Category Archives: beer and food

The Pub as Quasi-Happy Eater

Good George Pacific PearlOur local Wetherspoon’s isn’t a very good one. It rarely has anything other than Doom Bar, Ruddles or Greene King IPA on offer, usually a degree or two too warm, served in an ambience that brings to mind a faux-pub on a cross channel ferry. We pop in from time to time, though, just in case something exciting might be available and, yesterday, we were tempted to stop for a couple of pints from the international beer festival range.

Pacific Pearl, brewed by Good George of New Zealand (Kelly Ryan (PDF link)) was very good indeed though, yes, a bit warm. A sort of a black IPA or citrusy porter, like an oily Terry’s Chocolate Orange melted in a very posh coffee, it was certainly worth £2.15. Fly by Night, brewed by the chap from La Trappe in the Netherlands, on the other hand, was all sweaty socks and cardboard — bad rather than off, we think. Swings and roundabouts, eh?

As we drank, we talked about why, apart from the beer, we didn’t like the pub. Our conclusion: it feels like a fast food restaurant with some pub-like features — very convenient and obviously good value, but naff. Then, coincidentally, last night, we came across this passage in the 1985 CAMRA Good Beer Guide, on the subject of Host Group, Grand Met/Watney’s newly announced pub chain:

‘The Host packaged pub enterprise is as much of a threat to those who love individuality and consumer choice, as the packaged beer phenomenon was in the last two decades,’ says Peter Lerner of CAMRA’s Pub Preservation Group. ‘We cannot let our pubs decline to become chains of look-alike quasi-Happy Eater, Kentucky Fried Chicken bars or motorway service stations.’

A quasi-Happy Eater is a very good description of our local JDW.

Snacks to Beer: Pizza

Pizza with floury burned crust.

We’ve been making our own pizzas for a few years but have never really been happy with the results. We’ve tried pizza stones; posh mozzarella; tomato sauces from both fresh toms and tinned, cooked and uncooked.

Now, at last, we’ve settled on a recipe and an approach, and it’s one that illustrates the Premium Sausage Problem: the trick was using simpler, cheaper ingredients. It makes what we call ‘upmarket takeaway’ pizza — cheesy and salty, but with a crisp crust; think Pizza Express. By popular demand (one person asked), here’s the recipe.

Dough (for two pizzas)

  • 300g plain white flour — we use the cheapest available.
  • 1 teaspoon dried, fast-acting yeast. (Or 4-5 grams.)
  • Half a teaspoon of salt (or to taste).
  • Optional: a pinch of dried basil, oregano or mixed Italian herbs.
  • 180ml of warm water.
  1. Bung all the above in a food processor with a dough hook and knead in the machine for five or so minutes, or until it comes together into a nice, shiny looking ball of dough. If it looks too dry after two minutes, add water a drop at a time. (You can also make the dough by hand, which will be messier and take longer, if you prefer.)
  2. Put a slug of olive oil in a large bowl.
  3. Shape the dough into a neat ball and turn it in the oil then leave the dough in the bowl covered with clingfilm for a couple of hours.
  4. Knock it back when it doubles in size and then leave for another hour or so.

Toppings

  • Can/pack of passata (sieved, uncooked tomatoes).
  • Pack of grated, hard mozzarella. (Not sloppy mozzarella balls.)
  • Salt, dried basil, black pepper.
  • Topping 1: anchovies and black olives. (TIP: crush the olives in your hand to help dry them out.)
  • Topping 2: 10-12 slices from a chorizo ring (per pizza).
  • Optional: basil leaves.

Pizza bases, one plain and one with passata.

Putting it together

  1. Get the oven on as hot as it will go.
  2. Divide your dough in two and, on a floured surface, make a ball. Flatten it out with the heel of your hand or a heavily floured rolling pin until it’s a neat circle 20cm across. Flour a non-stick pizza tin (ours cost £4 each) and then press the dough out to the edges. It should end up pretty thin all over. Leave it for 10 minutes.
  3. Take a ladle and spread a very thin layer of passata over each base — thin enough that you can see the dough through it in places — something like four or five tablespoons’ worth. Add salt, pepper and dried basil to taste. Leave for another 1o minutes.
  4. Sprinkle cheese all over, just enough to cover.
  5. Add other toppings in a way which pleases your eye. (But not basil leaves just yet!)
  6. Once the oven is at maximum temperature, put both pizzas in. Our oven cooks them in bang on 11 minutes. In case your oven is better, set a timer for 9-10 and keep an eye on them.
  7. When they’re done (crust beginning to blacken, cheese melted and darkening), take them out.
  8. Add more black pepper and fresh basil leaves, if you’re using them.

Tweaks and customisation

  • Other toppings that work well are pepper and sweetcorn (further cost-cutting: frozen work well); and small beef meatballs with cayenne and black pepper.
  • If you find the pizza too crisp this way and like it ‘bendier’, turn the oven down to c.200 degrees C and cook for a few minutes longer.
  • If you really want to use mozzarella balls, try slicing them and leaving them to drain on a cloth for a while before adding them.

Beer? Oh, yeah, this is a beer blog, isn’t it? Alright then: we find that pizza goes particularly well with Saison Dupont but, actually, pizza works with pretty much any beer you fancy.

Schnitzels We Have Known

Half-eaten schnitzel in a German brewpub

EXT. RESTAURANT TERRACE, PASSAU. DAY

AUSTRIAN TOURIST
Waiter — the ‘Wiener’ Schnitzel on your menu — is that really veal? [Sneering] Or just pork?

WAITER
[highly affronted]
Veal, sir. If it was merely in the Viennese style, we would certainly have said so.

We usually eat so many schnitzels on our trips to Germany that, by the time we leave, the mere thought of a buttery fried breadcrumb makes us feel sick.

We ordered and regretted the Käse Schnitzel at Brauerei Fässla in Bamberg — the size of a frisbee and with a kilo of Cheddar melted on top.

We wondered at a restaurant called Schnitzel Time! (in Augsburg, we think) which offered something like fifty variations, including a ‘Hawaiian’. (Yes, that’s right — with tinned pineapple.)

We scheduled our afternoon pauses to coincide with a TV show whose title we never worked out but the gist of which was: “It’s 10 AM and Fritz has arrived at the restaurant to prepare a hundred schnitzels for the lunch and evening service. Meanwhile, across town, staff at Die Goldene Gans are having a crisis — the daily delivery of breadcrumbs hasn’t arrived!”

We bought a schnitzel hammer at the Galeria Kaufhof in Cologne because, somehow, a German meat tenderiser just seemed more appropriate.

Last night, we had Schnitzel Wiener Art for tea. We butterflied and hammered flat pork tenderloin, dipped it first in flour, then in egg, and finally in Panko breadcrumbs, before frying in butter with a splash of sunflower oil. As we ate it, we wished, not for the first time, that a trip to Germany was on the cards in the foreseeable future

Dear Restaurateurs

We really enjoyed eating at your restaurant. We couldn’t fault the food, service or ambience. You have obviously put a lot of thought and care into every detail.

Oh, except the beer selection, obviously.

One of the beers you sell is undrinkably bad, despite the cute locally-themed label; another is pasteurised, filtered, packaged in clear bottles and stored in direct sunlight, and has thus also been rendered undrinkable; the rest of the list is made up of ‘international lagers’ brewed in Wales and England under license. You are selling bad, spoiled and fake beer.

You might not be at all interested in beer and that would be fine if you weren’t selling it. As it is, the careless way you go about it suggests a lack of taste and attention to detail.

You wouldn’t spend all that time, money and effort on the restaurant only to play nothing but Jive Bunny’s greatest hits on a loop over the stereo; or lay the tables with plastic cutlery; or decorate the walls with pictures cut from FHM.

What we’re saying is, your crappy beer list is not OK. It is a jarring note. It makes us wonder if you’ve also been careless in areas we know less about such as your wine selection or even the cooking.

Sort it out.

Love,

Boak & Bailey

PS. You could hire a member of the British Guild of Beer Writers to advise you, or read one of these books, or go on one of these courses.

Mrs Beeton on Table Beer

HODGE-PODGE

191. INGREDIENTS.–2 lbs. of shin beef, 3 quarts of water, 1 pint of table-beer, 2 onions, 2 carrots, 2 turnips, 1 head of celery ; pepper and salt to taste ; thickening of butter and flour.

Mode.–Put the meat, beer, and water in a stewpan ; simmer for a few minutes and skim carefully. Add the vegetables and seasoning ; stew gently, and skim carefully. Add the vegetables and seasoning ; stew gently until the meat is tender. Thicken with the butter and flour, and serve with turnips and carrots, or spinach and celery.

Time.–3 hours, or rather more. Average cost, 3d. per quart.

Seasonable at any time. Sufficient for 12 persons.

TABLE BEER.–This is nothing more than a weak ale, and is not made so much with a view to strength, as to transparency of colour and agreeable bitterness of taste. It is, or ought to be, manufactured by the London professional brewers, from the best pale malt, or amber and malt. Six barrels are usually drawn from one quart of malt, with which are mixed 4 or 5 lbs. of hops. As a beverage, it is agreeable when fresh ; but it is not adapted to keep long.

(From Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, 1861; typos Mrs Beeton’s own.)

Sucking up a social class

In his column in the 5 December issue of New Statesman, Will Self, on the subject of wine, quotes his French translator who says “when I have a glass of wine, I’m imbibing the region where it comes from.” Self ponders this and suggests that “when an English person drinks wine, she’s sucking up a social class”.

Is that also what’s going on when people drink craft beer? Is it becoming an accessory for those who aspire to, or wish to emphasise, middle class credentials?

We like to think that beer is in the process of being stripped of any specific class associations — that it’s becoming socially mobile, as comfortable at an Islington dinner party as in a working men’s club. But maybe we’re kidding ourselves.

Either way, there’s plenty of work to be done before beer is quite welcome to a seat at the shabby chic dining table in front of the Aga. The Cheese Shop in Truro — one of the most middle class shops you can imagine — has wine, port, sherry, sparkling cider, soft drinks… but not one drop of beer. Not even a politely packaged Fuller’s Vintage Ale getting dusty in a corner. Shame.

This agonising over snobbery and social class isn’t going to end anytime soon, we’re afraid. It is much on our minds.

Snacks to beer: Doner Kebab

Doner kebab sign, London

From Flickr Creative Commons, taken by Renaissancechambara.

We usually leave recipes to the experts but make the occasional exception when it comes to foods which are an inextricable part of our beer culture.

In Britain, after several beers, when everything else is closed, you can always rely on the kebab shop and everyone’s favourite guilty pleasure: lamb doner kebab. No-one would dream of eating one while sober. The great round of meat is often referred to as an “elephant leg” because it is so heavily processed that it’s hard to be sure exactly what it is composed of. Meat, fat and salt are the three main ingredients but beyond that… Asbestos? Industrial grease? Who knows.

Nonetheless, they are delicious, and we decided to make one at home so that we could feel a bit less grotty eating it.

We were inspired partly by Kenny McGovern’s The Take Away Secret although we ended up adapting his recipe substantially for our own. The main tip we picked up from McGovern is the importance of garlic powder. It’s the magic ingredient in most fast food.

Continue reading →

Defying the English weather

As everyone knows, the weather in England is rubbish. Even when it’s sunny, you can be fairly sure there will be a shower just as you’ve set up your picnic.

In May, we were faced with a long bank holiday weekend where the rain didn’t stop in London, but we decided to ignore it and go on another tapeo (tapas crawl). Sod the rain. We were going to pretend we were in Spain.

If you treat a crappy Greene King pub like you would a Spanish bar, it’s not half bad. The tourists just added to the atmosphere, and our two halves of cold Kronenbourg didn’t taste any worse than Mahou does in Madrid. And they had some decent olives to nibble on. Result.

Next up, the Queen’s Head and Artichoke. As a pub, it probably wouldn’t be our cup of tea, but as a tapas bar, it was great. They let us sit at the bar to drink our Bitburger and had a proper, convincing tapas menu, which we ordered bits and pieces from over the course of an hour or so.

Finally, we headed for the Norfolk Arms. It’s more of a restaurant than a bar despite being (we think) somehow related to the previous place. They were a bit sniffy because we didn’t want a table and a full meal but they put up with it. We put away some serrano ham, a few Estrella Damms and, finally, a couple of glasses of sherry.

When we left, it was still raining, but we’d very successfully banished the bank holiday blues.

Snacks to beer part 2 — schmaltz/smalec

I have very happy memories of visiting Poland. Chief among them is the great joy I experienced in Wroc?aw when presented with a free — yes, free! — plate of bread and dripping with my first pint at Piwnica Swidnicka.

Since then, I’ve also enjoyed it at as ‘schmaltz‘ in various places in Germany, most notably Klosterbräu in Bamberg which has several varieties, including goose fat.

They say you shouldn’t eat greasy food with beer and, yes, if you’re carrying out any kind of formal tasting, it’s probably a bad idea. But, in the real world, nothing makes a wheat beer zing like a piece of rye bread spread thickly with spicy, salty, onion-laced lard.

These days, it’s thankfully very easy to get schmaltz/smalec in the UK in any shop which stocks Polish foods.

The one I bought to eat with my beery bread had a higher meat content than some (try saying “mechanically recovered chicken and pork” without saying “mmmmmmm”…) and was very satisfying indeed. Sometimes, you’ll find it in tins; in blocks like butter or lard; or in glass jars. It’s cheap however it comes.

Let’s be clear, though: it is not health food.

That salad I had with it cancels out the fat, though, right? Right? And it’s normal to have shooting pains in your left arm, isn’t it?

If you like your grease cut with other fats, why not give Obazda a go?

Bailey