A brilliant meal starts with beer

Dec 12 2008 by Alastair Gilmour, The Journal

FOR some people, beer and food starts with a ploughman’s lunch and a pint of bitter – and stops there. But, brilliantly as ale and cheese go together, there are infinite dining and drinking combinations and to ignore beer at the table is to miss out on a richness of experiences.

Cutting-edge cookery teases out flavours by combining ingredients that work in harmony and contrast in non-conformity. This approach surely deserves a full range of flavours to elevate the experience to an even higher plane.

With flavours from various varieties of malted barley, hops, yeast and – yes – water, the combinations in beer are almost beyond calculation. For example, hops can impart a medicinal character or floral touches and citrus smidgins; it’s the art and craft of the brewer and it’s ours to experiment with.

Beer can be the most fundamental of thirst quenchers and the basic choice of millions, but it can surpass a wine from Bordeaux’s cru classé when it comes to pairing with food.

The North East has recognised this with some of our top establishments looking very seriously at extending their beer offer. Sampling different beers course-for-course allows the palate to adjust as the meal progresses. A light ale or hoppy Pilsner lager is the perfect aperitif; the crisp fizz sharpens the tongue and sensitises it to the range of flavours being compiled in the kitchen. Belgian wheat beers with their whiffs of orange peel and coriander are amazingly versatile – and as for presentation, nothing served in a bucket could ever be considered elegant. Beer while dining should be served in smaller volumes – large wine glasses are perfect – to encourage sipping and savouring rather than swigging and swilling.

On a regional level – and if you are lucky enough to be dining in a restaurant with such an imaginative approach – Wylam Brewery’s Czech-style Bohemia Pilsner accompanies most North Sea produce, gravadlax or smoked salmon. On a festive note, roast turkey and Tyneside Blonde from Hadrian & Border Brewery in Newcastle is a match made in heaven. Durham Brewery’s 10% alcohol by volume Temptation – styled on a Russian imperial stout – will make a cheese board sit up and sing with your supper.

Restaurants which have grasped the significance of food and beer pairing could be in the running for the Best Drinks List category of the North East Restaurant Awards 2009, which are run in association with the Gourmet Society and sponsored by The Journal, our sister paper the Evening Gazette in Middlesbrough, North East crockery and cutlery firm Crosby’s and German catering equipment supplier Schönwald.

The aim of the awards is to celebrate and highlight the region’s burgeoning restaurant scene and its many culinary delights from across the globe.

To this end, readers are being encouraged to enjoy some of the exquisite food served up by dining out at one of the region’s 500-plus restaurants and gastro pubs. About 500,000 voting cards are being distributed to restaurants in the region, giving diners the chance to nominate their favourite in the 14 categories to be decided by the public. I’m fortunate to have dined with two of the world’s most committed beer and food enthusiasts, Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery, New York, and Raymond Blanc, chef/patron of Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons in Oxfordshire.

“If you miss out on beers, you’re poor,” says Oliver. “You can’t play a symphony using only half the notes and half the instruments – and I say this as a wine lover. Beer is so expressive and its impact with food is fantastic.”

Raymond Blanc’s sentiments are similar. He has grasped beer’s undertones, overtures, subtleties and face-slapping vigour with the zeal of the convert that he undoubtedly is.

“Modern gastronomy is adventurous, it’s not sedate,” he says. “We want to introduce our guests to different experiences and there’s no reason why quality beers can’t go well with gastronomy; it’s really a lot of fun as well. Education is the by-product of the fun you’re having.”

With that, he pours a glass of clove-high, fruity Schneider Weiss Bavarian wheat beer which bursts into action alongside our first mouthful, an assiette apéritive of tuna, eel jelly and seaweed.

The secret is to find a balance – delicate foods need delicate beers and something with a tiny touch of sweetness appreciates an echo of that in the beer, or at least a fruity vibrance. A rich meat stew embraces a beer with depth and body, such as a traditional British ale. A Belgian kriek – cherry beer – may raise eyebrows served with a chocolate dessert, but the palate-tingling experience unfolds an amazing alliance.

“Often, beer is drunk on its own or with cheap food,” says Blanc. “In France we always have wine with dinner; only a drunk will drink wine on its own. But there’s no reason why beer can’t be introduced in restaurants – it makes for fantastic relationships.”

And, beer can be such an integral ingredient in rural dishes that emphasises the reason peasant dishes emerge straight from the heart. I’ve been stopped in my tracks by a cassoulet of beans and merguez sausage cooked in Wells Bombardier ale and have gasped at the sweet tenderness of a Limousin steak fillet from a beast massaged twice-daily in a rapeseed oil, yeast and beer mixture and fed on spent malt grains and a brewery’s first runnings.

I’ll forever regret missing out on a vegetarian option, stuffed fennel braised in Grolsch with saffron sultana couscous, but I’m honoured to have tasted Liefmans Frambozen (strawberry beer) with a roast squab (young pigeon), chocolate bonbon and beetroot cannelloni main course served with Heston Blumenthal-inspired virtuosity.

As Garrett Oliver says: “Someone has spent a lot of time on what you’re drinking. It’s a level of personal contact that you’re just not aware of. Beer deserves to be at the forefront of what food is all about.”