Month: October 2014

Can we beat Germany at their own game??

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RMTTB loves Germany!  We lived there on and off for many years, we love the Bundesliga, the wonderful train system, the ladies’ biathlon team and the fact that every single hole in the hedge has its own brewery.  We hum Dsching! Dsching! Dschingis Khan!! while sinking pils and polishing our Birkenstocks.  You get the idea.  We love Jörgi Löw and we loved Klinsi before him.

But when Germany and Ireland meet in Gelsenkirchen tomorrow for the away leg of our Euro 2016 qualifier, we will banish our love of all things German.  We’ll paint our faces green, scream “hashtag COYBIG!!” at the telly and swap tales of the legend of Ray Houghton (was he really the last Ireland player to score a goal in Germany…?!)

And what better way to enjoy the national elf (fnar fnar) being given a run for their money than by enjoying some deutsche küche Irish-style, washed down by Irish versions of classic German beers?  As usual, RMTTB has selflessly soaked up a half dozen tipples in order to bring you the perfect combo.  And this one, believe us, is a real winner.

It’s a simple match platter of boiled bacon ribs, Irish bratwurst and potato salad washed down by a crisp helles and a hearty doppelbock. And because nobody has time to spend in the kitchen on match night, we’re taking a few short cuts.

Germans love pork ribs.  Much as RMTTB likes to pride ourselves on our authenticity and integrity, we prefer bacon ribs, so that’s what we’re cooking.  This one couldn’t be simpler to make: get a couple of bacon rib racks (1 for every 2 people), throw them in a pot of cold water and bring to the boil.  Throw away the water and cover with cold water agin.  Boil, simmer for about an hour and a quarter and – sieh an! – tasty ribs!

We served this with an Irish twist on German potato salad.  Boil some spuds in their skins and leave to cool.  Chop some rashers and fry till crispy.  Peel the spuds and chop roughly, mix with the rashers.  Blend together two spoonfuls of cream and one of mascarpone and coat the potatoes.  Add in some chives and you’re done.  Mmmmmm, lecker!

Finally, bratwurst.  No recipes here.  We picked up a packet of Jane Russell’s bratwurst and will be buying them again.  And again.  And washing them down with some of White Gypsy’s doppelbock.   This was a match made in heaven, if you pardon the sporting pun.  One of the best beer/food combos we’ve enjoyed in a long time.

Despite changing the cooking water, our bacon was still a little salty but this contrasted perfectly with a bottle of St Mel’s helles. The slightly caramel taste just cut the salt with a perfect tang.  The potato salad went equally well with both beers.

And there you have it: German cuisine, Irish style!  Back of the net!! Roll on tomorrow….

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What goes well with Mexican food?

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So, having gathered our ample harvest of tomatillos and chillies and prepared our fiesta Mexicana, RMTTB sits down to ponder the serious business of the day: what Irish beers would go best with this spice?  It’s a tough one.  Usually when eating hot food, our preference is for a cool, unobtrusive brew.  But very few micro or nano brewers are going to invest their time and effort into making a bland beer.  At least not on purpose.  So our challenge remains:  what will complement but not challenge our food?

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To the blackboard!

First off: Mexican food without tortilla chips?  Not going to happen at the RMTTB table.  And as it happens, our local Supervalu was doing plain tortilla chips at €1 for a large pack.  Sorted.  A couple of tubs of sour cream and a bunch of coriander from the garden and dip 1 is sorted.  Dip 2 is tomatillo salsa.  A fantastic was to use up those stubbornly green tomatoes that cling for dear life to the late Irish autumn.  Dip 3 is a classic guacamole with a tequila twist and behold, our starter platter (recipes here):

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The food was good, the beers we had selected for testing were tasty enough, but it was difficult to find a pairing that made both beer and food taste better.  After much slurping and swilling (and even some swallowing) a couple of contenders emerged.  We couldn’t find one brew that really zinged with all 3 starters but each dip had found a partner.

Tortilla chips are moreish.  Dipped in sour cream they’re even more moreish.  Washed down by N17’s Rye Ale, they’re addictive. That light caramel, sweet but subtle malty rye with its light bitter finish was a prefect counterpoint to our exquisitely presented chips.

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Black’s of Kinsale’s Session beer was a revelation with the guacamole.  It’s summery: light, low alcohol, fruity.  And the tequila kick in the dip left an aftertaste that was carried on by the grapefruit finish of the beer.  Douze points!

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Delicious and all as they were, by the time the main course was presented we were pretty stuffed.  Thankfully the pork was spicy enough and coleslaw crunchy enough that it felt like a light snack, rather than a heavy meal.  We served the meat & slaw with tortilla wraps and chopped chillies and used the tomatillo salsa as a wrap spread.  RMTTB takes its job seriously and, however daunting the prospect of tasting another three beers with the main course might have been, we cast caution to the wind and cracked on.  The beers were not unpleasant but one in particular stood out.  St Mel’s Pale Ale was bloody gorgeous.  It hit the right notes with both the spicy meat and fresh slaw and washed down the food in a way that enhanced and supplemented the many flavours at play.

And even more wondrous than the discovery of this hot, tasty match, was the learning of the fact that St Mel is the patron saint of single people, whose feast day occurs a week before St Valentine’s Day.  Apparently on this day, a woman has to find a Longford man to kiss or else she will have bad luck for the rest of the year.  Hot tasty matches abound!  Olé!  image14

Harvest time (part the first)

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RMTTB has a garden and we’re not afraid to use it.  Ideally we’d have a vast expansive hop garden and lovingly craft our own fabulous beers from hand grown, hand picked, hand rolled hops.  And people would taste our beer and feel inspired to acclaim it online!  Except that our few forays into homebrewing have met with disaster and our garden’s about the size of a postage stamp.

But we digress…. right now we have a bumper crop of green tomatoes and chilli peppers to be taken care of

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And they just scream modern Mexican cuisine.  Which begs the question – what Irish beer would go best with a bit of spicy Mexican on a warm autumn evening in Donnycarney…?

It took a bit of testing.  Sometimes spicy food needs a beer that won’t challenge it, that will complement but not compete.  Micro-brewed beers are usually anything but bland and often too complex to go well with highly spiced cuisine but, after an evening of trial and error, we came up with this menu:

Starter of Tomatillo Salsa, Guacamole & sour cream with tortilla chips.

Pork Carnitas with Mexican coleslaw

Churros with Chocolate Stout

Recipes below, diary & beer notes to follow!

Tomatillo salsa

Take about a half kilo of green tomatoes and two or three chilli peppers (we used one jalapeno and one scotch bonnet both lovingly cultivated under the stone cold skies of Dublin).  Method of preparation is very much a lifestyle choice, you can boil, pan fry or oven roast the tomatoes & chillies until they are soft.  We roasted with a couple of cloves of garlic in a hot oven (220C) for about 15 minutes.  Allow to cool and then whizz in a blender with the juice of half a lime, a handful of chopped coriander, a spoonful of honey and a chopped scallion.  Chill for an hour or two and serve with nachos or toasted tortilla bread.

Guacamole

Another recipe chosen to help us dispose of this year’s bumper crop of chillies.  Take a couple of ripe avocados (soft to the touch but not yet brown on the inside) and mash the bejasus out of them until you are left with a texture that’s pleasantly lumpy and not quite smooth.  Throw in half an onion finely chopped and one or two seeded, chopped jalapeno peppers.  Squeeze the juice of half a lime and, if you’re feeling frisky, a spoonful of tequila.  Mix in some chopped coriander to taste y aqui – guacamole!

Sour cream

Run to the shop.  Buy sour cream.  Tip it into a fancy bowl you picked up somewhere on a sun holiday.  Sprinkle with chopped coriander.  Sit back and accept plaudits for food styling and sophisticated presentation.  Smirk.

Pork carnitas

Source a shoulder of pork or a couple of pork shoulder steaks (say 3 steaks for every 2 people).  Chop a couple of chillies (we used about 5), a whole large Spanish onion and a head of garlic.  Mix with two teaspoons of ground cumin and a handful of chopped oregano.  Cover the shoulder or cutlets in the combined ingredients and give them a good rub in.  Heat a pan on high heat with a dollop of olive oil and a good sized knob of butter and brown the meat well before tossing into a slow cooker or casserole dish.  Fry any remaining bit of onion etc until soft and add to the meat.  It should look something gorgeous like this:

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Cook in a slow cooker on high for about 6 hours or in an oven at 140C for about 4 1/2 hours. When done, the meat should be falling apart into spicy cooking juices.  If the meat juices are too hot, you can reduce the heat by adding lime juice or sugar.

Mexican coleslaw

There are many variations on this recipe – this is ours.  Get a half head/quarter head, depending on how much you want to make, of white cabbage and an equal amount (in volume) of carrots.  Shred the cabbage and carrots (get your hands on a food processor – RMTTB did this by hand, tedious is not the word…).  To the sliced veg add a thinly sliced red pepper, the juice of a lime, a handful or coriander and some sour cream.  We’re not going to specify quantities here: mix and match until you find the balance you need.  We used just enough sour cream to barely coat, leaving the overall slaw texture very crispy and fresh.

Churros

Desserts not being our strong point – we robbed the recipe from the BBC.  All you need to know is here.

 

 

 

 

Keeping our hand in…

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Ok, this blog business is bloody hard work.  And as blog-people go, RMTTB is pretty lazy.  But, while an entire month has passed since our first (and last…) post, we haven’t been completely idle.  For instance, we managed to fit in several trips to the Craft Beer & Cider Festival at the RDS.  All in the name of research.

There aren’t enough superlatives in the English language to describe how much we enjoyed this year’s event.  Fantastically friendly atmosphere, great range of food and beer and a wonderfully diverse visitor demographic.  The organisers had also  taken on board the many pleas for smaller glasses.  Kudos.  (I wonder if we could get them down to 0.2 for next year??)

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Conscientious to the last, RMTTB slugged our way through the entire offering and looks forward to revisiting our favourites here on the blackboard in the near future.  We gave our vote for the festival beer to the Galway Hooker Coffee Porter.

We’ve also been planning.  Sometimes we try new recipes and they just don’t work out.  Or else the food is amazing but the beer we’ve chosen doesn’t quite work.  In which case, it’s back to the blackboard until we get it right…  If something isn’t great we don’t write about it.  We’re only interested in writing about great beer and the food that makes it taste even better.  Bear with us if we’re offline for a while.

So.  Coming up in the next few weeks we’ll be asking:  “What goes well with Mexican food?”  “Beeramisu?  Really??” and “Can we beat Germany at their own game??”

We’re also planning a blow out harvest meal to showcase the best of Irish saison beers in time for Hallowe’en.

Let the tasting commence…