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Category Archives: Beer And Food

Beer and Food: Goose Island and Nota Bene

April 14, 2013 9:19 pm ⋅ 20 Comments ⋅

The other day, I was invited to a lunch launching a couple of Goose Island’s beers in Canada. Specifically, Matilda and Sofie. The Goose Island property is a contentious one, and to attempt to relate the details of the lunch without at least acknowledging some basic facts about the brand and about their perception would reek of incompletion.

As most beer nerds (and I suspect relatively few other people) know, Goose Island was bought out by AB InBev a couple of years ago for about 40 million bucks. Some of the existing personnel have changed over. John Hall, the original owner, stepped down as CEO. Greg Hall, who was the brewmaster is now making craft cider.

There was outcry about the purchase. People swore up and down that they’d never drink the stuff again. Then there was an announcement that some of the beer would be brewed in upstate New York. Again, people more or less lost their minds.

It has been about two years since the takeover, and for better or worse, I had never managed to get to Chicago when it was under the old ownership. I have no platonic ideal of what the product ought to be to compare it to. For me, it holds no sentimental value. I feel like I’m relatively well equipped to talk about the beer and the food that was paired with it without a whole lot of bias.

So, that being said, let’s have a look at what’s going on here.

I'll say one thing for goblet style glasses: they lend your beer a sense of gravitas. A sippy cup would simply not cut it.

I’ll say one thing for goblet style glasses: they lend your beer a sense of gravitas. A sippy cup would simply not cut it.

The launch took place at Nota Bene at lunchtime, and the beer and food pairings were designed by their chef, David Lee. It seems that the beers are more or less exclusive to Nota Bene until the end of April (although, I have heard reports of them popping up in other quarters.) According to a representative for AB InBev, Matilda and Sofie should hit liquor stores the week of April 29th, with other brands following in the nearish future.

The concept of a beer launch in Toronto that is restricted to a restaurant, as opposed to a pub or bar is something of a rarity. I don’t recall that happening before. Even a single location launch is practically unheard of. I believe this to be because of the specialized nature of the Goose Island Vintage Ales. I’m sure that you could drink them by themselves, but they cry out for food. This is not because there is some hole in the flavour profile that needs to be filled, but rather because there is so much nuance throughout. Food teases things out of them.

Take Sofie, for instance, a Belgian Style Farmhouse Ale. It’s a Saison with brettanomyces and it’s aged in neutral oak barrels for three months. Neutral oak, as it was explained, essentially means that the barrels were used for wine at one point, but have been re-used frequently enough that they now only impart oak flavour. The aroma is huge with pear and pepper and tropical fruit and wheat and the mildest touch of barnyard. On the palate it diffuses into ripe peach and kiwi and passion fruit and honey. It finishes dry and is dangerously more-ish. The carbonation is vivacious.P1020516

It was paired here with Poached Nova Scotia Lobster with a Citrus Vinaigrette, Pineapple-Vanilla Reduction, A Foam made from the beer itself and um… Crispies.

Now, the lobster is rich and the carbonation cuts right through that, but there’s nothing particularly revelatory about pairing seafood with saison. Where David Lee’s pairing shines is on the understanding of the periphery. It might seem overly elaborate to include a foam and a reduction and a vinaigrette on the same plate, but all of them hit different tones in the beer. The Pineapple-Vanilla reduction is especially clever because if there’s even a mild note of vanillin from the barrels, it will highlight it. Not mentioned in the brief on the menu was the bed of what I believe were enoki mushrooms. I had never considered it previously, but there is probably some umami component in a bottle conditioned beer that resonates there, creating a detail in pairing that is somehow more about commonality in mouthfeel than flavour. A trick I had never seen before.

Matilda is a Belgian Pale Ale, but no less complex. The aroma I picked up off of it, aside from the cloves and some other baking spice which likely derive from the yeast were stewed apple and possibly persimmon. The hops are Saaz and Styrian Golding, and there’s this quality of depth to it reminiscent of some English Pale Ales which I can really best describe as forest floor; that hint of herbal dampness in brisk autumn.

Matilda is so much clearer than other belgian pale ales I've tried that at first I assumed that it would be more like a Belgian Amber. I was wrong.

Matilda is so much clearer than other belgian pale ales I’ve tried that at first I assumed that it would be more like a Belgian Amber. I was wrong.

It was paired with a Suckling Pig and Boudin Noir tart with Maple-Smoked Bacon, Mushrooms, Arugula and Truffle Vinaigrette.

See how the arugula is reminiscent of Oak leaves? Isn't that clever? I don't know if he intended it that way, but I'm given to understand that authorial intent died with modernism.

See how the arugula is reminiscent of Oak leaves? Isn’t that clever? I don’t know if he intended it that way, but I’m given to understand that authorial intent died with modernism.

Looking back now at the plating, I wonder whether David Lee came to the same conclusion I did: Matilda is an Autumn. From the plating up through the pastry to the mushrooms to the staggering variety of pork, he’s practically recreating that forest floor, layer by layer. The suckling pig is (and I hate to use the word) unctuous and the boudin is surprisingly light. The bacon and crackling are, I suspect, just there to round out the concept of the pig rooting for truffles. It is not so much a pairing of beer and food as an evocation of October.

You can see why they chose Nota Bene. David Lee should really be doing this kind of thing more frequently, as he clearly has some insights into how pairing beer and food should work.

As to the Goose Island beers, let me say this, if you’re concerned about the takeover: Both Matilda and Sofie are lovely, complex beers. If you’ve had them before, I would advise to seriously consider should you find there to have been a decrease in quality, whether it is imagined. If you haven’t had them before, you’re in for a treat.

As for the launch at Nota Bene, I have to suggest to you that I have not seen anyone pair to the whole flavour profile of a beer like David Lee. The specialty menu is on until April 30th.

Posted in: Beer and Food, Reviews ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

In Which I Plug The Brewer’s Plate

April 11, 2013 4:47 pm ⋅ 2 Comments ⋅

I’m sitting here and I’m trying to come up with an interesting and insightful way to plug The Brewer’s Plate.

I mean, you could go with “It’s one of the premiere events of the Toronto beer scene!” or “It just keeps getting bigger and better!” or “I know $125.00 seems like a bit of a spend, but it’s a better value than last year since there’s even more stuff!” or “They support a marvelous charity called Not Far From The Tree that you should look at!” or “Jamie Kennedy’s going to be there, and he’s a pretty nice guy” or “Hey, wanna learn about beer and food?! This is the place to do it!”

Any or all of these things would be accurate things to say about it. I could plug previous editions that I’ve written about, like the one from two years ago at the Wychwood Artscape Barns. That was a nice day, except for the rather startling man on stilts trying to navigate through an increasingly compact throng.

But the truth is that just about everyone has already done it.  I was asked if I’d get the word out about the event, and unfortunately, I just couldn’t figure out a way to make it play nationally in the newspaper, because I suspect there’s nothing worse than reading about an event you really want to go to in another province that you can’t possibly get to. I mean, there’s some disgruntled foodie in Edmonton who’s looking at that if it’s an article and thinking “Curse your eyes, Jordan St. Whatsit, you slightly tipsy scribbler! This is not relevant to my interests in an immediate way although possibly we could steal the idea!”

I mean, I can’t even give it the Craft Beer Advent Calendar treatment with the bad doggerel. What am I going to do, rhyme it in Homeric couplets? It would be a challenge to try that with some of the chefs’ last names. Karen Vaz for instance could only merit Hudibrastic poetry given that she works at the Rebel House (and even then only if you’re a cockney). There was a brief appeal in that Barbara Frum and Atrium seem like a natural.

The brewer’s plate is going to be excellent. I don’t know exactly what the highlights are going to be. There are celebrity chefs in addition to the regular chefs this year.  There are more regular chefs than there were last year! One of them is Howard Dubrovsky, who cooked what was possibly the best beer and food pairing event I’ve ever been to! His seafood chowder was so good I considered offering him an involuntary unpaid internship at St.John’s Wort.

There’s so much stuff that you’ll never get through all of it. There’s just no chance. You could be three people and you’d still never manage it. There’s a silent auction! You might win stuff! It’s going to be exciting. There’s going to be music and people and entertainment and slightly drunken revelry and people are going to have a really, really good time.

So buy a ticket already and send a shirt to the dry cleaners. It’s going to be awesome!

Posted in: Beer and Food, Shameless Plugs ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

Beer and Food – Charcut

February 23, 2013 3:13 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

Probably the highlight of Alberta so far was dinner at Charcut Roast House, which has garnered a reputation as one of the best new restaurants in Canada. I didn’t realize, when I saw it on the itinerary exactly why I knew what it was. It turns out that the chef is Connie DeSousa, who was a solid competitor on Top Chef Canada Season One. When I started looking into it a little more, I found out that this is a place that has developed a practically cultish following as a result of its cuisine and because of their Alley Burgers. The idea was that the restaurant would periodically inform the public through social media that  there was going to be a set number of burgers offered through the alley door of the restaurant. I’d say that if you can get people to line up in -35 degree weather, it’s got to be a pretty exceptional burger.

I was mostly interested in Charcut because they are one of the only restaurants in Canada with a beer sommelier on staff. This makes complete sense since the menu deals with shared platters of hugely beer friendly food. Kirk Bodnar prefers the moniker of Beer Steward. We have a lot in common. We’re both Cicerone Certified Beer Servers and we’re both waiting to hear back about the results of the Cicerone exams that we’ve recently taken.

When you’re faced with a menu like that at Charcut, there’s a wheelhouse of flavours that anyone pairing beer is going to be extremely confident working with. Connie picked the menu, resulting in a situation in which Kirk was forced to pair beer with each course on the fly.

Now, it has to be said that after four days of hobbling gently about Alberta with a broken arm and a mildly sprained ankle, that my appetite was not completely suited to the vast outpouring of dishes from the kitchen. I gave it my best shot.

The head really is the most delicious part of the pig.

The head really is the most delicious part of the pig.

You know that you’re in for a treat when the amuse bouche from the kitchen is house made mortadella with bubbling raclette and fresh made brioche. The mortadella is apparently formed in a pig’s head. I hear that Connie has the ability to debone a pig’s head in less than half a minute, which may well fall into Bill Brasky urban legend territory. The pairing here was tree hophead, which certainly had enough bitterness and carbonation to cut through all of the elements of the dish, and enough of a malt backbone to play nicely with the sweetness of the raclette and brioche.

Subsequently, dishes simply started arriving. Bone Marrow with Escargot Gratin. House made pretzels with a cheese dip and pickled vegetables. Tuna Conserva with a salad of arugula.

Bone Marrow and Escargot Gratin

Bone Marrow and Escargot Gratin

P1020437

Tuna Conserva and Arugula

Tuna Conserva and Arugula

Kirk chose two beers for the appetizer course. A Munich Helles and an Schneider Weisse Aventinus. While the Aventinus tended to compromise the subtlety of the Bone Marrow and the Tuna, it was a dead certainty for the house made pretzels and cheese dip. The highlight of the course was the Tuna Conserva, with its lightly pickled (either new or fingerling) potatoes and its nuanced kick of citrus. The Munich Helles complimented the citrus perfectly and never interfered with the delicate mouthfeel of the tuna.

The realization that my eyes were bigger than my stomach arrived at approximately the same time as the plethora of entrees. There was the Share Burger, with its garlic sausage patty, cheese curd and fried egg (which explains completely why you’d stand in an alley late at night freezing your area off.) There was the Duck Fat Poutine with a truffle gravy. A Double Cut Pork Chop with Smoked Baked Beans and Aged Cheddar Cornbread. Although I didn’t realize it for several minutes, a butcher’s steak with chimichurri and matchstick potatoes nestled gently under a nonchalant bunch of arugula. Also, there was a salad, which was delicious but almost entirely disregarded by the table as the meat fever gripped us.

Pork and beans and cornbread. Deceptively complex and definitely worth the trip by itself.

Pork and beans and cornbread. Deceptively complex and definitely worth the trip by itself.

Everything, all at once.

Everything, all at once.

A truly excellent salad, which we, heathens that we are, mostly ignored.

A truly excellent salad, which we, heathens that we are, mostly ignored.

Kirk decided on three beers to pair with this course. A Naramata Nut Brown Ale, an Affligem Dubbel and the Ayinger Celebrator Doppelbock. Now, to be fair, it should be pointed out that any of these in combination with any of the dishes would probably have been an excellent pairing if only because of the character of the dark malts. I have a theory that the maillard reaction that takes place in the malting process and during the boil helps pairings with meat that has been prepared through a dry cooking method. Grilling, roasting, frying, even a braise will probably produce complimentary flavour compounds because of maillard browning.

That said, the subtleties of pairing are really about the minor elements of a dish. Kirk mentioned at this point that he is in favour of pairing with underlying flavours of a dish, and I agree. The Affligem Dubbel really does a number on the truffle in the Duck Fat Poutine’s gravy. The Celebrator pairs wonderfully with the smoke in the baked beans and compliments as well the smoked paprika that was in the rub for the pork. It even makes sense culturally. If ever a cuisine was Pork-centric, it was Germany’s. That southern fixin’s would slot in alongside makes perfect sense. The earthy qualities of the Naramata Nut Brown even picked up herbal elements of the Chimichurri sauce (possibly oregano if I understand the milieu.)

There was dessert, which I’ll mention only briefly since I had reached the point where I was begging for slightly more mercy than Uncle Jesse.

For me, the highlight here is the Apple Pie Gelato, and I am a pie hating man.

For me, the highlight here is the Apple Pie Gelato, and I am a pie hating man.

The dessert beer was a 2008 Brooklyn Chocolate Stout, which had picked up some sherry like notes as a result of the slight oxidizing that takes place through age. That it would work with the chocolate dessert was a given. More surprising was the support it lent the preserved cherry cheesecake and the apple pie gelato. (An apple pie gelato could easily be a one note experience, but this remained tart despite significant sweetness and pronounced cinnamon.)

Proper glassware is important, as any good beer steward knows.

Proper glassware is important, as any good beer steward knows.

People praise Charcut for its food, and that praise is clearly well deserved. There are, however two things you should know about Charcut:

1)      It should be one of the prime beer destinations in Calgary. There are nine carefully chosen draught lines and approximately twenty five bottled beers. Thanks to Kirk’s expertise, not a single one of these is a dud. The staff has been educated on the subject and this is an excellent place to experiment with the potential of pairing beer and food if you’re unfamiliar with the concept or uncomfortable trying it at home.

2)      You’re going to either want to skip lunch before going to Charcut or bring a small army of confreres with you. To say that the portions are generous would be to do them a disservice. They are practically Brobdingnagian.

Posted in: Beer and Food, The North American Tour ⋅ Tagged: , , , ,

Beer and Food: Belgium and Lancashire, Together At Last

January 3, 2013 7:48 am ⋅ 2 Comments ⋅

Alright. Let’s say that you got up at O Dark Thirty on December 12th and you went out and stood in the line at the LCBO with a bunch of other poor bewildered sods who hadn’t ingested enough coffee to qualify as anything other than “shambling horde.” You stood in line in temperatures that would normally make you get a second pair of woolen socks and you managed to get a ticket for the Westvleteren XII at the liquor store only to find that you were probably going to have to wait another hour before the heavens parted and the manager saw fit to open the store so that you can get your monastic zymurgy on.

Good for you. You just purchased an excellent beer! Well done on remembering to bring your mittens.

If you were one of the happy go lucky folks balancing your eighty dollar purchase in one hand on the way to the car, I’m betting that you’re probably not suffering from any kind of apprehension about what to do with those beers now that you’ve got them. Maybe you were in line for someone who had to go in to work. Maybe you had a really expensive night in front of the TV. The point is that these are your beers and you can do whatever you want with them. Once you’ve actually purchased the thing, you can do the world’s most expensive beer bong for all I care.

For some of the beer nerds over in the Bartowel.com thread, there was actual panic involved in the situation. They didn’t know how they were possibly going to get their hands on the thing. There was a sense, I think, of unfairness that people who had been waiting for this beer to come to the LCBO since July might not be able to get any of it, being that the release really didn’t provide enough information to guarantee that you could show up at the right time at the right place. Sure, an afternoon of phone calls and pooled resources would help with that, but once that information is posted on a public board, you’re really no better off than any schmuck with a search engine.

I think that for some people who actually managed to get their hands on the Westvleteren XII, there will be a certain amount of agonizing over how best to enjoy it. You know: whether a situation is special enough to break out some of the secret stash. For some, just the fact that it is Tuesday will suffice. For others, the Leafs actually winning the Stanley Cup might not.

Regardless of your personal feelings on the matter, the fact remains that opening a thirteen dollar bottle of a beer that you will probably never be able to buy legitimately at retail again constitutes AN EVENT. For that reason, I’m going to go so far as to suggest that you should probably have it with friends. And that you should probably have it with food. For that reason, I’ve come up with what I think is a pretty good pairing for Westvleteren XII, and having now tested it during one of Brock Shepherd’s last nights at Burger Bar (to a diminutive but captive audience), I’m ready to share it with you.

One of the really great things about the XII at the moment is the fact that it’s pretty aggressively carbonated because it’s still young. This means that it has the ability to scour fat right off the palate. It’s a little bit rustic at the moment since the flavours haven’t come together yet. You get dried fruit that changes with every sip. It’s raisin, it’s cherry, it’s date or fig depending on how that sip attacks you. Mostly it’s raisin, but there’s some variability in there. There’s also a certain amount of toffee and a significant Belgian yeast character.

For that reason, I decided to try it out with a fairly rustic raisin pastry originally from Lancashire called Eccles Cake. You might think it odd to pair an teatime specialty with a Trappist beer, but I think it makes sense, not merely because of the filling, but because of the butter and sugar content in the pastry. Michael Jackson suggested that the XII was all pale malt with the majority of the other flavour coming from candi sugars. This way, you match not only the dried fruit character with the raisins, but it matches the sweetness of the non fermentable stuff from the candi sugar. The carbonation is aggressive enough to lift the fat from the butter.

Of course, that’s not all that interesting by itself. It merely compliments the factors already in play. If you serve the Eccles cake with a small amount of Stilton, you end up with an additional element that provides two important things: salt content, which contrasts the sweetness in both the beer and the cake, and a small amount of that blue mold character. Now, the yeast in the Westvleteren XII isn’t cheesy or butyric, but the mold in the stilton serves to heighten very slightly the yeast character in the beer. It’s not something that you would necessarily think that you want, but it works very nicely.

My feeling, as per usual, is that if you’re going to borrow a recipe in order to do beer and food pairing, you may as well steal from the best. In this case, I’ve lifted the recipe from Heston Blumenthal in the attached link. He suggests a potted stilton, and I think that might be a better idea if you are saving the beer for a little while. Once it ages slightly and the rougher edges come off it, you might not want the full flavour of stilton by itself.

At any rate, this is the kind of thing that will help to make a couple of the bottles of your stash of Westvleteren XII special, if only because the recipe provides so many Eccles cakes that you’ll need to share.

I'm sure that this is not the proper glassware for this beer. However, it did make me feel a little like John Steed on The Avengers

I’m sure that this is not the proper glassware for this beer. However, it did make me feel a little like John Steed on The Avengers

Posted in: Beer and Food ⋅ Tagged: , , ,

Set up a brewery in Kingston, already!

December 31, 2012 12:23 am ⋅ 6 Comments ⋅

Although I grew up in Toronto, I spent a year after university living in Kingston. I like Kingston, but I never really felt as though I understood it. The downtown is laid out as a sort of Triangle, and the bar scene at the time was more or less based on the fact that Queen’s students enjoy cheap beer. The pleasant limestone construction can impose itself on your imagination as you make your way through streets blasted by winter wind. I am comparatively pleased that I wasn’t there for the Ice Storm, since I have seen the six foot icicles that hang off those roofs during the best of winters.

I don’t mean to hold forth on the character of the city overmuch, as that is clearly the bailiwick of Alan McLeod. I will content myself with having my column appear periodically in the Kingston Whig-Standard.

One of the things that always struck me is that this is a city of over a hundred thousand, halfway between Toronto and Ottawa and that no one has seen fit to build a brewery there. It’s more or less ripe for the picking, but without some investment of time or effort, there will not be a brewery there. I think that a proper brewery in Kingston is something of an inevitability.

I’m not entirely discounting the presence of the Kingston Brewing Company, which has a very nice pub, but I’m of the opinion that the shot they took at Ontario market might not work in the current climate. The Dragon’s Breath Pale Ale was a well made and thoroughly satisfying beer back at the turn of the century, but I can’t see anyone with the space to bring it back as a contract brew as Hart Brewing once did. It is still a nice place to spend a couple of hours.

The fact of the matter is that Kingston has incredible potential for a craft brewery, and not just for the reason that there is an annual influx of student loan money and enthusiasm for going out on a Friday night. The city has changed somewhat in terms of appreciating what’s around from a culinary perspective. It can lay claim to some of the best charcuterie in the country in the forms of Luke’s Gastronomy and Seed To Sausage (Up Highway 38 near Sharbot Lake). There’s some very nice cheese being made in Wilton. There are some excellent dairies and organic vegetable farms. This is a city where it’s now possible to buy local everything if you know where to shop.

In addition, the pubs that I remember are not the pubs that people are talking about. There was the Tir Na N’og, which benefited massively from the influx of Belgian beers under the Oland company in the mid 90’s. There was the Toucan, which was where bartenders would call their orders in from other pubs when it was time to close down.

It’s something of an amazement to me that less than a decade on, there are a number of pretty decent places serving craft beers, but no brewery.

As a for instance, there’s The Alibi, which, judging by their facebook presence, may as well be in Toronto. They have Spearhead and Boneshaker and even had a Great Lakes one-off in the form of Audrey Hopburn just before Christmas. Of course there are the more locally based breweries in the form of Barley Days and Church Key. This looks to me to be a step in the right direction.

There’s the Iron Duke, which had Muskoka Mad Tom last time I visited. There’s Sir John’s Public House, which is decorated in the manner of an early 19th century public house replete with haggis fritters (I believe it to be a city by-law that there must be at least one drinking establishment in Kingston which features the likeness of Sir John A. MacDonald. Unlike in America where it is “Washington slept here,” in Kingston it’s “MacDonald drank a fifth of gin, passed out, fell down the stairs, got up without a scratch on him and proceeded to debate a portrait of Thomas D’arcy McGee.”) Sir John’s is a marked improvement on the previous incarnation, Johnny Mac’s, which is now a bridal shop.

The place I had heard the most good things about was The Red House. Before I went to Kingston for Christmas, I found that they had a cask of Pinot Noir barrel aged imperial stout from Nickel Brook. Apparently Ryan Morrow visits the area occasionally and brings beer. I wanted to try it because their Bourbon Barrel Aged Imperial Stout “Kentucky Bastard” is a freakin’ monster.

By the time I got to The Red House on Boxing Day, they had run out of that beer, but that turned out to be something of a blessing in disguise. It’s hard to enjoy your dinner if you start out with the imperial stout. Their tap lineup was suffering somewhat as a result of it being the Christmas season. They were even out of Pilsner Urquell, which is something you don’t see much. I take this to mean that patrons are blowing through good beer in Kingston at a decent clip. Encouraging.

This is more or less what I want. Quality and simplicity, rather than a wider variety.

This is more or less what I want. Quality and simplicity, rather than a wider variety.

Not as encouraging as the food. It’s the sort of upscale down home cooking that makes any beer you order better.  My Brother had the leek, potato and bacon soup and the fried chicken sandwich. I had the burger and Caesar salad. We split a side of lentils because… well, how often do you see a side of lentils? (They were delicious if a tad dijon mustard heavy.)

Skipping dessert, we had the charcuterie platter, which the menu doesn’t really do justice to. In addition to what’s described, there was pepperoncini and marinated artichoke and what I think must have been eggplant. It came with local cheese and meat, which must have come from within a hundred kilometers.

All of this was reasonably priced, especially when you consider the effort the care that has gone into creating the menu. The most expensive thing on there is the cassoulet, and I bet it’s excellent. McLeod, who I mentioned earlier, reported having to restrain himself from licking a plate on one visit. If that’s not an overwhelming endorsement, I don’t know what is. If they had more uniform access to really good beer, this would potentially be one of the best pubs in the country.

At some point, there’ll be a brewery in Kingston to take advantage of this new crop of pubs. The stage exists and only needs an actor to make it work. Then again, I thought more or less the same thing three years ago and nothing has happened yet. Eventually, some second year bio-chem student will take up a hobby. There is definitely room to expand your brewery in Kingston. Probably for cheap.

Posted in: Beer and Food, The Ontario Beer Revolution ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

Beer And Food Tuesday: Carbonara Alla Morana

November 20, 2012 10:08 pm ⋅ 9 Comments ⋅

For those of you that have just joined the craft beer scene in the last couple of years, it’s worth pointing out that Bar Volo wasn’t always a beer bar with a light menu. At one point in the late 80’s, it was an Italian restaurant. After a while it became an Italian restaurant with beer. It further evolved into a beer bar with Italian food. Then came the nanobrewery and, with kitchen space at a premium, an expanding audience and wait times for food frequently outstripping forty minutes (about two pints, for those of you who tell time by pints), it became Bar Volo as it currently stands.

They changed with the times, somewhat to the chagrin of the regulars. Roger Pettet would sometimes ask me if I could write a blog piece about how the bar was changing, probably with the aim of stopping it from changing overmuch. The problem is that with Bar Volo being a leader in craft beer in Ontario, change was inevitable. It was not a bad thing, necessarily. People seem much happier getting fed quickly. So it goes.

The only issue that I had with the change is that Volo was responsible for a truly great pasta dish in their Carbonara. Periodically, when people wax nostalgic, the Carbonara comes up as one of the only examples of something they wish could come back. (The Puttanesca is also mentioned, as is the Pepperonata (at least by me)).

This is what Carbonara looked like when Volo used to cook it.

One day a couple of weeks ago, I realized that I could rectify that problem for people who missed the Carbonara. Since the Moranas aren’t using it anymore, they were pretty quick to supply me with it. I had tried to get the recipe previously, but it had been a long night and I discovered, after having it explained to me at great length, that I had no idea how the sound recorder on my Blackberry worked.

I emailed Ralph and he gave me the recipe, which I now impart to you:

Two Stages :
1. In a stainless steel bowl add
2 egg yolk
T parmigiana cheese
T Italian parsley
tsp salt
tsp pepper
tsp mixed dried herbs – basil & oregano
Pinch of chilli flakes (optional)
4T of 35% cream – (I just drizzle the cream in. You do not want too much because this is a dryer version of the Carbonara)
Add al dente spaghetti noodles (portion for one person)
Whisk all the ingredients.
Put aside until needed.

2. Heat a pan on medium low heat.
Add half of red onion medium thin slices.
Within 3 minutes add 2 diced smoked bacon.
When the onion and bacon are 3/4 of the way cooked raise the temperature to medium and add the mixture in the bowl.
Toss until all the ingredients are mix.
At this point I add a pinch of salt, pepper from a pepper mill and I grade ricotta salata cheese( asiago also works). I usually add about 2T of cheese and 2 diced fresh sage leaves.
Toss
Taste ( add more salt or pepper if needed)
Pasta is ready pending on how you like it. i like it on the crisp side.
I also like to add pancetta on top of the pasta.

I should point out that there are three things you need to know here.

My version doesn’t look nearly as good, but I don’t have a white plate or a DSLR Camera or any ability to plate food in an aesthetically pleasing way or the inclination to do so when I’m just ripping hungry and want to get to it already. Jeez.

1)      Since you’ve tempered the egg yolks with cream and the other ingredients prior to adding them to the pasta, you’re probably not going to scramble them. This is good news. It is still worth removing the pan from the heat to be safe.

2)      While ½ a red onion seems like a whole big bunch of red onion, it’s actually more or less right as long as you don’t choose the biggest one in the display.

3)      This is a restaurant size portion. At home, this could probably feed two, since it’s quite rich and very filling. I am slipping into food coma territory at the moment.

But what to drink?

Things people have sent me. I’m not sure where the one on the right came from, actually.

Well, people send me things. The fridge is so full that baking soda has developed agoraphobia.

GRANVILLE ISLAND LIONS WINTER ALE

When the folks at Creemore sent this stuff over, I was more excited about the Hops and Bolts. Call me a skeptic, but I haven’t really liked much of the Granville Island stuff I’ve tried. The Pale Ale is lodged squarely in the 80’s. The Hefeweizen is fair to middling.

The Lion’s Winter Ale is surprising in that it contents itself with a healthy bill of dark malts, a relatively creamy texture and a strong hit of vanilla. It is actually mildly reminiscent of Dieu Du Ciel Aphrodisiaque. I was a little shocked that the pairing works here. The sweetness of the malt and the vanilla actually play with the caramelization that the onions have gone through and there’s enough carbonation to lift the fat off the palate and refresh for the next bite. Oddly enough, the texture is the big thing. It’s creamy enough to play to the sauce while stripping it off your tongue.

I shouldn’t be surprised given that the Granvillers provided this recipe for pairing.

CAMERON’S RPA

It is always good to choose appropriate glassware. In this case, I’ve chosen branding over propriety.

As I think we’re all aware, Cameron’s RPA is one of the better IPAs available in Ontario at the moment. It’s going into year round production soon. It has five malts, seven hop varieties and at least one hand picked variety of water. It’s delicious. It may not have a whole lot of noticeable rye character, but who cares when the overall product is this good? Caramel Malt and Pine and Citrus and Tropical Fruit and Joy.

It paired terribly. The hops just blew the Carbonara out of the damn water. It’s too big. It’s too bitter. It somehow fails to cut the fat in the cream sauce and the bitterness coats the tongue. If there was a single ingredient it might have had some interplay with it was the oregano. Not enough.

Don’t get me wrong. Love the beer, but this application was a loser. It was a bad choice on my part.

AECHT SCHLENKERLA RAUCHBIER

I was dreading this one.

Ralph suggested a smoked beer. I haven’t ever really liked this beer, but it was the smoked beer that I had on hand. Sometimes I’ll use it to braise a pork shoulder.

I don’t know if it’s ingredient creep, but the smoked malt doesn’t seem as pronounced as it once did. Probably, a slight whiff of smoke in Imperial Stouts is acclimatizing me. What it manages to do very nicely is accentuate the bacon and the smoke there, and in turn the salt content. There’s enough malt character to hold its own against the onions.

While it worked nicely as a pairing, I still didn’t quite manage to finish the bottle, although I admit that in the proper culinary application, this works. It’s just that I wouldn’t drink it without food.

WHAT DID WE LEARN

Oddly, the winner here in terms of pairing was Granville Island Lions Winter Ale. The shocking thing is that it might work even better if you throw a pinch of nutmeg at the cream sauce. I’ve seen that in some carbonara recipes.

Also, we learned that it is good to be friends with Ralph Morana. He’s the Godfather of the Ontario Craft Beer Scene. If you go against the Morana family, you might wake up with the neck of a bottle of Rolling Rock next to you.

 

 

Posted in: Bar Volo, Beer and Food ⋅ Tagged: , , , ,

Beer and Food Tuesday: Temple Bar, Cambridge

November 6, 2012 10:44 am ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

Recently, I was flown to Boston to visit the Sam Adams Brewery. While we’ll no doubt get to the brewery tour itself later in the week once the experience has had some time to percolate through the ol’ grey matter, I wanted to talk about something that Sam Adams is doing right.

Once a month, or thereabouts, Sam Adams hosts a beer dinner at Temple Bar in Cambridge, just a couple of blocks up from Harvard. Coming from Toronto, where beer and food pairing is something that happens at a rotating series of restaurants and comprises great effort on the part of individuals like Greg Clow or of brewery reps, it’s somewhat surprising to see an attempt at continuity between a brewery and a restaurant.

Temple Bar does an upscale bistro take on what I suppose you would call Yankee cuisine, with a focus on seasonal ingredients. They have a wide selection of beers on tap, including small brewers like Jack’s Abby, and Pretty Things in addition to larger properties like Harpoon and Sam Adams. The beer menu is nearly as long as the wine menu. That’s an encouraging sign in and of itself.

Todd, shrouded in darkness, spends a contemplative moment with his beer.

Our host for the evening was Todd Bellomy, who is the Consumer Relations Representative for Sam Adams. He is one of the biggest beer nerds that ever sighted a refractometer. He makes Sake in his spare time. He’s all about beer and food, having spent years working in kitchens as an undergrad. This is a man who held forth eloquently for nearly ten minutes on “Beer Cheese” at one point in the evening, going so far as to highlight the advantages of various types of cheddar that might profitably be employed for this application.

Clearly, we were going to get along just fine.

The novel thing about the relationship between Temple Bar and Sam Adams is the way that it works. Before there were beer dinners, Todd showed up at Temple Bar and gave executive chef Greg Boschetti and his staff a bunch of beer to play with. The cases included a few bottles of everything that Sam Adams makes. The goal wasn’t to come up with a focused menu that would persist as a feature, but rather to see what a talented group of people could come up with if they were given license to play with the pairings. It has been over a year since this program started and so far they have repeated a total of one dish, but Todd was quick to point out that the beer pairing was different so that may not really count.

Before we get into the beer dinner proper, I have an observation about Sam Adams and regionalism. In the bread basket, there was a delicious Boston Brown Bread. I noticed, over the couple of days that I was in Boston, that most of the Sam Adams core lineup seems to have crystal 60 malt as part of its DNA. It seems like you get some of that malt character in the Boston Lager, Winter Lager and Oktoberfest. It goes extremely well with the molasses heavy brown bread, and I find myself wondering whether there was some intentional mirroring of a traditional cuisine or whether it was a subconscious thing on the part of the brewers, who may have been influenced by what was around. It’s possible I’m imagining it. Either way, it’s worth replicating at home as an experiment. I’m hoping I can shake the recipe for the bread out of them with a polite email.

FEZZIWIG STEAMED PEI MUSSELS: Chorizo, Jalapeno, Cumin-Cilantro Butter, Grilled Baguette. Paired with Winter Lager

Mussels are pretty much beer food. I know people who cook them with wine, but those people are wrong and should feel bad.

This is an interesting combination, because the Chorizo leeches a smoky paprika into the broth that compliments the heat from the jalapeno and the earthiness from the compound butter. It is probably déclassé to sop up broth with sourdough at a place like Temple Bar. I did so unapologetically. Winter Lager showed up in Ontario without much fanfare and it was never really advertised that it contains orange peel, ginger and cinnamon. It’s subtle, so that I’m not sure the mixture is immediately obvious if you drink it by itself. As a pairing, the orange played off the cilantro and the malt from the Fezziwig matched the Winter Lager.

The speed with which this bucket filled with shells is an indicator of how wrong the wine people are.

BOSTON LAGER POACHED PEAR & CRISPY DUCK RILLETTE: Caramelized Blue Cheese, Baby Greens, Balsamic-Lager Reduction. Paired with Latitude 48 IPA

Not only customizable, but pretty.

This is designed as a plate where you can combine different flavours in order to discover what works with the beer pairing. Each of the individual components would work with the IPA. The rillette and blue cheese, with their fat and salt, play with the mouthfeel and carbonation of the beer and also with the malt sweetness from the crystal 60 (those dudes love some crystal 60) and Gambrinus Honey malt. Because Latitude 48 uses hops from different regions, the individual character of the hops is highlighted by different components. The baby greens are peppery enough to bring out some of the Hallertauer Mittelfruh and East Kent Goldings.

BEEF TWO WAYS: Grilled Brandt Bavette Steak, Holiday Porter Braised Short Rib Cannelloni, Fingerling Potatoes. Paired with Boston Lager

Steak doesn’t need a caption. Steak needs only potatoes.

Typically, at beer dinners, when I see beef on a menu, it’s with a darker beer than a Vienna Lager. Todd was of the opinion that sometimes you just want to let steak stand on its own, that the beer balances the maillard reaction in the steak while more or less staying out of the way. I’m not sure it’s a great pairing, but in context, it’s a welcome relief between the intensity of the bookending courses. That said, in any other context steak and beer is nothing to whine about.

CHOCOLATE BOCK CAKE: Chocolate Bock Ganache, Salted Caramel, Chantilly. Paired with Utopias 2011

I’ll talk about Utopias more in another post, but I have to say that Graham Duncan made an excellent observation about the pairing here. Utopias takes on a minerally character from the barrels it ages in and that means that, oddly, the dessert component that complements it best is the salted caramel. At this point in its life, it seems to me that the barrel character coming through on the 2011 Utopias is port heavy, and that certainly works with the chocolate.

It may be wonderful, but there is only so much Utopias that even journalists can drink.

I think that the ongoing collaboration between Temple Bar and Sam Adams has some benefits. First of all, I can say that this is one of the most considered beer dinner menus I’ve seen. I think that results from the removal of one-time planning from the equation. Greg Boschetti has been thinking about this for more than a year and he’s had the opportunity to try different things. I suspect that means that there’s no impetus to do something really wild and crazy with the pairings in order to make a short term impression. That’s a good thing, especially since Sam Adams uses these monthly dinners for training new employees.

This is the kind of thing we should be looking into in Ontario. It’s one thing to have talented chefs doing one off beer dinners. It’s a joy when it works out. A longstanding arrangement, on the other hand, builds consistency and builds fluency on the part of the chef doing the pairing. I don’t know that there are any individual craft breweries in Ontario with the wherewithal to make something like this happen, but if I’m the Ontario Craft Brewers, I might look at this post as a suggestion of something being done right that can be shamelessly pilfered.

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Beer And Food: Jamaican Curry Chicken and Nightmare on Mill Street

October 21, 2012 7:14 pm ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

A large number of people like Pumpkin beer, and this is very largely because it tastes like fall. It has those pumpkin pies spices in it that make it reminiscent of coming in from raking leaves before Sunday dinner. That being said, it can be a little difficult to find something to do with Pumpkin beer, since it already tastes like dessert. They’re typically fairly sweet and they contain a mixture of allspice, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and any number of other things depending on the brewery.

The obvious thing to do is to serve it alongside pumpkin pie. If you’re particularly adventurous, you might even want to try it alongside another dessert like ginger cake that has a selection of the same spices. This might be alright for home consumption, but if you’re at a beer dinner, that sort of double barreled approach might not really be welcome after about five courses. At that point, it’s a whipped cream topped overload.

Since I’m always looking for something interesting to do with beer and food, I googled the ingredients that go into pumpkin pie. Sure enough, if you throw those ingredients in to google, you come up with jerk chicken.

Initially, this seemed like an ideal solution. I checked through a bunch of online recipes and then dug through The World Cookbook for Students in order to find something that would give me a reasonably effective version that I could try at home. I failed pretty badly, but mostly on the basis of equipment. I don’t have a grill that I can use for this kind of thing.

That’s when I realized that I know a professional cook who might be able to furnish some insight into my problem. I’m lucky enough to know La-Toya Fagon from Twist Catering from another life. At the time, I had no idea that I would end up writing about beer, but she had already managed to secure some pretty promising weekend gigs as a cook. After I left that job, I lost track of her, but cut to three years later and she’s on Marilyn Denis’s show doing a cooking demo. It turns out she’s doing Mediterranean inspired Carribean food.

Talk about a stroke of luck.

The Beer

The beer I’m working with in this case is Mill Street’s Nightmare on Mill Street. It’s a good candidate for pairing as a pumpkin beer for the reason that it is restrained. First of all, the base recipe is a wheat beer, so it’s not a high alcohol beer. It clocks in at an even 5% and is brewed with actual pumpkin. The orange colour and head retention are good. Plus, the spice blend is nicely balanced. Some of the pumpkin beers out in the LCBO overbalance in favour of cinnamon or ginger. That’s fine if it’s to your taste, but if you want to talk about a prototypical pumpkin beer, this is it. The spice blend was inspired by brewmaster Joel Manning’s wife’s recipe for pie, which is a nice thing. Well done, Mrs. Manning.

They sent over some sample bottles for me to play with, and on my recommendation sent some to La-Toya.

The Recipe

I got in touch with La-Toya about jerk chicken, but she played around with a couple of recipes and had a better idea. The problem with jerk chicken is that because the spice blend is so similar, you’d be pairing it with beer on a complimentary basis. That was more or less what I wanted to avoid by skipping the pumpkin pie and dessert angles. I’m sure it would work, but she came up with a pairing that’s a great deal more interesting.

JAMAICAN CURRY CHICKEN

1lb boneless skinless thighs

4 tbsp. vegetable oil

4 tbsp curry powder

1 tbsp garlic powder

Salt and pepper to taste

6-7 pimento seeds crushed

1 medium onion diced

1 bell pepper diced

1/2 Scotch bonnet pepper

6 spring’s fresh thyme

4 medium size potatoes

2 c. water

 

Heat oil in pan till smoking level. Cut up chicken in bite size pieces, place in a bowl. Add in all ingredients except potatoes and water. Place chicken mixture in pot, stir, and cook on high add water. Cook, till it comes to a boil, stir, lower heat until chicken is almost cooked. Add in potatoes. Cook until water is thickened.

 

Serve over steamed white rice or with roti.

 

The Pairing

This is what your food looks like if your professional cook friend takes the pictures and sends them to you.

Now, this is a vastly different flavour profile than what I started out with, and in terms of cooking curry at home, I’m lost at sea. What better way to learn than by doing?

The reason that this works is because of the pimento seeds (which I discovered are allspice after 10 minutes of standing in the spice aisle) and the thyme. The thyme plays with whatever earthiness is in the beer as a result of the hopping as an aroma, while the allspice comes through in the heat at the back of the palate. Now this makes a great deal of sense as a pairing because the heat from the Scotch Bonnet is just enough to make you want a mouthful of a cold beer. The spice mix from the Pumpkin beer chases the heat with the carbonation, but from a sensory standpoint it lends even more depth to the curry by suggesting spices that it doesn’t necessarily contain. Salting slightly higher than normal is not a bad idea because of the steamed rice and the constrasting sugars in the beer.

Now, when I mentioned I might be doing this on facebook, Garrett Oliver from Brooklyn suggested that you’d probably want quite a sweet pumpkin beer if you were going to pair with Jamaican food. I can certainly see how he would have been right if we’d gone with jerk chicken. Because we went with curry, I think that the slightly wheaty finish on the Nightmare on Mill Street works pretty well. Also, from the standpoint of personal preference, I have to suggest that you really want a lighter alcohol pumpkin beer than some of the monsters out there. The dish is spicy enough that you are likely to want more than one beer with it. Safety first.

And this is what it looks like when you do it at home and are not interested in plating. Still tasty.

WHAT DID WE LEARN

1)      The proper soundtrack for this dish is Jimmy Cliff’s The Harder They Come

2)      La-Toya Fagon knows what she’s doing, which is not exactly a surprise since she always struck me as extremely competent. She managed to steer me to a more complex pairing from a less complex one. Good eye, and I think a good appreciation of what I’m trying to do.

3)      If it says ½ scotch bonnet, don’t go adding a whole one, especially if you’re new to the flavour profile.  I know you probably won’t have anything you can use the other half in, so just discard it. I mean, it cost you 10 cents, so this is no time to be miserly.

Posted in: Beer and Food, Shameless Plugs ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , ,

Beer and Food Tuesday: National Capital Craft Beer Week

August 22, 2012 1:34 am ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

On Friday night, I got to go to a beer dinner hosted by Stephen Beaumont at the Capital Dining Room at the National Suites Hotel in Ottawa. You know Stephen Beaumont. He doesn’t really need any introduction. He’s been writing about beer for 23 years. He has a book coming out soon. It’s the World Atlas of Beer. If you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance you will get a copy for Christmas. I say go buy it now and make life difficult for your relatives. They’ll probably be forced to buy you beer if you already have a copy.

Stephen Beaumont would later go on to reveal that he cannot do the moonwalk, proving that no one is perfect.

He’s been writing about beer and food for a long time, so let’s see what we can learn from his beer dinner.

FIRST COURSE – Tasting of Duck Prosciutto with caramelized onion and peppers, sausage, cured ham, grilled asparagus with marinated buffalo mozzarella, warm olive and black plum relish

PAIRING–Black Oak Pale Ale

I quite like the creative shape of the flatbread as a plating element. Dynamic.

This is a fun plate because of the contrasting components. It’s a playful first course because you get to match flavours. Black Oak Pale Ale is balanced enough that some element of it stands up to just about everything on the plate. The earthy hops stand up nicely to the ham and asparagus bundle. The carbonation is enough to lift the fat from the sausage and prosciutto off the palate before the next bite. The crystal malt sweetness works double duty here as it matches the sweetness of the onion and peppers and also provides a nutty character that works with black olives. I was not expecting that last part. Discussion around the table on a dish like this is fun, because people begin to suggest combinations. Lets you get to know your dining companions a bit.

SECOND COURSE – Pulled Pork Ravioli with roasted pepper fennel sauce and crumbled goat cheese

PAIRING– Spearhead Hawaiian Style Pale Ale

Never having had pulled pork in ravioli format, I am now curious as to the potential of a pierogi and zywiec application.

Spearhead works well here because the pineapple aroma is evocative of Luau, so it’s a natural for a pork dish. The body is full enough to stand up to the combination of the pulled pork and sauce and there’s some pleasant interaction before the bitterness cuts through the richness of the goat cheese. One element that isn’t listed are the watercress microgreens, which added a mild, bitter, peppery note that helped with the transition between each bite and sip. It’s a minor touch, but because it reduces the fullness of the goat cheese on the palate, an important one.

THIRD COURSE – Spiced Potato Broth with clams, mussels, shrimp, spinach, double smoked bacon in beer broth

PAIRING – Green Flash West Coast IPA

Stephen warned us in advance that this pairing might not work. Mostly he wanted to be able to launch the Green Flash West Coast IPA in Ontario. This is fair because if I’d been given the option I probably would have too. I’m unused to the progression here from hoppy to hoppier to hoppiest.

It’s a good dish, but difficult to pair because I feel like the IPA is there to cut the sweetness of the shellfish in combination with the smoky, salty broth. The natural inclination of a diner presented with a bowl of shellfish is to eat the shellfish first, leaving a pool of broth. It’s tasty, certainly, but the pairing sort of falls apart at that point. Possibly you could trick the diner into making it work with a deeper bowl, but then it wouldn’t plate as nicely. Good separately, not a great pairing.

FOURTH COURSE – Stuffed Squid with Chorizo Sausage and Rice cooked in tomato beer broth

PAIRING– Beau’s Venskab

For a relatively small dish the squid packed a lot of flavour.

I’ll let Steve Beauchesne explain the Venskab.

This is a pretty complex beer. There’s some citrus from the yuzu, and some earthy mint from the bog myrtle and perle hops. The sweetness from the cane sugar and ice wine chips plods down the centre of the palate, but the whole thing results in a dry, oaky finish as a combination of the barrel aging and champagne yeast. Maybe Anders Kissmeyer is a genius. I don’t necessarily get it.

I feel like no single dish is going to stand up to all of the flavours in the beer. I think the best you can do is attempt to accentuate a few characteristics. The earthy combination of chorizo and rice plays with the bog myrtle. The dish is fairly salty, right down to the tomato broth, which works well with the drying finish.

I saved some for dessert, because it seemed like a dessert beer to me.

FIFTH COURSE – AAA Strip Loin marinated with beer-soy-honey, Yukon mash in Yorkshire pudding

PAIRING– Marston Pedigree

Yes, it’s beef. Yes, it’s served with English pale ale. Sometimes these things are classics for a reason.

This is a combination that you’d be happy to see on the groaning board of any English pub. In that respect it’s a classic pairing. Pedigree has enough malt character to stand up to beef with its grainy nuttiness. The thing that elevates this is that the beer is used in the marinade and also in the saucing on the plate. With the honey and soy in the reduction, there’s a more intense version of the nutty character that is bolstered by the soy and sweetened by the honey. This means that the two versions of the same flavour range complement the beef during either bite or sip. The Yorkshire pudding is mostly there to mop up the rest of the sauce, as is traditional.

DESSERT, ALREADY – Chocolate Pot de Crème, blueberry scone with fresh cream and mini chocolate soufflé

PAIRING– Sinha Stout

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you can’t finish dessert. This was one of those times. Delicious, though.

Well, Sinha is going to work with Chocolate. It just is. There’s chocolate and coffee and practically a crème brulee burnt sugar character in amongst the roast character. It’s syrupy, which just reinforces the Pot de Crème and soufflé by causing a lingering sensation of melting chocolate. The odd thing is I’m not sure I’d had it previously.

The Venskab went fairly well with the blueberry scone, which had a mild lemon element to it. I think that’s the interplay of the yuzu. I practically want to try a plum galette with a citrus cream to try and match the Venskab. Maybe someday.

WHAT DID WE LEARN

1)      We learned that when faced with the phrase “I’m going to steal that honey soy reduction idea,” Stephen Beaumont is unfazed.

2)      Anders Kissmeyer is probably a misunderstood genius (by me, anyway).

3)      Beaumont’s dinner menu illustrates a good balance of classic pairings and slightly riskier ones. This is actually a good tack to take as beer dinners will always have standout courses that will probably be different for each diner. You may as well try out a complex pairing next to a classic one. It provides some refreshing contrast for the guests and encourages conversation about each course. That’s important. No one likes eating in grim silence.

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Beer and Food Tuesday: Nua Pad Prik with Miranda

August 14, 2012 9:26 pm ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

Sometimes, Beer and Food Tuesday just falls in your lap and today was one of those days. I got a call from Troy Burtch at Great Lakes Brewery this morning. Shockingly, he wasn’t called to yell at me for the outcome of the Ontario Brewmaster’s Cup. I would have been yelling, but Troy is a laid back fellow who understands that sometimes the rules just don’t work in your favour.

The reason they didn’t work in the favour of Great Lakes is that, while they make many beers that range towards exceptional, they’re seasonal. One of the best things they’re doing this year is taking advantage of the R&D that Mike Lackey has been doing over the last couple of years and releasing fairly large batches of what would have been pilot brews. The first one was the Robust Porter, which was well received by just about everyone. Hell, even Alan liked it and he’s a hard man to impress.

The one that they’ve got out now is the one that I’m excited about. It’s the 25th Anniversary Belgian Saison. Lackey has been working on a number of Saison variants for a while, and I’ve been following the process relatively loosely from point when he started experimenting with fermentation temperatures. It was a while back. Probably a year and a half. I figure that’s no time at all in craft brewing. This is how good Lackey’s experiments have been: Other people have followed suit. There are a bunch of breweries experimenting with this now. Nevermind whether it’s commercially viable on the large scale; they like it and they’re doing it. That’s awesome.

Troy Burtch wants me to tell you some things: It’s going into the LCBO real soon. There are about 3000 bottles total. It’s going to cost $9.95. It will be in bars starting later this week. There is no wax on the bottle this time around because the folks at Great Lakes figure people will want to dive in and drink the thing. You could probably age it, but why would you? It’s a refreshing summer beverage.

Troy Burtch does not want me to tell you some things: His street name is “T-Bu”, even though that’s not very forceful. He is thought of as the gentlest and most respectful hustla.

THE RECIPE:

If you’re hungry when you’re making a stir fry, it’s hard not to snack on the veggies as you wait for your electric element to reheat the faux wok.

The release for the Saison suggests that you pair this beer with seafood. I can tell you that this is something that definitely works. It’s an extremely complimentary pairing that reinforces the sweetness in shellfish and lobster. It’s actually strong enough to stand up to Salmon because of the peppery character of the Dupont yeast strain they’re using and the spices they’ve added. The body is light and relatively highly carbonated.

The release also says, “or go in a different direction with… Thai Food.” Groovy.

THE RUNDOWN:

I’ve been wanting to experiment with Thai Food and beer. To be honest with you, people send me beer. Sometimes, it’s the good stuff. Sometimes, I nod politely. Either way, I’m generally happy about it. Thai Food, people only bring me if I dial up Just-Eat.ca in Google Chrome. Learning how to cook Thai Food with a sort of faux wok on an electric element is, I can guarantee you, some foodie’s version of hell. Sisyphus ain’t got nothing on a faux wok on an electric element. Your temperature control is basically zilch.

Not bad for a faux wokkin’ mook.

I’m not necessarily that worried about the technique. The flavours are important here. I suspect they’d be even better if you had the proper equipment.

Nua Pad Prik is, as far as I can tell, something no one agrees on. The only concrete elements seem to be Beef, chilies and bell peppers. The sauce changes from recipe to recipe, but I’ve used this one, partially because I remember the episode of the show the blog is talking about and I’m thinking about going to see Jamie Oliver at Massey Hall. He is a well intentioned man with a silly accent.

The recipe calls for fish sauce, oyster sauce and chilies. I had those kicking around. I was lucky enough to discover that there’s a Farmer’s Market on Tuesdays near my apartment. I went over and got some beautiful bell peppers, garlic, onion and some grass-fed round steak. Also, I got some Oaxacan Coffee from Chocosol. 12 bucks a pound. I love beer, but without coffee I start freaking out.

I’ve been playing with the recipe with various proteins over the last week, and I’ve left out the cornflour, which is really only there to act as a thickening agent to coat the beef. I’ve changed it so that the garlic goes in the marinade for the beef. The farmer’s market garlic was incredibly pungent, so I liked that component at that point. I had the beef sliced thinly enough that the garlic would never have had the chance to char. Also, I substituted half of the chilies for Sambal Oelek. It’s hard to predict how hot a chili will be. Sambal never changes.

Nua Prik with Miranda, which I think was the gist of the beer’s original name anyway.

THE VERDICT:

This is pretty complex, when you take the component ingredients into account. The beef, probably because I’ve used good beef, is relatively mildly flavoured. The bell peppers shine through with a sweetness and a slight bitterness of their own. The difficulty is that because it’s a stir fry and my julienning skills are … uh… rusticated… it’s hard to get a composed mouthful that brings everything into focus.

What you end up with, then, are the impressions of two separate pairings that are reinforced by the sauce. Both the peppers and the beef seem to take on the fermented tang and salt of the fish sauce and the subtle sweetness of the oyster sauce. This means that as an underpinning you’ve got that sort of shellfish sweetness pairing that they actually suggested 500 words ago. If you get a bite with enough bell pepper, it’s a race between the sweetness of the saison and the sweetness of the pepper on to the palate, and as those cascade (or rather Columbus, I suspect) into the mid-palate, you get the pop of citrus from whatever hop is being used here before a mild spice finish. If you get a bite with the beef, which seems to take on the more of the heat, you end up with a really exaggerated sensation of carbonation, but instead of the hops it’s an exaggerated kick of coriander and white pepper with a sort of lifting sensation on the swallow.

This is a really interesting pairing, food wise, and probably worth trying. You either need better knife skills than I’ve got or the willingness to accept that this one is a thinker. The different textures combine to make it even more interesting. Plus, the beer seems to relieve the heat completely.

WHAT DID WE LEARN:

1)      Even if you’re surprised by the effect of a pairing, that’s going to be a useful lesson down the road. Plus, at least you ate. There are Children starving in Freedonia.

2)      My knife skills, while not bad, ain’t chef level and I should probably take that into account.

3)      “T-Bu” is indeed the gentlest hustla.

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