Chocolate, hazelnut and rosemary truffles with Mikkeller Big Worse red wine barrel-aged barley wine

It’s hard to pick out a single pairing from last week’s brilliant pop-up beer dinner at the Independent Manchester Beer Convention (IndyManBeerCon) but I’m going for this one because it’s Chocolate Week in the UK.

The meal was devised by Laurence Tottingham of Aumbry restaurant in Prestwich in consultation with the Port Street Beer House who curated the event and with whom they have already collaborated on a couple of beer dinners.

The chocolates - or rather truffles - were flavoured with hazelnuts and rosemary and were so rich they would have defeated most wines but they found their match in an extraordinarily intense 12% barley wine aged in red barrels in the ‘Big Worse’ series by Danish brewer Mikkeller. I’d tried it earlier in the day and found it a bit overwhelming but it was just brilliant with these chocolates.

Strong beers are an underrated match with dark chocolate adding a refreshing counterpoint of bitterness rather than adding to the overall sweetness. A 12% dessert wine would have never worked - you’d have had to turn to port to get a similar effect.

PS the other sweets on the plate were apple toffee pastilles in case you're wondering.

Pear and chai cake and green jasmine tea

I’ve been rediscovering tea pairing with food lately and this was a standout match at my local self-styled modern tearoom Lahloo Pantry in Bristol. It was a simple pound cake topped with spicy pears* cooked in chai syrup with the company's own green jasmine tea.

I keep struggling with green tea which I feel I ought to like more (so healthy!) and have up to now found jasmine tea just a little too cloyingly scented but this particular combination of the two is brilliant. The green tea balances the sometimes overwhelming aroma and taste of the jasmine. The sweetness of the jasmine offsets the slight bitterness of the tea though if you brew it at the correct temperature (around 70° I seem to recall) it shouldn’t be bitter anyway.

Brewing at that temperature makes it a warm rather than a hot drink which actually suits food better. The reason this pairing worked was that the cake wasn't too sweet and the touch of spice in the pears made a lovely contrast. I can imagine drinking it with a mildly spiced chicken salad and other gently spiced savoury Asian dishes too.

* Kate Gover who runs Lahloo says they might blog the recipe soon. I'll link to it if they do!

Tandoori salmon and fino sherry

One of the more successful pairings from the otherwise rather challenging sherry lunch I attended at the Cinnamon Club last week was a dish of tandoori salmon with a Valdespino Innocente fino. I tend to overlook fino in favour of manzanilla but I’m not sure it’s not a more flexible match with food.

The salmon itself was quite delicate but it came with some mango purée and a fiery wasabi-like green pea relish which didn’t dent the flavour of the Inocente at all.

Another fino, the Lustau La Ina also went well with a dish of Norwegian king crab with tamarind and burnt chilli dressing and a (totally delicious) chilled lentil and coriander soup.

I wouldn’t have thought of fino as an automatic go to for spicy food but this lunch certainly suggested it has potential. Maybe with a selection of Indian snacks at the beginning of a meal? Indian tapas - now there’s a new trend!

Hot dogs and champagne

One of the under-appreciated qualities of champagne is how well it goes with fast food. Like fish and chips, fried chicken, popcorn and . . . er . . . hot dogs. Or so the clever founders of Bubbledogs discovered and found themselves with a smash hit on their hands.

I must admit I was sceptical. Beer goes, sure, and there is a logic to combining bread with bubbles but some of the fillings sounded pretty challenging for £50+ bottles of champagne.

I chose a ‘breakie dog’, a sausage wrapped in bacon, topped with a fried egg and a scattering of black pudding which paired very well with a glass of rich, golden, almost honeyed Christophe Mignon brut nature (that’s without any added sugar or ‘dosage’ as they call it). It also went well with my daughter’s BLT dog with truffle mayo (champagne and truffles being a classic combo).

Curious to see how stronger flavours would impact I tried a kimchee dog but this time chose a glass of (I think, but didn’t note it down) the R H Coutier grand cru rosé which was sweeter and fruitier. (I’m sure the kimchee would have obliterated the Mignon). Other ‘dogs’ like the Sloppy Joe might have clobbered even that but hey, it’s not about perfect pairings, more about having a bit of fun. (Though not the cheapest fun in town.)

If you fancy the notion but can’t get to Bubbledogs check out my my ideas for a hot dog party.