Marinated lamb leg steaks and Hacker Pschorr Weissbier

 Primarily, please allow me to apologise for the long time since I have written this blog. This has been caused by a health scare that meant that I was not in a place to write about food and especially drink for a while. However, all is now well and I am back at my keyboard. I am going to continue to write about the matching of beer with food until I run out of beers or ideas.

It has been a beautiful Spring in the UK. Much warmer and drier than usual and there has been plenty of sun. This means that all over the country men (and it is mainly men) are getting out their rusty BBQ grills and filling them with charcoal. I am no exception to this norm! I have a tiny little grill which folds up on itself for storage this is plenty enough for two people though I would probably get one far larger if I was feeding a gang.

Below is a recipe for a marinated lamb leg steak cooked over charcoal. It made enough for 3 in reality but certainly enough for 2 greedy Brits.

• 2 lamb steaks
• 2 tbsp pomegranate molasses
• 3 minced garlic cloves
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• Juice of half a lemon
• pinch of salt
• 1 handful of fresh mint (shredded)
• Salad leaves
• 50 gms pomegranate seeds
• a few parmesan shavings 
• a smear of humous
• 2 tbsp vinaigrette 
• 1 large ciabatta loaf

Mix the molasses with the oil , lemon juice, garlic, salt and mint in a shallow dish. Add the lamb and coat all over. Pop in the fridge for, at least, a couple of hours.

Light your grill and give it plenty of time for it to come up to heat. Slice the ciabatta in half along its length and toast the open sides on the grill. Smear the humous over the bottom side of the loaf. 

Get the steaks on the grill and cook to your liking (probably medium to medium rare for lamb). Then, and this is really important, allow your lamb to rest for quite a bit longer than you imagine - about the same length of time as they took to cook.

Add the salad leaves to the vinaigrette (you could even add one or two mint leaves here). Throw in the pomegranate seeds. Then pile the salad on the bread. Slice up the lamb and pop it on top. 

A few parmesan shavings over it all, then put the lid on your sandwich and take a short minute to enjoy how beautiful it looks and what a genius you are and then slice it and serve.

The Match

Hacker-Pschorr is one of the great breweries of Munich. It is, however, difficult to truly say when it was founded: maybe in 1417, the first records of the Hacker brewery or 1813 when Joseph Pschorr bought the brewery from his father in law having married into the Hacker family or even 1972 when they became a single company in law! They are now owned by massive beer corporations but maintain their brewing independence and produce some cracking beers. 

I make no secret of my abiding love of German wheat beers and this is one of the classics. Golden honey to look at, it has banana, clove and vanilla on the nose. Then comes a rich, soft mouth feel with more banana and spice. It finishes long and demands that you take another gulp.

It matched beautifully with the lamb adding spice and depth whilst being strong enough to work with some pretty powerful flavours. (Then again, I would say that, wouldn't I?)