What to drink with Scandinavian food

If culture and ‘terroir’ are a basis for deciding which drinks bestmatch a particular cuisine then beer must have a strong claim to bepaired with Scandinavian food.

Certainly London’s newest Scandi restaurant Madsen believes so offering a matching beer with every course for their recent menu for the London Restaurant Festival.

It was a nice idea that didn’t quite come off because of the quantities of beer involved. I ordered an Aer India Pale Ale from Denmark which was fine with my main course of ‘Hakkebøf med bløde løg’ (aka Danish beef burger with beetroot) but much less good with my ‘curry-marinated herring with green apples’ and a delicious smoked salmon dip, both of would have been better with a light lager or pilsner. Ideally you’d be able to order 250ml (or smaller) glasses so that you could match each course. 500ml is a lot of beer to drink for lunch (for girls at least ;-)

The food though was lovely - a modern take on smørrebrød with slightly larger helpings than you would get in Denmark but smaller than a standard main course - perfect for lunch. I also got to taste (though didn’t order) a fantastic baked crème caramel made with Svaneke ‘Choko’ Chocolate Stout so they’re obviously playing around with the idea of beer in food too.

There are other drink options, obviously, with this style of food though beer almost always scores better than wine with anything pickled in my opinion. A pan-fried fillet of Irish plaice with steamed broccoli tossed in oyster remoulade I also tasted would have been excellent with a minerally Sauvignon Blanc and my beefburger would have gone well with a Bordeaux or any similar Cabernet Merlot blend.

I like Madsen. It has a friendly, café-style design and atmosphere (very Scandi) and offers something genuinely distinctive to the London dining scene. They’re apparently thinking of putting on beer dinners so keep an eye on their website and on Twitter where they tweet as MadsenLondon.

Madsen is at 20 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 3DL. Tel 020 7225 2772.

I ate at Madsen as a guest of the restaurant.

Photo by Nextvoyage

Pairing beer with dessert

If you were going to introduce someone to beer the last course you’d probably think of would be a dessert but as I discovered at a beer and pudding matching session at Brown’s Hotel in London it can be a surprisingly successful combination.

The problem is that when it works it’s sublime and when it doesn’t hit the spot it can be downright weird. Added to which not everyone agrees which the pairings work best . . . Here are my own impressions with the following ratings:

***** Sublime. An all-time-great pairing
**** Very good - the drink enhances the food and vice versa
*** A sound reliable match (generally)
** Fine but no fireworks
* A feasible match but one which may diminish the wine or the food
No stars A misfiring match

Lime and mango Eton Mess with Sol lager
You could see the thinking behind this pairing. You drink lime with Sol, lime goes with mango ergo Sol goes with mango but it didn’t quite work like that. For a start the Sol was served (oddly) in a red wine glass without its lime. And the Eton Mess - with alphonso mangoes I would guess was exceptionally rich and sweet. I asked to try it with the Sol served the traditional way in a bottle with a wedge of lime stuck in the neck and it was much better but you wouldn’t really want to serve it that way at home with a posh dessert, would you?
Rating *

Steamed orange pudding with Blue Moonwheat beer
This by contrast was a surprise hit. Blue Moon is an American wheat beer brewed in the Belgian style with a big hit of orange which actually complemented the orange in the light, airy steamed orange pudding perfectly. Lovely
Rating ****

Poached pear in white wine and Grolsch Weizen
Again you could see where this pairing was coming from. The Grolsch which is more in the style of a German weiss bier has quite a strong banana-y note which was actually quite in tune with the delicate vanilla flavour of the poached pear but it was slightly too sweet for the beer. Also you wouldn’t serve a dessert unadorned like that and when we added cream the beer immediately tasted bittr. An odd one.
Rating **

Spotted Dick with custard and Aventinus
It was worth attending the tasting just to experience this combination which everyone agreed was the best pairing. Why? Well this traditional English fruited pudding brought out a whole raft of spicy raisiny flavours in the beer which in turn gave an extra dimension to the dessert - almost like a sticky raisin sauce. Totally unexpected and totally brilliant!
Rating *****

Raspberry crème brulée with Innis & Gunn oak-aged beer, Bacchus Frambozen beer and Hix Oyster ale
These were the combinations that caused the most discussion and disagreement. Personally I thought the dessert too light and too sweet for both the richly malted Innis & Gunn and for the Oyster Ale, de-naturing them and making them taste excessively bitter but the majority preferred them to the Frambozen (raspberry beer which was also very sweet. I’ve tried berry-flavoured beers with creamy desserts before and they’ve worked (especially cheesecake) so I think it’s just a question of tweaking the level of sweetness in the dessert (panna cotta might have been better than crème brulée with its caramelised topping) and adding some fresh raspberries rather than cooked ones. (Innis & Gunn is a much better cheese beer IMO and porter a better match with chocolate.
Rating: Innis & Gunn and Hix Oyster Ale * Bacchus Frambozen ***

Ginger parkin and Worthington’s White Shield
Actually porter might have come into its own here too. Worthington’s White Shield, a very dry hoppy ale, certainly didn’t work for me. The very sweet dessert stripped it of all of its flavour. Again it would have been much, much happier - and hoppier - with cheese
Rating: no stars

Pannacotta with caramelised oranges with Goose Island IPA
If you taste it on its own, Goose Island is big, rich, sweet and generous. You wouldn’t have known it with this dessert. The orange really blew all those flavours away making it taste one-dimensional and bitter.
Rating: no stars

Verdict
A fascinating tasting that hinted at a number of interesting possibilities. Yes, several pairings misfired but if other beers and desserts had been chosen (odd that there was no chocolate dessert and no barley wine, for instance and no desserts with a spicy element which I think would have helped the matches) I think the hit rate would have significantly increased. Certainly, on the basis of this tasting, beer is a better match for steamed English puddings than wine is.

Photo by Valeria Boltneva

What to pair with artisanal cheddar?

By artisanal cheddar, I mean cheddar that is mature, full-flavoured, and unpasteurised (learn more in this post: So what makes a great cheddar?). It isn't the easiest cheese to match with wine.

One’s instinct is to drink red but it’s a struggle. You don’t want anything too light and graceful or, conversely, too full-bodied and tannic. There can be some wild flavours in a cheese like this which I think are best matched by an equally artisanal wine - and old Syrah/Shiraz, Grenache or Mourvèdre, maybe - or a blend of all three. Or a good Zinfandel. But don’t introduce blues or smelly washed-rind cheeses to the cheeseboard as well.

Vintage port is surprisingly - or not so surprisingly - good as we confirmed at a cheese and wine tasting I conducted for Decanter last year. One associates it more with stilton but it’s equally good with a fine cheddar. But it’s not the type of wine to open with a ploughman’s or other light lunch.

That distinction goes to a traditional British ale which I’m not sure isn’t the best pairing for this kind of cheese, especially if you serve it with an onion pickle or a chutney. Something like Adnams Broadside or Young’s Special. If you find British beers too bitter a sweeter-flavoured American IPA may be more to your taste, being a classic example.

If you’re looking for a terroir-based match a farmhouse cider would be the obvious choice for an authentic Somerset cheddar, especially if you serve it with apples or an apple chutney. Personally I prefer a medium-dry style but that’s up to you.

Apple-based aperitifs or digestifs such as Pommeau and Pomona which is made by the Somerset Cider Brandy Company can also work very well. Obviously they’re more alcoholic than cider but you could serve them instead of port for after dinner drinking.

Other possibilities, less mainstream: a full-bodied oaked Chardonnay pairs surprisingly well with cheddar as does a good rich whisky like The Macallan or Famous Grouse. Sherry can also work well particularly if you serve your cheddar with nuts - I’d choose something like a palo cortado. Other possibilities would be a medium-dry Madeira or a 10 - or 20 - year old tawny port.

See also: The Best Wine Pairings for Cheddar Cheese

Image by SplitShire from Pixabay

Which wines and beers match best with Chinese food

With Chinese New Year coming up this weekend you may be planning a trip to a Chinese restaurant or planning a Chinese meal at home. But which wine to serve?

I’ve talked to Chinese chefs and food writers about their own personal preferences and you’d be surprised how many of them reach for a full bodied red rather than the floral whites that are usually recommended. My own personal failsafe recommendation if you want to pick just one wine is a fruity rosé - the Merlot based ones from Bordeaux such as Château de Sours are perfect.

Better still treat a Chinese meal like any Western meal and serve a lighter wine with the lighter dishes and a more robust one with more robust dishes such as glazed ribs or dishes in black bean sauce

• Delicate dishes such as dim sum and steamed or stir-fried vegetable dishes

Champagne or sparkling wine is the ideal answer with dim sum - both the steamed and deep fried variety, especially when stuffed with shellfish. It also goes well with lighter stir fries and steamed fish and vegetable and with the more delicate flavours of Cantonese food.

A clean minerally citrussy Sauvignon Blanc (rather than a grassy, herbaceous one is also a good match with seafood - just as it is in other cuisines - and dry Rieslings such as those from Germany, Austria and Alsace work well with these kinds of dishes too.

• Sweet-sour dishes

This is where off-dry wines score best and why fruity rosé works so well. Even those who don’t like White Zinfandel concede that it’s in its natural element with these types of dishes. Aromatic whites such as Riesling, Pinot Gris and Austrian Grüner Veltliner are good matches as is Argentinian Torrontes. And if you’re feeling extravagant ‘rich’ Champagnes like Roederer’s and Veuve Clicquot’s also handle sweetness well.

• Duck

The wine-friendliest dish of all in the Chinese repertoire, fabulous with lighter reds such as Beaujolais (or the very similar Australian Tarrango) and Pinot Noir as well as more intensely flavoured Merlots (including Merlot-dominated blends from Bordeaux) and lush Australian Shiraz. (The latter two wines benefit from a couple of years of bottle age to mellow the tannins)

Duck is also in my view the best partner for Gewürztraminer which can overwhelm some of the more delicate elements of a typical Chinese meal.

• Powerful dishes with sticky sauces

Such as glazed ribs or crab in black bean sauce. Here fruity reds again come into play. When leading Chinese Food writer Ken Hom introduced a range of varietal wines to go with Chinese food a couple of years ago he picked a Mourvèdre and a Grenache, both big wines but without excessive tannins. Ripe fruity reds certainly tend to deal best with the hotter, spicier dishes like Szechuan beef

If you prefer a white wine consultant and MW Peter McCombie who has worked with a number of oriental restaurants favours rich waxy Pinot Gris from Alsace, Oregon or New Zealand which he has found works with tricky-to-match customers such as eel and black beans. He put together the list at London’s fashionable Bar Shu

Another Chinese restaurant where the wine list is exceptionally well thought out is Hakkasan where buyer Christine Parkinson pairs all the wines she considers with food before she puts them on her list

Which beers match best
I haven’t done as much research on beer as I have on wine with Chinese food but I’ve found that light wheat beers such as witbiers and Bavarian weissbiers generally work well with Chinese-style snacks such as prawn dumplings and spring rolls and can also handle sweet and sour flavours.

Belgian ‘brune’ beers like Leffe Brune are a good match for duck with hoisin sauce. Dishes like glazed ribs or beef in black bean sauce also pair well with brown ales and Belgian triple beers.

And what about tea?
The Chinese drink tea all day long, just as we would drink water says Edward Eisler of specialist importers Jing Tea and that obviously includes meals too. With lighter foods he recommends a green tea like Dragonwell or jasmine tea like Jasmine Silver Needle. Fried or heavier foods go well with aged teas like Puerh while rich and sticky dishes like ribs benefit from a dark high-fired Oolong tea such as Great Red Cloak.

Image credit: Cats Coming