Scottish Devils and Ruination

I didn't want this to turn into a food and beer blog so I've been holding back on writing about the pairings I've been experimenting with. But I accidentally invented the best beer snack known to man and I have to share.

Recently I was invited to a beer and food pairing event held at the Liquor Plus branch on Douglas Street. It was the first pairing event I'd been to and I'm excited to attend and perhaps even host some more. Left4Beer designed a menu and attendees had to bring a specific snack or beer. By the time I got my act together, there were only a few options left. I chose to bring devilled eggs.

Having never made them before, I did a bit of research on egg recipes and discovered that scotch eggs — a childhood favourite of mine — are not that hard to make. I really wanted to make scotch eggs, but the brief was for devilled, so I decided to combine the recipes and called it "Scottish Devils".

The eggs were partnered with Howe Sound's King Heffy, which is a total triumph of an imperial hefeweizen from one of BC's best craft brewers. They went down well with the beer guys.  I neglected to take my camera and felt like I could improve on them a little, so I recreated them at home later in the week. Here they are, partnered with a Stone Ruination IPA. I gave the recipe a good kick of heat and garlic which is ideal with a powerful IPA like the Stone beer.

Ingredients
Scotch part
4 large eggs
4 good quality sausages
1tsp cumin
1tsp garlic powder
1tsp cayenne
1tsp thyme
1tsp pepper
1beaten egg
flour
panko breadcrumbs (or other)
butter

Devilled part
half cup mayonnaise
2 minced garlic cloves
1tbsp dijon mustard
1tsp curry spice (curry powder is good, but use imagination)
2 green onions (chopped)
2 tsp vinegar
salt
pepper

Directions
Hard boil and peel the eggs (5 minutes is enough). Split sausages open and mix well in a bowl with the cumin, garlic powder, cayenne, thyme and pepper. Divide mixture into four, wet hands to prevent sticking, and mold each portion around a peeled egg. One sausage per egg provides perfect cover. Dip each egg into flour, then beaten egg, then breadcrumbs. Bake in a buttered oven dish at 350f for 30 minutes. Remove when done and leave to rest for ten mins. Halve each egg (be careful, the coating can split, so use a very sharp knife). Gently ease out each yolk with a teaspoon and put in a bowl. Add all the devilled ingredients apart from the mayonnaise and smoked paprika. Then add the mayonnaise and stir well until the texture is creamy and easy to spoon. Spoon a blob into each egg cavity, sprinkle paprika over the top, and serve. The version below was a second batch. I followed the same recipe, but drizzled tabasco, chinese pepper/garlic sauce and some more chili powder over the top.

Tapped Out/Flat Beer Eats 2

I was recently approached by Victoria's free weekly newspaper Monday Magazine to write a short article about the range of craft beer available in Victoria pubs, liquor stores and restaurants. I asked Dave to help me, as his knowledge of Victoria's scene is deeper than mine. I wrote our findings up, and Monday published our article as part of their "Crafty Brewing" edition dedicated to all things beer (available on stands around Victoria for the rest of this week only!)

It's nice to do a bit of grown-up journalism. For free, admittedly. It's a shame that there isn't too much print media coverage of our beer scene, but as the Editor of Monday Magazine — John Threlfall — explained with sadness, the budget for freelance work has been brutally slashed as part of the struggles all print media producers are suffering.

Regarding the article, our brief was to be, well, brief. So we highlighted 3 pubs and 3 standout liquor stores. There are plenty of other good places we would have liked to have included, many I discovered writing the article. Flavius at Left4Beer kindly pointed me to a galaxy of places I'd overlooked. But our choices are very strong and I stand by them.
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Update on that keg of flat Phoenix beer: I made two more dishes with it. First, a beer-boiled prawn curry. I fried garlic and tomatoes, added a good pint of beer, tomatoes, cumin, coriander and fennel, then boiled it down. Marinated the prawns in yogurt, cinnamon and lemon juice, then threw them into the reduction when it was sticky. I added cream, green onions and salt. The rice is boiled in beer too.

Then I worked on the bread recipe. This one is the same as the last, except I used only a 1/3 cup brown sugar this time, two handfuls of cheese, and some rosemary and thyme. This one came out even better than the last one. A bit denser, as expected, but the flavour is more balanced with less sugar. The Phoenix doesn't lend as much flavour as the Buck — so I'd ideally use a darker ale in future, but it still beats water. In the background are two glasses of the British classic Shandy (half-sprite-half-beer). The only way to drink a dead lager.

If anyone wants more precise recipes, ask in the comments.

Beer Bread Solves Everything

I woke up on the couch at 6 a.m. this morning and immediately had to deal with three sources of anxiety:
1. post-surprise-party hangover
2. England v. Slovenia world cup match
3. two warm, half-full kegs of beer

After a good 5 minutes of misery, I got up and decided to make beer bread for breakfast. Coffee brewed while I made the dough. Then I settled down to watch the match while the sweet smells of baking and coffee calmed my nerves.

I've only ever made beer bread twice before. I googled a few recipes, one of which suggested no raising agent is needed, but my first loaf was a sludgy slab of crap. Second time I used baking powder and a half bottle of stout and I was hooked.

If you haven't made beer bread, you should know that it is one of the best ways to cook with beer. It is simple to make and, unlike a lot of beer cookery, really does showcase the beer itself. Beer bread is usually pretty dense, richly sweet, and has the most powerful yeasty funk. I've never actually used yeast to make it, I'm not sure how that would turn out. Maybe next time. For now, here's the recipe I invented this morning:

Ingredients
3 cups white flour
5 tsp baking powder
12oz warm beer (I used Blue Buck)
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
handful shredded cheddar
pinch chili powder
2 tbsp melted butter

Directions
Throw all ingredients except butter into a big-enough bowl and mix roughly with a wooden spoon (it's too sticky for hands). Let sit for a bit while you coat a bread tin with butter. Bake at 375 for 50 mins then check it. Best check is to turn it out of the pan and knock on the bottom of the loaf with your hand. If it sounds hollow, you're good to go. If not, give it another 5-10 mins, but no longer. It doesn't rise like ordinary bread, so you might not get a hollow sound every time.

You can eat it on its own after 10-20 minutes of cooling on a rack. My wife smeared some with cream cheese, which is a good choice as the fresh tartness complements the hearty flavour of the bread very well. I find this recipe to be a touch on the sweet side, and I'd be tempted to use only a 1/3 cup of sugar, but the sugar is needed for the rising so don't skimp too much.

By 9 a.m. I was full, we'd won 1-0, and I had completely forgotten about the hangover. I went to work with a smile, knowing another slab of beer bread was waiting for me at lunchtime. What a comeback.

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Note#1 I changed the blog theme because I read that light-on-dark can be difficult and even painful to read. I hope the new look is pleasing. Feel free to comment or suggest improvements.

Note#2 Thanks so much to amazing-wife and friends for coming to the party and bringing some exceptional beers too!

Beer and Butter Tarts/Chicken

Smallbeer safely returned from Suds-bury to deliver these important messages.

Thanks to Dave for putting me onto the Beer and Butter Tarts Canadian food and drink blog aggregator. This is a site that lets people find Canadian beer blogs without being a. another beer blogger, or b. members of my own family. Sadly, that's pretty much the extent of most beer-blogs' readership. Or at least crap ones like mine.

However, in return for this plug, Beer and Butter Tarts will aggregate me an audience of millions. I will then sell out, and drink free for the rest of my life thanks to google-ads.

To keep this post vaguely on-topic, I recently prepared a Beer and Butter Chicken pairing. I'm a die-hard curry fan, but not this artsy fare you find in Vancouver restaurants, or the timid, soupy type you seem to get in Victoria. I mean the REAL stuff. You know, like what they make in England...

To satisfy my urge for arterial and facial trauma, I tend to make my own curries. Lots of cream, garlic, handfuls of cilantro, half-the-spice-cupboard, and enough heat to bring an old man to tears.

My wife loves the mythical Chicken Tikka Masala. Pictured here is my version: basically a souped-up butter chicken with heightened spice and fresh tomatoes.

In England, I'd typically pair a Lamb Madras or Prawn Pathia with whatever lager they had at hand. Sheffield curry houses often have Kingfisher on tap, which does the job. But I'd heard that IPAs are a natural curry partner so I put my last Pike's India Pale Ale to use.

The Pike is a modest IPA, liable to get lumped into the "English"* category because it is not as powerful as many of its West Coast counterparts. That said, it has a resinous tang that cuts through the thick curry well. The body is not too full. It has a somewhat clotted-cream-like sweetness. Something more forthright might have stood up to the curry better, but the Pike was still an excellent partner.

SO. Do Canadian beer bloggers and yourselves a favour, and poke around Beer and Butter Tarts when you get the chance — particularly the BC section.

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ReaderQ
*Can someone suggest a reasonable definition for the "English" style IPA? I find the current tendency to categorize North American IPAs as either English-style (weak hops) and US-style (strong hops), to be a bit throwaway. I'm sure some critics mean something very specific when they say "English-style", but most, I suspect, are just riding the terminological bandwagon. There must be more nuanced distinctions. We should respect them.

Another Boring Beer Recipe

This article puts "Cooking with beer" at  #3 on the "5 MOST BORING TOPICS IN BEER JOURNALISM" list. I was just typing up my experiments with beer-battered fish when that article arrived — courtesy of a tweet by AGoodBeerBlog's Alan McLeod. (Oh I'm on twitter, finally, just in time for it to become obsolete probably: dansmallbeer)

The list is tongue-in-cheek, more of a platform for Hedonist Beer Jibe's cheeky ranting skills. But it's true. Beer journalism is awash with some dull, routinized writing. It gets worse when your magazine has a "Cooking with Beer" column, which you then simply have to fill every week, with increasing desperation. Here's some examples* I didn't see recently:

Milk Stout Beerios!
Ingredients
1x small bowl of Cheerios breakfast cereal
1x 12oz serving of Three Floyd's "Moloko Plus" Milk Stout
Directions
Wake up, shake the foggy regret from your throbbing head, and dump a bottle of milk stout over your favourite cereal. Return to bed and spoon into mouth gratefully — avoiding the cereal, of course. Sleep, then repeat.

Dubbel Whopper
Ingredients
3x hamburger patties
2x buns
cheese
1x snifter of North Coast Brother Thelonius Dubbel
Directions
Gourmet burgers don't come much classier than this. Soak one split bun overnight in the snifter of dubbel. Cook and assemble burger, inserting dubbel-soaked bun halves between the three patties. Eat, within dashing distance of a latrine. Avoid clothing with sleeves.

Eggs Beernedict
Ingredients
2x eggs
2x English muffins
6oz cream
1x 600ml bottle of Tilburg's Dutch Brown Ale
Directions
True hollandaise sauce can be a real bingo-wings enhancer. This recipe keeps your netherlands in check with a healthy, slimming Dutch ale. Poach 2 eggs in half the ale. Whisk remaining ale with the cream. Slop the lot over your muffins and serve.

If you're still hungry, here's some pictures of my recent beer-battered fish and chips. I went with a white ale, as my wife sensibly suggested the citrus notes would work with the fish. The batter is just a cup or so of self raising flour (flour plus baking soda plus pinch of salt), with garlic powder, pepper and cayenne added. I dredge the cod through some cornstarch before battering, then sling into 2" of oil for 2-3mins a side. You don't need to deep fry, a few inches is enough.
I've been honing the recipe, and have used lager, stout, wheat beer and hoppy pale ales. To be frank, I can't say there's a lot of difference. Beer is better than water, but the type of beer adds little to the flavour in my experience. I got pretty great results with a tall-boy of Löwenbrau. I think the fizz is the important thing, as it does tend to produce very crispy batter, as you can see above. It is advisable to let your fish rest briefly on paper towels (or newspaper if you're old-school), in the open air. This provides maximum crunch and minimum lard. Oh, and a tall-boy is essential, as you'll only need half of it for the batter, and frying is thirsty work.

*These recipes are all wastes of good beer invented by smallbeer as a joke, and as such, should definitely be cooked by no-one. Except the fish. That one's yum.

Imperial Stout Chocolate Cake

This is the best chocolate cake I've ever had.

My wife has been making the excellent Nigella Lawson Guinness Chocolate Cake for years now. It recently occurred to us that Nigella only uses Guinness because of its popularity, and maybe other stouts or porters would be even better. As usual, my wife is way ahead of me, and I came home the other day to find a bottle of Howe Sound Pothole Filler Imperial Stout in the fridge.
"Do NOT drink this one," she said, as I lifted the heavy, litre-bottle of tar out of the fridge to inspect it. "It's for a cake."

After three days of my ceaseless pestering, she finally baked it. I could have done it myself, but she's a cake-master, and I didn't want to risk ruining it. The recipe calls for a quarter of a litre of stout, which isn't a bad thing, as drinking a litre of imperial stout in one sitting can be a bit much (all Howe Sound beers come in litre bottles only.)

The Guinness version of the cake has a subtle bitterness that complements the sweet chocolate. The Pothole Filler model blows it out of the water. It certainly adds a heavily bitter twang, but also a complex sweetness. As you'd expect, it brings aniseed, coffee, and molasses to the party, which is perfect for this cake. But because it is an imperial stout, not all the alcohol is lost in the bake, and you still get a bit of heat and boozy-aromatics. As for texture, the cake is as thick and rich as you could ever want, which is typical for this recipe, and the imperial stout certainly doesn't dry it out any.

Of course, I got a chance to drink the stout too. It's a very accomplished RIS, and the texture is thick and hearty. The flavours can become a bit of a muddle, though. I already mentioned the aniseed, which works in the cake, but gets a bit much in the beer, jostling with vanilla, coffee and other warm flavours. I suppose I wish it had just one or two dominant flavours coming through the mix, but some people will enjoy disentangling the complex soup. Any BC stout lover should try it, but perhaps not by the 750ml glassful like I did. Too rich for a session for me,

I strongly recommend you bake the cake, though. I'm already thinking up other stouts that could work (I think barley wines could be good too). Maybe that Stone Smoked Porter would be good, or, if I could bear to sacrifice a bottle, the Peche Mortel from Brasserie Dieu du Ciel would probably be sumptuous, as would be pretty much anything on this page.