Baked potato and Chiltern Brewery Session IPA

Sometimes life comes down to a few ingredients and a nice beer. This is an extreme version of that sentiment. Please do not think that this dish, however humble, is anything other than heroic. There are occasions when a potato "baked in its jacket" is the only answer. Hearty, filling, comforting and full of memories, this is home cooking at its most kind. The only problem with a baked potato is the fact that it is very difficult to get a really good one if you eat out. Ever since the demise of "Spud you like", it is almost impossible to get a decent jacket spud to eat outside the home. This is nearly always a dish that is best served sitting on your own sofa. Of course you can baked beans, chilli or, if you are a bit misguided, coleslaw but I have decided to go with simple butter and cheese. I'll leave the volumes up to you.

 Baking a potato

• Large fluffy spuds
• Salt
• Butter
• Cheese (Entirely your choice)  

Wash the potatoes in cold water and through some salt over then so it sticks to the skin. Make sure you piece the skin of each potato a couple of times (you do not want one of them to blow up in your oven, or worse, in your hand. I carry the scars still).

Put the potatoes on the bars of your oven at a medium hot level until they are clearly done. 

Take the potatoes out of the oven and lay a tea towel over them. Tap each one with your hand, just hard enough to break the skin. remove the tea towel. Break open the the spuds and slide in quite a bit of butter. Pop them on the plate, open them a bit and pour on the grated cheese. 

Add salad or any other stuff you want -Cold cuts, preserved meats, and smoked fish all work well here.  

   The match

Chiltern Brewery is my local micro. They have been brewing traditional beers in the shadow of the Chiltern hills for over 40 years. They set out to be part of the movement to save cask conditioned ale. This is a beer unique to the UK and thanks to the work of the guys and girls at CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) and a few breweries that held the line, it is starting to thrive again. They have always supplied pubs and done bottles and recently have become a bit more experimental. They tend to do small batch beers in amongst their regular beers. These often celebrate an event or historic moment.

Last year they popped a Session IPA in a can and I loved it. This year they have repeated the deal and its just a touch more hoppy. Make no mistake, this is a really well made beer and coming in at a very low 3.4% abv. It punches seriously above that weight and manages to seem modern but also has its feet firmly in the tradition of English beer making. Its bitterness nicely cuts through the cheese and butter, its malty spine matching neatly with the lovely potato skin.  

Meat Balls and Czech Mates (Budvar and Thornbridge collaboration)

Meat balls turn up in all sorts of cuisines, from Italy to Sweden rolled balls of minced meat are the choice of the frugal chef with a gang to feed. This is real home cooking. You can use all sorts of different minces and, indeed, mix them up. I chose pork for these because it has a large fat content, this means that the meat balls will remain moist on the plate. I decided to make them a bit of a homage to Ikea with a creamy gravy.

• 500 gms of Pork mince
• One small onion, finely diced
• Dash of oil
• 30 gms butter
• 30 gms flour
• 250 ml of rich vegetable stock
• 75 ml of double cream
• Boiled new potatoes and peas to serve
• Redcurrant sauce    

Gently fry the onions in a little oil until they start to soften. Place the cooled, cooked onion in a bowl with the mince. Season with salt and pepper. Squeeze the mix with your hands, making sure its all fully amalgamated and sticky. Divide the mix into 10  and roll into balls. Oil the frying pan and seal of five meat balls at a time, Place all of the meat balls in a roasting dish and pop them in the oven for about 15 minutes until cooked.

In the mean time melt the butter in a small saucepan until foaming. add the flour to create a roux. Slowly add the stock to create a thick rich gravy. Add the cream and bring to the boil. 

Serve the meat balls with the boiled potatoes and peas. Pop a teaspoon of the redcurrant jelly on the side.

The Match

I am quite cross - Nobody told me! When two of your favourite breweries in the world come together to create a great beer, and you completely miss it, you need somebody to blame! 

This beer is lovely, a Czech style premium larger, complete with decoction mash finished with English hops. I purchased mine in Lidl at a price which was very low for the quality of the beer.

As it sat somewhere between Czech larger and English Pale ale it stood up to the meat balls really well, The grassy woodiness of the beer sat with the rustic nature of the meat. There was just enough bitterness from the hops to cut through the creaminess of the gravy.     

Braised Lamb Shanks with Titanic Plum Porter.

• 2 Lamb Shanks
• 2 celery sticks, finely chopped
• 1 carrot, finely chopped
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1tbsp plain flour
• 1 glass red wine (rough as ya like!)
• Lamb or beef stock
• 1 handful of small onions (peeled)
• 1 handful of small button mushrooms
• Mashed potatoes

A few years ago it was possible to pick up lamb shanks for a very little money but now they are a staple of the gastro pub, they are somewhat more expensive. However, they are worth every penny.

Pour a little oil into a medium saucepan with a lid. Brown off the lamb shanks, ensuring that all sides are thoroughly browned. Remove the shanks from the pan and pop on a plate. Add the chopped vegies and brown them too. Add the wine and allow it to reduce by half, throw in the flour and stir. Pop the shanks back into the pot and pour in enough stock to come about 3/4 of the way up the shanks. Put the lid on and boil gently for 90 to 120 minutes, turning the shanks once in a while.

In the meantime pour a little oil into a roasting tin, and put the onions in. roll them about a bit then put in an oven at about 170 c for about 30 minutes.

When the shanks are nearly falling off the bone, lift them out of the liquid and put them on a warm plate, cover with foil. strain the vegies from the gravy and return the liquid to the pan. Add the button mushrooms whole into the liquid. The roasted onions and the shanks can now be added back to the gravy and warm through.

A quick word about mashed potato: Mash the cooked spuds with some butter and some milk or cream. consider how much butter you want to use then double it! I tend to whisk mine a bit at the end.

The Match

If I were matching a wine with lamb I would tend to start with Bordeaux as it's a classic pairing. However, we are matching a beer so, on the basis that a good claret will give flavours of blackcurrant and other red fruit I decided to go with a beer that also offered fruit. Titanic Plum Porter has rapidly become this breweries best seller. For those of us who occasionally like our beers on the dark side this is a superstar! The plum in the mix gives both flavour and sweetness. The match worked very well with the limited bitterness backing up the richness of the gravy.

Toad in the Hole with London Pride

For me, one of the greatest of British comfort foods is Toad in the Hole. Opinion is divided as to what should be in the perfect toad and there is considerable evidence that this dish was originally made with all kinds of meats. Lamb cutlets. beef topside, pork cheeks and, of course, sausages. In essence, as with everything that involves Yorkshire pudding batter, it was a way of making an expensive piece of meat fill more bellies than it probably should.

For those of you who are reading from outside the UK a little explanation on Yorkshire pudding is required. It is actually a very simple flat pancake batter; the sort you would use for Crepes. Just a simple mix of eggs, flour and milk. This is then added to a hot deep roasting tray (one could use the tray that the meat has been roasted in as it rests on the side) or a muffin tin for individual Yorkies. Either way the fat has to be fearfully hot before the batter is added. Traditionally Yorkshire pudding was served only with beef and also sometimes as a starter with gravy to lower the appetite for the expensive meat mail course.   

This is a classic, and with all classics, less is more! Don't mess with near perfection.

Toad in the Hole. (Serves 2)

• 4 good large Butcher's Sausages. 
• Plain Flour. 
• Milk. 
• 1 egg. 
• Salt and pepper

Sieve about 200 gms of flour into a bowl and add enough milk to make it the consistency of single cream add the egg and beat in - DO NOT OVER WHISK - its not a meringue!

Gently fry the sausages, just to seal them then pop them in a high sided roasting tin with a little nugget of lard, dripping, or oil with a high burn point. Pop them in a hot oven and let them sizzle for about 5 minutes. The fat in the tin needs to be really hot, almost smoking. Pull out the tin and pour in the batter so that the edges sizzle and bubble a little. Then its back in the oven and enjoy the magic of a rising Yorkshire pudding. Serve when it is crisp on top and has a bit of fluff underneath. Make sure there is something green and squeaky to go with it and lashings of onion gravy.

For the Toad in thepicture has some streaky bacon wrapped round the sausages, this is not a necessity but I had some spare. I also served it with peas as I didn't have any greens. (I have lifted a lot of this recipe from my previous post of this recipe)

The Match

A British classic dish deserves a classic British beer. I decided to match this dish with another British classic: Fullers London Pride. When I first moved to London for University in 1987 you were either A Young's fan or a Fullers drinker. They were the two largest independent breweries in London. Youngs in Wandsworth and Fullers in Chiswick.

Only Fullers remains and it is now owned by  Asahi, but still brrewing in the same manner. London Pride is named after a little flower which is the first to grow in ruins or land broken up with bricks and rocks. It was particularly important during the Blitz for obvious reasons. It was also the first beer I ever pulled from the cask with a beer engine.

It is a classic "Best Bitter". It is tawny in colour and on the nose it gives clear malt spine with a subtle English hop herby high notes. On the palate it has a sweet maltiness balanced with bitter hops. Nothing about this beer is overdone, all is in balance.

It was a super match with the toad; the malt matched the savour of the batter with just enough hop edge to cut through the fattiness of the sausages. the gravy sat up with the sweetness and reclined with the malt!  

Chicken liver parfait and Toast / Coop Hazy Pale Ale

 Parfait is a pate that is blitzed up after having been cooked, it is very smooth and packed full of livery flavour. I always like to think of this as a dish to make for a lazy lunch before a Six Nations decider! I have also made a Youtube video of the process. (link below)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH0BW5zkZwI&t=533s400gms Chicken Livers

20 gms Butter (cut up into cubes) 50 gms Butter 20 gms Butter Small glass of booze (Sherry, Madeira, Whisky, Rum, Brandy)(optional) Salt Ground Black Pepper Black Peppercorns Pop the 20gms of butter into a hot frying pan. Melt and allow the butter to start foaming. Add the chicken livers and fry (they will spit and bubble) until they are completely cooked on the outside but still a little pink in the middle. Deglaze with the booze (if using) and allow the alcohol to burn off. Add the livers, the cubed butter and the pan juices into a blender and blend until it is smooth (go a little bit longer than you think). Divide up the parfait up between a handful of bowls or ramekins and smooth the surface down. Pop in the fridge for 20 minutes or so. Remove the parfaits from the fridge and cast a few black peppercorns over the top of each one. Melt the remaining butter and pour over the parfaits. Return to the fridge for 24 hours and serve with toast. The toast was made from a raisin and walnut loaf which I made with this particular pate in mind, the recipe will be part of a later post.

The Match

Toast Beers grew from a pressure group / charity called Feed Back. This was the brain child of Tristram Stuart. It was set up in order to encourage people and companies to stop wasting food. His TED talk of 2012 is still very much worth watching to gain some perspective on the level of food waste globally.

https://www.ted.com/talks/tristram_stuart_the_global_food_waste_scandal?language=en

After realising that a great deal of bread was being wasted the team at Feed Back realised that it could be used as an adjunct in brewing and thus fed back into the system.

The mantra that if you want to beat those who are trying to destroy the earth, you have to throw a better party than they are has never rung more true!

This is the gang that were responsible for the Cop 26 box which I blogged about a couple of years ago, they are the kings and queens of collaboration. They have worked with bread producers, other breweries and in this case. high street retailers.

So, to the beer itself: This is a bit of a juicy one very much like a tuned down New England IPA. A citrusy, almost tropical nose gives way to sensible malt backbone. A neat finish with a clean dry edge makes it a lovely match for the parfait. The citrus notes cut the fat of the butter and the richness of the pate giving a clean finish. The malt spine matches up with bread and draws the whole dish together.

Cheese board and Westmalle Dubbel

 Your dinner has been a screaming success, the meal you spent hours on has been greeted with the right amount of "oooohs, argghs" and "how did you make the sauces?". The only thing left is the cheeseboard and what to serve with it!

Before I go on I must put a point of view out here. Traditional French cooking is my usual start point for all things food related and in France they would generally have the cheese course before the pudding and in many ways this is a good idea. However, I think this is one of those things that we Brits get right. A good cheese board is the perfect grazing plate and, when served at the end of the meal, allows everyone to relax and chat on into the small hours whilst helping themselves to little mouthfuls.

Let us first deal with what a good cheeseboard looks like: Primarily, you do not need 14 cheeses on your board. A maximum of 4 different cheeses is all that is required. This will not only make your shopping simple but also mean that you can buy large enough lumps of cheese to make for good keeping. 

Moving on to the carbohydrate: Bread or crackers are both fine. Normally I would make the decision based on what has happened in the meal previously. Balance is everything here. For this board I chose crackers, specifically, Stockan's Oatcakes and Miller's elements Ale (which contain hops). Again, don't feel the need to put 25 different types of crackers on the board, you will simply end up with 25 stale half packs three weeks later.

The other bits on the board are really up to personal choice; though classics would include dried fruit, celery sticks and nuts.  

The cheeses I chose were as follows

• Snowdonia Black Bomber
• St Marcelin
• Highmoor

The Match

It is very easy to fall back on old friends like Port and Madeira though be careful around red wines as often they are a poor match for cheese ( I promise you this is the case). However, this is all about beer so to beer we must look.

Trappist beers are are made within monasteries. Not only do they have to be made in specific holy places but the Monks must be involved in the brewing. This is monitored very strictly and often producers are removed from the list, so it is very difficult to give an exact number of Trappist breweries at any given time. Suffice to say, it's around 15. I must also emphasise at this point that "Trappist" isn't a style of beer it simply denotes the location and the manpower involved.

Westlmalle Dubbel is one of the more available Trappist beers with quite large production. It is very dark brown with a reddish tint. It kicks in at 7% so its not for the faint hearted. It uses secondary fermentation in the bottle and produces a light brown head of foam. On the nose it has a lot of fruit and spice with herbal hints. (almost a dandelion and burdock smell, honestly). On the palate it is rich and sweet with more dried fruit flavours. There is a very clear malt spine in the beer, rich and like wholemeal bread. The finish is both bitter and dry without being too much.

I was very pleased with how it matched the cheese and would happily do this match again.  

Pub Lasagne and Hacker Pschorr, Oktoberfest Marzen

It's controversy time. Not only is Lasagne itself controversial, but one of its ingredients, the Bolognaise sauce, is its own controversy too. Let's start with the sauce:

Bolognaise does not really exist. It's a made up name for a meat and tomato Ragu for pasta. We Brits have taken the idea of a beef and tomato sauce added spaghetti and created a meal that has graces dinner tables all over the country. It has become the ultimate student dish owing to the fact that it can be made reasonably cheaply and batch cooked to gain economies of scale. The interesting thing about this sauce is that so many people claim to have the authentic recipe leading to all sorts of weird arguments and complaints.

Should I use pork and beef mince? Or even veal? Should I use red wine , white wine or just stock? Onion? Garlic? Both? Fresh tomatoes or tins? Beef stock or chicken or even vegetable? There is a plethora of choices and questions on route to the perfect bolognaise sauce. 

Dear reader, let me assure you that it simply does not matter. There is no authentic sauce here. This is, in effect, peasant food, Cucina povera, so work with what is in your fridge. You can go quite light on the meat and bulk up with vegetables and add all kinds of bits and bobs you find. In the past I have added bacon (often), chopped up black pudding (you must try this) and even leftover steak (so very good). As long as the sauce is based on tomato and is thick enough to coat pasta then all is good. By the way, it tends to be much better if it is served with ribbons (taggliatelle, linguine, etc) rather than spag.

And now another controversy: The other sauce. This should probably be a bechamel, made with infused milk, however, I tend to go with a cheese sauce albeit made from scratch. 

You can buy posh fresh pasta sheets or even roll your own but my recipe uses dried.

Pub Lasagne (for a large bunch of people)

• 1kg meat (mince, cooked roast leftovers, little bit of bacon, black pudding)
• Glug of oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 medium carrots, finely chopped
• 2 celery sticks, finely chopped
• 3 to 6 garlic cloves very finely chopped
• 2 tins of plum tomatoes
• 2 beef stock cubes
• 1 small glass of dry sherry
• Salt, pepper, thyme, Oregano.
• 1 large squirt of tomato puree
• 60gms plain flower
• 60gms butter
• 500ml full fat milk
• 200gm mature cheddar
• Dried pasta sheet.

The ragu - Add the oil to a large saucepan ans place over a high heat. when the oil is hot add all of the chopped veg except the garlic. Cook until the tiniest amount of brown is appearing. Remove the veg and pop in a bowl. Now add the beef in batches to brown off, adding the browned meat to the veg. When all the meat is ready add all the meat and veg to the pan with the garlic. Throw in the sherry and allow it to boil for a couple of minutes, then add the tomatoes and stock cubes and a little water. Bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer and leave on a low heat, gently simmering for a couple of hours, topping up with water if necessary. Add the herbs after about an hour.

The cheese sauce - Melt the butter in a medium saucepan and add the flout. thoroughly mix these with a wooden spoon to form a roux and cook for just two minutes. Add a splash of milk and mix like crazy, then another splash slightly larger, again mixing vigorously. ( You may want to switch to a whisk at some stage) Keep adding more and more milk until you have a smooth sauce that coats the back of a spoon. Add the grated cheese stir it in to melt and season with pepper.

Construction - In a huge tin, layer up the lasagne with alternate sauces and pasta sheets until it is full. Make sure your last layer is the cheese sauce. If you have any cheese left sprinkle it over the top then put the whole thing in the oven for 20 minutes. Place in the middle of the table with a big bowl of salad and allow your friends to tuck in.

The Match 

Hacker Pschorr Marzen Oktoberfest is a version of the original beer of the Oktoberfest. Around 1990 the beer of Oktoberfest became the light strong lager we know today as Festbier. However, before that time the beer of chpice for this event was Marzen. It is much more amber than the straw colour of the Festbier, much more like a Vienna lager. It has a lovely nose of nettles, mild spices and herbs. On the palate it is biscuity and doughy but quite rich too. It has a lovely clean finish and despite an abv of nearly 6% it is very drinkable. I chose this beer to match the lasagne because it will cut through the richness of the cheese and pasta whilst matching up to the meaty fullness of the ragu. It also has the feel that you cuold be in a pub with a really solid meal and a pint!