus - you know me - I like to play around with beer and food and this is one of the more famous recipes to use beer as an ingredient.

It’s easy to make. Butter and flour plus milk to make a basic, but thick, white sauce. Add mustard, Worcestershire sauce, strong cheese and a splash of beer (I used Guinness as I had a bottle in the cupboard), stir until smooth with a texture that’s spoonable but not too runny. Then toast one side of bread, flip it over, put the cheese topping on and grill until bubbling but not burnt.

It’s like the most luxurious cheese on toast you’ve ever had. And it goes great with beer too. I suggest a malty brown ale to go in the sauce, although Guinness was also good. To pair with Welsh Rarebit I’d like a hoppy brown ale to match the cheese, the toast and the punch of heat from the mustard.

FABPOW! Carbonnade and Chimay Blue

Ireland has beef and Guinness, England has steak and ale, Belgium has carbonnade. It’s that classic recipe which uses beer as the vital ingredient along with hunks of beef and lots of onions. I don’t know if there is a definitive beer to make carbonnade but a dubbel seems to be a popular choice, although I’ve seen everything from a bottle of geueze, to Orval, to a Flemish Red, to Westlveteren 12 and beyond into beers of all styles from all over the world. To be honest you can use any beer you want and each will add its own flavour, though it probably should be Belgian to qualify as Carbonnade (use a British ale and you’ve made a stew...). I decided to use Chimay Blue because it’s a great beer, it’s ideal for this recipe and I can buy it from Waitrose down the road.

The joy of carbonnade is the simplicity. Brown some beef, take it out, soften lots of onions, a little garlic and thyme, a couple of bay leaves, a teaspoon vinegar and of sugar, a little stock and then the beer and cook for a couple of hours on a low temperature until it’s thick and rich and delicious. Pile this high next to a mound of chips and a glass of beer. You can add mustard-covered slices of bread on top too. It’s great and hearty food, it’s warming, it’s tender, it’s intensely savoury with an underlying sweetness and it comes with chips: it’s proper man grub.

The Chimay adds a depth of flavour to it that can only be given by the beer and when you drink the beer alongside it you can pull out the caramel base, the dried fruit and the distant spice. Together they work perfectly; the beer is both dark enough to handle the carbonnade and light enough to not make it cloying, the carbonation is refreshing but it’s the bridge of flavours between the glass and plate that pulls it all together and makes it extra special.

Carbonnade is a great beer dish. It's so easy to make and whatever beer you open to put in will change the final flavour. My next attempt will use a geueze or Orval, I think, if I can bare to open one and not drink it straight down. Anyone used these or other beers to cook carbonnade? What has given the best results? 

Smoking Hops

I knew that hops were related to cannabis. This was just something I picked up on the way. I only realised quite how similar they were when I decided to smoke a few.

I was inspired by two sources, one was Stefan Gates’ Biscuit Tin Smoked Salmon from Gastronaut and the other was a post on the Thornbridge Brewers’ blog. The idea was simple: cook fish in the smoke of some fresh hops. Just like wood smoking with a twist. I got the hops from Pete, who got them from Hopdaemon Brewery. They were Cascades. I bought myself a fat piece of cod. I engineered myself a makeshift smoker. I was ready to go.

Stefan Gates uses an old biscuit/sweet tin and wire. I neither had an old sweet tin or wire so I grabbed a wok, lots of tin foil and the wire rack from the grill. Makeshift, like I said. I made a nest out of tin foil for the hops so they couldn’t escape, filling it with as many as I could. I placed this inside a huge wok and put the wire rack on top. For a lid I used more tin foil. Then I just lit the hob and let it heat up, placing the fish on the rack and covering to smoke for about 10 minutes. It’s easy.
The Cascade hops in their pre-smoked state were wonderfully earthy, spicy and fragrant with citrus, which I hoped this would come through into the fish. As the hops stated to warm up all the citrus aromas came out, this then turned into sweet tobacco, then to a massively worrying cannabis-perfumed cloud (‘Honestly officer, I’m just making my dinner’). This fug was when I was acutely aware of the relationship between hops and cannabis, but this soon developed into the relaxing smell of bonfires and burning, fresh wood.

Ten-minutes, and a kitchen full of smoke, later and it was done. But the taste? It’s really unique, interesting and powerful, unlike any other smoke flavour I’ve had before. Beyond the sweet fish it had the taste of a smell: bonfire smoke on a cold evening, plus faint hints of earthiness and even a little dry, herby, burnt citrus. I had mine with spicy noodles and a bottle of Jaipur which was fabulous with the fish - just sweet enough to soften any harsh edges.
It was an interesting experiment, that’s for sure, and something I want to try again. I was left worrying about possible after-effects of smoke inhalation which was perpetuated by a self-fulfilling paranoia (Am I going to get paranoid? I think I’m paranoid… Why aren't I paranoid?) and the fact that I couldn’t find anything about hop smoking online. There was some moderate panic that I may have also gassed myself and that I'd pass out any minute. All was well in the end though, I'm happy to report.

Some words of warning: I got into a lot of trouble for doing this. The house reeked of sticky, thick, sordid smoke for days. Pretty much everything had to be cleaned, including the actual fan extractor above the hob. But don’t let this put you off, just learn from my mistakes. Firstly, keep it covered so that the smoke doesn’t escape. Secondly, keep it covered so the smoke doesn’t escape! It’s the smoke which smells. It’ll be cooked in 10 minutes but leave it for longer if that worries you, just keep it covered. If you can use a sweet tin then I’m sure the smell wouldn’t be so bad, or it will at least be contained in its own little space. Alternatively, cook it on the barbeque.

Gooey Chocolate Puddings

This is my favourite dessert recipe in the whole wide world. And just to forewarn you, this pudding is so good that whoever you serve it to will fall madly and deeply in love with you, so just watch who you give it to...

I’ve had this recipe written since January and just haven’t got around to posting it, but the time has come to unleash this dessert and change the world by pairing it with some awesome beers.

The chocolate pudding is feather-light on the outside, hot, rich and gooey in the middle and it’s enough to melt even an iron heart. Pair this with the right beer and it turns all magical and supernatural. But what beer? Some would go straight for the cherry beer, and this is wise, no doubt, but there are better beers to pour with this. Personally, I’m thinking a big coffee stout. Here’s why: coffee stouts and chocolate are killer combos. It’s all about the lustful coming together of sweet chocolate and roasty-bitter coffee beer: it just works. But you need a big coffee beer, something full-bodied, imperial, rich and strong enough to leave you wired. It’s a real pick-me-up pairing, like a do-it-yourself tiramisu (I have to make tiramisu with coffee stout in the base one day…) where the chocolate soothes and the coffee kicks.

The pudding recipe has never failed me and it’s incredible. The pudding coats the tongue in the way that only good chocolate can and then the beer glides in and lifts it all away, making you want more and more and more… But there are careful steps needed to get that oh-so-important gooey centre. First, I add grated chocolate to the mix. Second, I add a little contingency square of chocolate in the centre. Third, make the mix a few hours before you need it (this is helpful anyway) and then chill it. Fourth, bake it for exactly 10 minutes at 220C – no more, no less.

Gooey Chocolate Puddings

This makes 6 puddings.

• 200g dark chocolate (or part and part with milk chocolate)
• 150g butter, plus some for lining the dishes
• Pinch sea salt
• 3 whole eggs and 3 yolks
• 50g caster sugar
• 20g plain flour
• Cocoa powder for dusting

Line the ramekins with butter and sprinkle cocoa into each so it all sticks to the butter. Melt 150g of the chocolate with the butter (in a glass bowl over a pan of bubbling water) and add a pinch of sea salt. While that’s melting whisk the eggs, yolks and sugar until they are pale and creamy. When the chocolate is done take it off the heat for a minute, in that minute grate a few chunks of chocolate (leaving six squares behind) into the egg/sugar mix then add the melted chocolate and butter and stir through gently. Next add the flour and stir into a pudding mix. Pour into the ramekins and pop a square of chocolate into the middle of each one. Chill until you need it.

To cook the puddings the oven must be preheated to 220C – exactly 220C. Add the ramekins and watch the clock very closely. As soon as ten minutes are up take them out, run a knife around the edge and turn them out onto a plate.

I like this served with ice cream. The first time I tried it I had it with a coffee ice cream and that was super but I personally think a more subtle ice cream would be best, and something like the RipTide Stout Ice Cream would be spot on. Another excellent choice would be a banana ice cream (coffee, chocolate and banana is a truly great combo). Or just go for a good vanilla ice cream.

As for the beer, I’d jump straight to Mikkeller and grab the Beer Geek Breakfast, or even better, the Beer Geek Brunch Weasel (I wrote about that here). I’ve had the puddings with BrewDog’s Coffee Imperial Stout, as the picture shows, and that was fantastic. You could try the Meantime Coffee but I think it might struggle to deal with the awesomeness of the dessert. If you can’t do a coffee beer then go for a straight up imperial stout - Thornbridge’s Bracia would kick serious pudding-fattened ass, Stone’s Imperial Russian Stout or a sublime De Struise Black Albert. The dessert deserves good beer, the dessert demands good beer. But remember the cautionary words at the beginning: whoever you serve this to will fall wildly in love with you.

'In The Bag' Broccoli and Blue Cheese Bombs

This is my first entry in the foodie blog-up ‘In The Bag’. It’s like ‘The Session’ for beer bloggers just with a bag of ingredients instead of a topic. Scott at Real Epicurean is hosting this month. It’s a super idea, plus it gives me a chance to try and infiltrate some beery words into the wine-dominated food spheres!

Now sometimes, as you’ll know, recipes just don’t turn out right first time. This is one of them. Luckily, getting things wrong lets us get it right the next time.

The idea: broccoli and stilton wrapped in parma ham and deep fried in a beer batter. Simple. It’s one of those perfect little pub snacks that’s warm and salty and rich and the ideal size for a couple of bites between big gulps of beer. And that was exactly what I wanted from this ‘In The Bag’: a beer-friendly treat.

Why didn’t it work? The little bombs start off great as you bite through light batter, through salty-sweet ham and into soft broccoli, then you chew and it’s good and then all of a sudden the fuse burns down and BOOM the stilton explodes, wiping out everything else with a wall of cheesy saltiness.

This BOOM was an issue.

But you know what? It gave me the chance to make it better. The cheese was the first change. I started with Colston Basset (the king of cheeses in my opinion!) but I replaced this with some much lighter choices and both Cambozola and Cornish Blue were excellent. I also had a counter-attack in the shape of a cherry beer. It was just a bottle of Liefman’s Kriek, the one you get from the supermarket that’s wrapped in red paper. The cherry beer was a triple attack: in the batter, in a chutney and in a glass to serve with it. This was a good move. The sharp-sweet, peppery-fruity beer swirls around with the creamy-mouldy-salty cheese and cuts perfectly through it, swaying between the salty and sweet. The chutney does the same thing – it balances the wallop of the cheese with some sweetness. And the batter was tweaked slightly too (first up it was pretty thick – it started too runny and then I over-corrected, so I found the perfect balance the next time). The beer also gives a great pinky-caramelised colour and a hint of extra sweetness (I also tried this with little fish fingers and it was gorgeous!).

To be honest this doesn’t require a proper recipe, it’s more of a compilation thing, just putting it together in the right order and then deep-frying. Make the beer batter by mixing plain flour, salt and beer (any beer is okay, preferably something with plenty of sweetness) until thick and creamy. Leave it in the fridge for a while, the usual routine, and get some oil on for deep frying (look here if you need more guidance on batter and deep-frying). Par-boil small florets of broccoli in water and allow to cool. Put a small piece of blue cheese with the broccoli and then wrap up in a thin strip of parma ham. Pop these parcels into the batter and then deep fry for a few minutes, until golden and crispy. That’s it, pretty easy.

The Onion and Cherry Beer Chutney was one of those throw-it-in-the-pan-and-mix-it-together jobs. I didn’t measure anything; it’s the simplest and laziest of condiments. But it was roughly the following (and it makes a jam jar full: four medium red onions, 50ml cherry beer, 50ml red wine/balsamic vinegar, 50g of sugar and a pinch of salt and pepper. Sweat the onions until super-soft and sweet, add the sugar, then the vinegar and then the beer and slowly warm it up (do it slowly or the hop bitterness will come through). Taste it after 15 minutes or so and then tweak according to taste. You know what chutney should taste like so make it like that.

So there we are. Broccoli and Blue Cheese Bombs. They were proper in-your-face first time around, but the improvements made these fun little things to eat, especially when lavished with that wicked Onion and Cherry Beer Chutney. And they don’t just work with the cherry beer, oh no. Cheese and beer belong together, the inherent malt sweetness and gentle carbonation lifts the fatty richness of the cheese. These Bombs are perfect for so many different brews: Wychwood’s Hobgoblin, Theakston’s Old Peculiar, Bath Ales’ Gem or Barnstormer, Fuller’s ESB, Worthington Whiteshield IPA, Meantime’s London Porter… A cider (not one that you serve over ice, for goodness sake) would also be a great choice.

Carrot Cake and Beer

Cake and beer?! Cut the tomfoolery. Who wants a slice of cake with their beer? The two are so far opposed that it seems slightly ridiculous. You’ll want a cup a tea with that, you might shout. Well not me, naturally. I’ve made cupcakes with stout here and now I’m pairing beer with carrot cake, which is one of my favourite cakes ever, ever, ever.

I used to be all ‘eurgh’ about carrot cake during the years when I thought vegetables were evil (0 through 17, yeah honestly, even at 17 I didn’t like vegetables?!) but now it’s my birthday cake of choice. Last birthday I was eating it and had a beer on the go at the same time (I had a beer in my hand most of the day, naturally) and thought I’d see if it worked. And it was bloody amazing. I’ve been working on my cake recipe since (this is the best yet, all stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth gorgeous), trying it with a few different beers to see how it matches up and there are some great pairings.

The beer I had the first time up was Sam Smith’s Yorkshire Stingo. An 8% strong ale aged in oak. It’s rich and full flavoured, fruity and complex, chewy, full of toffee and roasted oranges and has a great creaminess from the barrel aging. And it just worked so well with the cake. My next experiment was with an IPA. BrewDog’s Chaos Theory stepped up (hence the bottle cap in the picture which came from this). The earthy spice and orange flavours in both the beer and the cake sing the same song while the big-hitting hops wipe the palate clear of all the thick cake texture. Awesome. Big, fresh and juicy IPAs, with lots of sweetness and lots of refreshing hops and their biting bitterness, are also brilliant. Ruination IPA should be great here or Meantime’s IPA, which would come from an earthier angle. I also think a decent barley wine would be great - Fuller’s Golden Pride, Sierra Nevada’s Bigfoot, Anchor’s Old Foghorn. And maybe some strong stouts too, stouts with notable hop presence - Great Divide’s Yeti or BrewDog’s Coffee Imperial Stout.

Here she is. My wicked carrot cake recipe, which is delicious with or without the icing and will last brilliantly for a few days.

• 300g grated carrots (about 4 really big ones)
• 150g dark sugar
• 150ml light/plain oil
• 200g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon each of bicarbonate of soda and baking powder
• ½ teaspoon each of nutmeg, ginger, turmeric and salt
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 3 eggs
• 100g chopped pineapple (tinned is fine)
• Zest of one orange and juice of half
  
  For the icing:
• 1 tub soft cream cheese
• Juice of half an orange and zest of a whole orange
• 50g icing sugar

Turn oven to 180C and butter a large cake tin. Mix all the dry ingredients together then add the eggs gradually. Stir in the grated carrot (squeeze out most of the liquid first) and pineapple and then add the oil and the fresh orange juice. Pour in to the cake tin and bake for around 60 minutes (or until a knife comes out ‘clean’ from the centre – it’s a very moist cake so just be patient and let it do its thing).

For the icing just mix all the ingredients together, adding more sugar if you want and then spread out over the top of the cooled cake. This is one juicy, moist and stodgy devil of a cake and I love it. And here’s something controversial… you don’t have to have it with a beer - I’m not completely beer-and-food-mental – a cup of tea really is a great choice too (I’m thinking we need a builders’ tea mild…).

Do you have any good cake and beer combos?

Asparagus Risotto

My asparagus binge continues and I’m cashing in while I can. Last weekend it was in a risotto, something I love to cook and eat - it’s spoon food and spoon food is what I like best. This recipe is nothing fancy, nothing complicated, just flipping delicious.

As with the previous asparagus recipe, it goes with a decent range of beers. Zak Avery tried a similar risotto paired with Sneck Lifter which seemed to go really well (I couldn’t find the beer when I was shopping). I served two beers with mine to see if either worked - Bath Ales’ Gem and He’Brew’s Bittersweet Lenny's RIPA (these were just the beers which I planned on opening that night, they were not chosen by design). Neither were any good so don’t try them - Gem was too malty-sweet, RIPA too citrusy and hoppy (check out the link to the beer above though if you're interested in brewing as they put the beer recipe on there). Ideally I’d have earthy IPAs with this; Meantime, White Shield, Downton’s. Or maybe a wheat beer, something oaty and smooth with some nice clove and citrus spiciness; St. Austell’s Clouded Yellow, Sierra Nevada’s Wheat/Kellerweis or Anchor’s Summer Beer. What makes all the difference in this dish is the addition of cream cheese at the end which makes it so rich and creamy and smooth and unctuous and acts as a wicked bridge across to the beer, and we all know that beer loves cheese.

Asparagus Risotto

The stuff you need for 2 hungry people

• Risotto rice, 350g
• Asparagus, 12 or so fat spears
• Stock – chicken or vegetable, 1 litre
• Onion, finely chopped
• Garlic, 2 cloves
• Butter and oil
• Pack of cream cheese (full fat is best, calorie-schmalorie)
• Strong, hard cheese (I used Lincolnshire Poacher like I did for the last asparagus recipe, parmesan is also good)
• Lemon juice

Prepare the asparagus by peeling the lower halves and add the peelings into the stock which is simmering on the hob. Chop the asparagus and fry in a little butter and seasoning (I usually cut a few small rings, 2mm-ish thick, off the end of each spear and set aside to fry with the onion and garlic). When almost cooked remove from the pan and place on a covered plate. Into the pan add the finely chopped onion, the little rings of asparagus and some more butter and a little oil. When this is soft add the garlic, stir for a minute or two and then add the rice. Most packets tell you 50g-75g per person. This is rubbish. I use 150g-200g of rice per person (but then I like my portions BIG). Anyway, stir this until it snap, crackles and pops in the pan and then add the stock bit by bit, making sure that none of the peelings get in the rice. Keep adding stock until it’s cooked, which takes about 20 minutes. Then add the almost-cooked spears and some cream cheese, about 40g-50g per person will do it. Then just add the hard cheese, the juice of half a lemon and leave it for a moment to relax and then serve in a deep bowl and eat with a spoon.

Brilliant. I love this. It’s a taste of spring, just so asparagusy and cheesy; tummy-filling, uplifting, fresh and heart-warming all at the same time. That’s good eating.

The Asparagus Season and My Favourite Spring Lunch

Okay, so most of the food things I write about here tend to be my ‘favourite’ something or other. What can I say? I write about what I like. This is my ultimate lunch when the sun is shining, everything is coming to life in April and the long-awaited asparagus season has begun. And it is a long-awaited season. I adore asparagus but I keep myself far away from it all year round just to be able to enjoy it even more during that short window between April and June when it is all around, standing tall and green and proud. The little beauties.

Just thinking about this lunch now makes me smile. Simply and far-from revolutionary, it’s fresh, new season asparagus fried in butter and oil (with a whole fat clove of garlic and salt and pepper to flavour everything, plus a squeeze of lemon at the end to make it sparkle), a poached egg or two on top, loads of Lincolnshire Poacher cheese is grated over and this all stretches and oozes over of a slice of bread which sucks up all the salty-lemony-buttery-yolky juices. It really is just a little moment of perfection how everything works together – the charred crunch of earthy-sweet asparagus, the slick rich yolk, the salty bite of the cheese, the soft chewyness of the bread… This is my food heaven.

And would you believe it, it’s also great with beer! Try pairing a wine with this and you’ll get yourself in all kinds of bother. Instead, pop the crown off a bottle of English-style IPA - Meantime’s IPA, Downton’s Chimera, Thornbridge’s Halcyon and Worthington’s White Shield would all be totally awesome. Their grassy, earthy notes along with the sweet malt backbone and the dry, lingering hops just have a wild fling with the richness of the yolk and cheese while the fresh spears of asparagus are enhanced by everything the beer can throw at it.

What could be better? And it’s all just so bloody gloriously English that it makes me proud.

An Awesome Salad for a Beer

I eat healthily. I also exercise a lot. I do this to justify drinking everyday and over-indulging in food and beer at the weekends. If you’ve paid any attention at all you’ll know I like beer with my food. As it starts to get warmer my beer gets colder, paler in colour and crisper and juicily bitter in taste. With this the food I eat changes too, to salads and fish and all things lighter and fresher. A salad is what you make it. If you just chuck some leaves in with some pieces of tomato and maybe some meat and drizzle some oil on top then it’s pretty crappy, but a salad can be a marvel. It’s a collusion of colours and textures and tastes, it’s fresh and (normally) healthy, it’s uplifting and if you serve it with a vibrant and zingy beer you get a summer-tastic match.

This is my current favourite salad. I first made it (that’s the one in the picture) while I was working on the food and beer matching I did for BrewDog and it was designed to go with Chaos Theory, their 7% copper IPA. I made it up, poured over the dressing and I loved it. It had the crunch of fresh carrots, the creaminess of avocado (that crunch and cream is a wicked combo), the nutty pods of chick peas, the heat and tingle of chilli, a fruity, sweet and spicy dressing and the uplifting presence of the fresh herbs. It’s a really delicious salad to pile up in a bowl and eat with just a fork. I like food like that; minimum effort and maximum flavour. And it was good with the beer, just not great; it was missing something.

I made the salad again, put it in a Tupperware container and took it to my girlfriends for dinner. I made it exactly the same and added the dressing. I ate some of it and put the rest in the fridge and when I was looking for breakfast the next morning it was calling out to me. Yeah, I know, it’s a weird breakfast, but that’s how I roll. Anyway, the point is this: as I was eating it I saw a box of grape nuts in the cupboard. For those who don’t know either the flavour of grape nuts or malted barley, they taste very similar. It’s nutty, malty like ovaltine, biscuity and fairly sweet. So grape nuts taste like the fundamental base of all beer (there’s pale malt in every beer) and this salad that I was eating for breakfast was designed with beer in mind. 1+1=2 and the grape nuts went into the salad. And oh my goodness, it added that essential missing element. A crispy crunch, a savoury-sweetness, a bit of bite and texture to mess around with the softness of the avocado. Hazzah!

And a beer with this? A BrewDog Chaos Theory – the original inspiration – would be a good choice as the thick fruitiness and spiciness in the beer is great for the sweet Moroccan spice. The orange juice and spice in the dressing give beer a lot to grip hold of, add the grape nuts and the chick peas and there’s a world of choice. And I think the beer should be cold and drunk from the bottle if it isn’t bottle conditioned. Stone IPA or Goose Island IPA would be my joint number one pairing as they both have incredible fresh flavours and a big hop finish to pick up the spices. What else… Thornbridge Kipling or Jaipur, or Sierra Nevada Pale Ale would be a magical match.

Carrot, Avocado, Chick Pea and Grape Nut Salad with Fruity-Spicy Dressing

Now I don’t really do instructions for salads. They aren’t challenging things to make where you need exact measurements, it should be done to taste and by sight, if you like a lot of one thing and less of another then make it like that. The dressing needs a stricter hand, but only just. Here’s how I like mine and this’ll serve one or two, or more if it’s a side to a piece of grilled (even barbequed) fish or chicken…

The Salad

• 1 massive carrot, or 2 normal sized carrots
• 1 ultra-ripe avocado (if it isn’t squishy then don’t bother
• 1 can of chick peas (it has to be chick peas, you need their nutty bite)
• A few handfuls of grape nuts
• A red chilli
• Some green bits – some rocket would be good, but don’t go crazy, and some herbs are in, I like a little coriander, a few springs of mint and maybe parsley or basil
  Some seasoning and spices – Paprika, chilli powder, salt and pepper

The Dressing

I like a little of all the tastes to play around on your tongue, so there’s got to be sweet and salty, sour and bitter and unami. Plus a little spice, because spice is nice and it goes great with a hoppy beer.

• Something Sweet: Juice of half an orange or tangerine (or another orangey thing), maybe a squeeze of honey
• Something Sour: Lemon or lime juice or vinegar; cider, white wine or apple balsamic are good
• Something Salty: salt
• Something Unami-y: Soy sauce, a few drops
• Something Bitter: Erm… a few drops of the beer will do it!
• Extra virgin olive oil, you'll want double the oil to the sweet and sour elements
• Spices (a pinch of each): Ground cinnamon, Turmeric, Paprika (sweet or smoked or go nuts and have both), Chilli powder or Tabasco for extra heat, if that’s your thing

Grate the carrots and squeeze some of the excess juice out. Then grate the avocado and mix them together in a large bowl. Drain and rinse the chick peas and chuck these in. Cut the chilli into tiny cubes and put them in. Mix in the grape nuts and the herbs, which I like finely chopped. Season it. Mix up the dressing - I use a jam jar – and then just spoon it over until it shimmers and gives off all the lovely aromas of oranges and earthy spice. Yum o’clock.

Beer Ice Cream: Thornbridge Hark

A while back I made ice cream from BrewDog’s glorious RipTide stout. Ever since then I’ve been in the mood to try out different beers to see what kinds of flavours they bring to ice cream.

There’s so much potential for using different beers to affect different outcomes in dishes. Carbonade, stews, pies, breads, pannacottas and ice cream would all use the same base recipes each time you make them but the beer which is added will change what the final product is like, and that’s pretty cool – it’s something I’ll be experimenting with quite a lot.

Last weekend I opened a 9-pint mini-keg of Thornbridge Hark which I had brought back from my visit to the Brewery. Most of this was for me to drink but I also decided to do a bit of work in the kitchen. This ‘work’ was a carbonade, beer bread and an ice cream (plus this crazy experiment at Butterbeer). The beer is a 4.8% ‘winter warmer’ brewed with a little rye malt, crystallised ginger, coriander and caraway seeds and Seville orange zest. It’s fruity, spicy, zesty, clean and crisp and it’s all underpinned with a fantastic rye bread flavour which is just delicious.

The RipTide ice cream is fantastic. It’s chocolatey and packed with fantastic roast malt flavours, keeping the essence of the beer but fading out before the hops kick in. And in ice cream you don’t really want hops as they leave a dry, strange and unwelcome tang. Saying that, I will soon try a big IPA and see how that comes out, maybe Goose Island as it’s got that huge orange and caramel mix which could be very tasty (it’ll probably need some fruit going in though to emphasize the juicy hops, and it’ll want less of the beer).

When I first tried the Hark I wasn’t sure how it’d translate as an ice cream as it has a decent dose of hops in it, giving a little floral bouquet and some dryness, but what the hell, this was an experiment and I would still have 8 ½ pints left! So I made up the batch and you know what? It’s really good! What you get is like a brown bread/rye bread ice cream with hints of banana and citrusy spice. I gauged it just right on the beer front and there was no hop bitterness coming through to kick the back of the throat. A really good result. And it has left me wanting to try and ice cream sandwich with it in, maybe with a little strawberry jam too! Yum!

I am lazy when it comes to my ice cream base but I am also scared of getting scrambled eggs when making custard, so I simply combine condensed milk with double cream and then add whatever else I want. It’s so easy but it just works perfectly. This hardly needs a recipe but here it is, and it makes around a litre. But here’s a warning: the amount of beer that you add varies between each different one that you choose; 300ml is not a blanket amount that works for every beer and most will want slightly less than this so start at 150ml-200ml and work your way up, trying it along the way.

• 1 can of condensed milk
• 300ml double cream
• 250ml-300ml Thornbridge Hark

Mix them all together and churn it in an ice cream machine then eat. I told you it didn’t need a recipe!

So Beer Ice Cream Take Two (well, technically Take Three as I made a tiny batch of BrewDog Paradox Isle of Arran which rocked) was a great success. I’ve got my eye on a strong Belgian ale next, probably Chimay. Then I’ll be testing out the IPA.

Any suggestions of other beers which could or do make amazing ice creams?

Butterbeer

Did anyone watch Heston’s Tudor Feast last week? (If not it’s on again tonight or you can catch it online, it’s well worth watching) I tuned in just in time to catch Protzy and Heston Blumenthal recreating a curious brew called Butterbeer. I then read this post over at Blog O’ Beer and thought I’d give it a try myself.

There is a Harry Potter link, supposedly, but I haven’t read any of the books and only seen a couple of the films. I looked it up in the only way I know and then I found a few recipes. It’s essentially root beer, butterscotch sauce and butter and leaves the drinker feeling warm. Blimey! That’s no drink for a wizard-in-training, is it?!

Anyway, the beery version is a little different to that. I got the recipe from here but there is another one here. It’s basically beer, egg yolks, butter, sugar and nutmeg. A curious combo if you ask me. And I’ve been looking for some of the history behind it but I haven’t found anything yet, anyone know about it?

I followed the recipe, as you do, and then poured it out into my glass (the beer I used was Thornbridge’s Hark as I had just opened a mini-cask of the stuff). The kitchen filled with the smell of buttery nutmeg, which is pretty nice I tell you. The drink itself is a waxy yellow colour and smells just like an egg custard tart. And the taste? It’s odd. Kind of like egg-nog with hops. It’s creamy, rich and warm, unnervingly eggy for a beer, spicy from the nutmeg and sweet from the sugar. I kept sipping it for a while but in the end it made me feel a bit sick.

To conclude: butterbeer is pretty rank. Stick to the beer on its own. I you want to try it it’s easy to make but just be careful you don’t curdle the egg yolks or you'll get scrambled egg chunks in your pint and that is proper minging.

Beer Snacks: Mini Toad-In-The-Hole

Hunger and thirst alert! I love finding good food and beer matches for all courses and all occasions, but sometimes the best pairings are the simplest ones, don't you think? They are the ones which live in all the best pubs, the foods which we can hold in one hand while we sup a beer in the other. It’s going to be warm and probably meaty. It harks back to childhood foods, to eating with our fingers, to wintry warmers and (kind of ironically/strangely) school dinners.

If I had a pub I’d like to think that I’d have a whole blackboard chalked up with bar snacks. My ideal list would include the following, all homemade, naturally: Sandwiches (fat slices of salt beef, sausage, fish finger, etc.), toasted sandwiches (ham and cheese is king here), big scotch eggs, sausages and mustard, meat and beer pies, pork scratchings and platters of cheese. I’d also like malted Maris Otter grain to nibble on instead of peanuts.

This Toad-In-The-Hole recipe would be right at the top of the list, perfect for any dark beer and the ideal snack for a cold day. The batter is crunchy and soft in different places, the onions are sweet and charred, the sausages hot and meaty and the gravy is thick and unctuous. And it’s all made with a can of beer (possibly my favourite canned beer right now – Twaites’ Dark Mild, which is smooth, nutty, light and fantastically roasty). This beer, with its minimal hop invasion, adds a great flavour throughout.

If you want eight huuuge individual puds and a monster pot of gravy, then follow this.

• 3 fat sausages
• 2 onions
• 3 field or portabello mushrooms
• 125g plain flour, plus an extra tablespoon for gravy
• ½ teaspoon salt and pepper
• 2 eggs
• 150ml milk
• 150ml beer (a dark beer, ideally a mild or light stout – check out Twaites’ Dark Mild)
• 200ml beef stock
• 1 teaspoon tomato puree
• Olive oil

First you have to make the batter and leave it to chill out for an hour or two. Put the flour and seasoning into a bowl. In a jug measure out the beer (keep the rest of the beer on the side) and milk then add the eggs and whisk it together. Add this to the flour and mix together to make a creamy batter. Pop it in the fridge until required.

Turn the oven to 220C, place a small drizzle of oil into the bottom of each hole of a yorkshire pudding or muffin tray, and heat until smoking. Then chop the onions into thin slices and fry gently in oil (there’s no hurry – you want them sweet and golden), when soft add the finely chopped mushrooms and cook until they let out all their juices and turn dark brown. Chop the sausages into three or four chunks and cook with the onions and mushrooms.

When the oil in the oven is so hot that it sizzles violently when you flick some batter into it, pour the mix into each hole (three-quarters of the way up) and pop a piece of sausage or two into each, along with some onion and mushroom, reserving about half the onion and mushroom mix (just set this aside). Then bake for 30 minutes or until crispy and golden and cooked at the bottom.

To make the gravy, heat the remaining onions until they sizzle again (you’ll probably want an extra splash of oil here, or maybe some butter) and add a spoon of flour, mixing it around. Add the tomato puree and stir in for a minute or two. Deglaze the pan with the stock (don’t use beer or you get a nasty hop tang) and then add the beer and simmer gently for 5 minutes, stirring so that all the flour cooks out and isn't lumpy, until it is thick and rich. Season if you need to.

When the puddings are cooked just pile them high around the pot of gravy and enjoy with a pint of beer. I recommend any dark ales, stouts, porters, milds; anything like that. Particular beers of note, which come to mind, would be: Dorothy Goodbody’s Wholesome Stout, Meantime’s London Porter, Fuller’s London Pride or ESB or 1845 or London Porter, Wychwood’s Hobgoblin, Adnam’s Broadside, Gadd’s Dogbolter… beers with roasted flavours and a nice depth of sweetness which calls out for the meaty gravy.

This is a damn fine beer snack. If ever I saw mini toad-in-the-hole served in a pub then I’d buy it in a second.

A Storming Lemon Cheesecake

I've decided to try out some video blogging. I have a youtube channel which you can view at www.youtube.com/user/markdredge. While you are there, check out Zak Avery's brilliant channel or click here.

If you’ve seen the video above then you won’t need much of an intro to this dish (this is my first attempt at a video, so be kind! EDIT: I've uploaded a new and improved version with better sound). Whether you want it with the beer or not, that’s up to you, but it’s an amazing match – actually amazing! - and I can’t think of a single other beer which would work with a lemon cheesecake. Even sitting here now this combo still baffles and excites me.

Like I say in the video, it’s difficult to do the beer justice with words. If you are a beer person then it’s one of those beers you need to try. It’s in-your-face awesome, it’s challenging and it’ll make you think about what beer is capable of being. I love it for its complexity. There’s more on the BrewDog website, including their own video and some more food pairing (written by me!), and you can find that here.

This cheesecake is so easy to make and tastes great. It’s perfect for a light finish to a meal, a great summer dessert or even a fancy dinner party – it can do it all with ease. The whisky-spiked sauce is intended for the beer and acts as a stepping stone between the food and drink, linking the flavours in each, but it works perfectly if you don’t serve this beer.

This makes a big cheesecake, easily enough for 8

The base:

• 125g melted butter
• 225g digestive biscuits (I used the Hovis ones shaped like bread)

The topping:

• 300ml double cream
• 300ml soft cream cheese
• 250g mascarpone
• 4 tablespoons icing sugar
• 2 lemons – juice and zest

The raspberry sauce:

• 200g raspberries
• 50ml whisky
• 1 tablespoon icing sugar or honey (you may want more than this)

Butter a loose-bottomed cake/flan tin. Crush the biscuits into a fine dust - I do this by putting them in a sandwich bad and smashing them with a rolling pin (make sure the bag is on top of a kitchen towel or something soft and ensure there is no air in the bag). Then add this to the melted butter and stir through. Push the biscuit mix tightly into the base of the tin and chill.

Mix together the double cream until it is as thick as you can make it before it turns to butter. In a separate bowl mix the cheeses and icing sugar, then add the zest and juice of 1 lemon. Stir it through and add the double cream, folding it in. Give it a taste and add as much of the leftover lemon juice and zest as you like. If you are making this for the Storm then go easy on the lemon or it’ll overpower the beer – it may be a beer full of massive flavours, but it is still only an 8%-er so you need some delicacy.

Once everything is mixed together, layer it on top of the base and chill until you want it.

To make the raspberry sauce just blitz up 200g of fresh raspberries, a tablespoon of icing sugar or honey and 50ml of whisky. Give it a taste, if you want more sweetness then just add some more sugar or honey. Pour it through a sieve to remove the pips and set aside.

Serve this with the Storm which should be just cool. I’d like to suggest another beer to serve with the cheesecake but I really can’t think of another which would work.

RipTide Ice Cream and Cupcakes

Beer with dessert is the finest way to end a meal and there are so many great matches out there: stout and strawberries, cherry beer and chocolate, barley wine and blue cheese, massive IPA with mature cheddar... Sometimes it can be a challenge (a fun challenge) to get a really great match without overpowering either dinner or drink, but when you get it right it can be awesome. For these recipes the beer was an essential part of the dessert.

I made these with BrewDog’s RipTide and it's a fantastic beer to use. It's rich, strong and packed with chocolate and coffee flavours which means that it’s got plenty of character to shine out and not get lost in the baking or the freezing.

The ice cream is glorious; it’s thick and creamy and it has this absolutely perfect depth of chocolate from the stout. It really is stunning. The cupcakes are light, moist, chocolatey, chewy. The best things about both of these treats are; 1) you can make the ice cream and the cakes at the same time, from just one 330ml bottle of stout; 2) they taste great together, especially if the cakes are still warm, or are delicious on their own; and 3) my girlfriend - who hates beer - absolutely loved both of these. That shocked me and made me smile - I finally won her over with beer, even if it was in dessert form. I challenge anyone who ‘doesn’t like beer’ to not like either of these.

If you wanted to use another beer then I’d suggest a fairly robust stout full of roasted grain flavours, rich, sweet and strong, but not overly hopped (too much hop bitterness in the ice cream leads to a dry tannic finish, which is odd). I reckon Thornbridge’s St Petersburg Imperial Stout would make incredible ice cream, as would Samuel Smith’s Imperial Stout and Oatmeal Stout or the Foreign Extra Guinness. I tried making the ice cream with BrewDog’s Isle of Arran (10% imperial stout aged in whisky casks) and that worked well, just use less beer to compensate for the extra ABV strength. I really want to try an IPA ice cream, probably with fruit juice added to sweeten the hop bitterness, I just don’t know if it’ll work?! There’s only one way to find out…

One note before we jump in. The beer should be poured and rested before you cook with it. You don’t want it cold and you don’t want bubbles in it.


RipTide Ice Cream

I favour the simple approach to ice cream which avoids any of the worrying custard making. I just use condensed milk and double cream and it’s perfect every time.

• 400ml can condensed milk
• 1 pint double cream
• 150ml-200ml stout
• Splash of vanilla extract

Mix the milk and cream and add the vanilla and 150ml of the beer, stirring it all together. Give it a taste. You’ll get all the sweet roast grain flavours in there and if you think it needs more beer than add more – make it to your taste (bear in mind that once the ice cream is frozen the flavours will be less pronounced, so don’t err on the side of caution). Next just churn it in an ice cream machine. It goes from nought-to-frozen in half an hour, but you may need to give it extra time in the freezer to set it hard, depending on your machine. And that’s it.

RipTide Cupcakes

Makes 12

The cupcakes:

• 125g softened butter
• 100g dark sugar
• 100g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 175g plain flour
• ¼ teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 150ml stout
• 50g cocoa powder
• 50g dark chocolate

The icing:

• Tub soft cream cheese
• 25g icing sugar
• 25g cocoa powder
• Drop of vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180C. Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and beat in. Fold in the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt and stir together. Add the stout bit by bit and work it in to make a thick batter. Grate the dark chocolate into this batter. Pour the mix into muffin cases and bake for 18-20 minutes.

When they are done allow them to cool while you make the icing. Do this by mixing the tub of cream cheese (low fat is fine) with the icing sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla (the cocoa powder isn't strictly essential if you don't fancy a chocolatey icing). Taste it and add more of each if required – you want it just sweet but not sickly and overpowering. These cakes are great without even adding the icing.

The best beer to serve with this? That’s obvious; the beer you cook with. RipTide is ideal as it’s got the perfect oomph of strength to stand up to the sweetness in each (it’s especially good with the cakes). You will want a big strong beer because if you’ve been making little cupcakes all afternoon and there’s flour in your hair/beard then you will need something to toughen you up again. Enjoy.

Christmas Leftovers

Christmas Day is my favourite day of the year and Christmas dinner is my favourite meal of the year. My best food-day of the year is Boxing Day, when the piles of leftovers (which we were sickened to look at the day before) become glorious mountains of unlimited joy.

King is the Christmas Leftover Sandwich (I capitilise it because it deserves it). It needs bread, thick slices of turkey, stuffing, a sausage wrapped in bacon, a potato if you have any left and then something sweet and lubricating like a good chutney. That is food perfection. So far I’ve had five of these.

The leftover hash comes second on the hierarchy in my opinion: squishing all the uneaten veg together and then frying it until it’s crispy on the outside. What a delight.

This year I made main and dessert from leftovers.

Christmas Risotto (aka Turkey, Stilton and Cranberry Risotto)

There is always always always turkey and stilton in the fridge in the days after Christmas. This is a good thing. The addition of cranberries is for a festive sweetness which perfectly eases through the richness of the cheese and rice.

This serves 2

• Chicken or vegetable stock – 1 pint, maybe a little more
• 1 large white onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
• Arborio rice – 150-175g, more if you’re ravishingly hungry
• White wine – a splosh if you have it, it isn’t essential
• Turkey – cooked and chopped/torn into small pieces
• Stilton, or any blue cheese – 100g, or so
• Dried cranberries – a handful, chopped
• Peas – a handful per person
• Butter and olive oil – a knob and a drizzle
• Sage and/or rosemary leaves, finely chopped (no woody stalk)
• Sea salt and black pepper

In a deep pan, sweat the onion and garlic in butter and oil until soft, then add the sage and/or rosemary leaves and stir through for a minute. Add the rice and coat in the sweet buttery-oil juices.

In another pan you will want your stock slowly warming. Add the turkey to the stock. When the rice starts to snap, crackle and pop add the wine. If you are not adding wine then go straight to the stock, adding a ladle-full at a time and being careful to keep the turkey from falling onto the rice (we add that later, you see). Keep adding the stock, bit by bit, as the rice sucks it all up. After 10 minutes add the peas and cranberries. Add more stock until the rice is cooked (it should be soft but still have an ever-so-slight nutty ‘bite’ in the middle).

Add the cheese (and some more butter, if you like) and the turkey from the stock and cover the pan, leaving it to rest for a minute or two, in this time the cheese will melt and ooze its wonderfulness throughout. Adjust the seasoning and serve in a deep bowl with more blue cheese crumbled over the top.

I would serve Innis & Gunn Triple Matured with this, like I did with Christmas dinner, as the creaminess in the dish would work well with the buttery oak in the bottle, while the sweet bites of cranberry would compliment the beer’s sweetness. If you want something different then try Cains Fine Raisin Beer for a strong malty backbone with a kick of sweetness, or maybe a bottle of Old Crafty Hen which is oaky, rich, vinous with dried fruit sweetness and a hoppy, palate-cleansing swipe to finish.

Main course done, on to dessert and…


Christmas Pudding Ice-Cream



There’s always pudding left and there’s always cream in the fridge, plus I always keep a few cans of condensed milk ready for whenever I want to make ice cream. This is a joyfully fun recipe and the perfect way to use up any leftover pudding.

An ice-cream maker is one of the best kitchen appliances there is, it goes from nought-to-frozen in just 30 minutes, and those minutes are spent huddled around the mixing bowl, mesmerised by the unending twirls of joy and the gradual thickening of the cream. As the churn finishes, it takes all the willpower in the world not to plunge a spoon straight in and finish off the whole lot, especially as it has that just-beginning-to-soften texture that is simply irresistible. If you haven’t got an ice-cream machine then go and get one in the sales.

This makes about a litre but can easily be increased with more cream and condensed milk.

• Leftover Christmas pud
• A pint of double cream
• A can of condensed milk
• A splash of brandy (50ml, or so)

This recipe is so easy. Mix the cream and condensed milk, add a slash of brandy and drop in chunks of Christmas Pud and then churn in an ice-cream machine. Done.

Do you want a beer with this?! If you do then you’ll need something big and strong, rich and full of flavour. An Imperial Stout would work, preferably a barrel aged one. Brakspear’s Triple is another possibility or maybe a bottle of Guinness Foreign Extra. Dare I suggest that you’d be better off enjoying the ice-cream and then opening a beer? Some dishes just don’t need a beer to go with them.

And that’s how I dealt with the Christmas Day leftovers this year.