Match of the week
Apricot pancakes and apricot (or peach) beer
Pancakes and beer might not sound like the most obvious of combinations but as with other flour-based foods such as sandwiches or pies they work together remarkably well. Especially, as I discovered when I was writing my food and beer book An Appetite for Ale last year, fruit-filled pancakes and fruit beers.
You could have a cherry-filled pancake with a Belgian Kriek beer for example but my favourite was an apricot filled pancake with a apricot or peach-flavoured beer. There is (or was. I haven’t seen it lately) an English apricot beer made by Melbourn Brothers but I prefer the Belgian peach-flavoured beers such as Timmermans Pèche or even Floris Mango or Passionfruit.
The interesting thing about beer, unlike wine, is that you can pair beer and food with a similar flavour profile. The carbonation in the beer refreshes the palate so that you can pick up the fruit flavours in both the food and the drink.
I’m not sure that I’d pair the classic British pancake day pancake with sugar and lemon juice with a beer though. In the past I’ve found a glass of Asti works reasonably well though I’m not sure, being comfort food, that they aren’t nicer just on their own. Or with a cup of tea.
Savoury pancakes and sparkling cider
The English - and very delicious - way with pancakes is to serve them with granulated sugar and lemon (a dessert that pairs well with gently sparkling, sweet Asti or Moscato d’Asti). But an even better match is the French - or more specifically Breton - tradition of serving savoury pancakes with sparkling cider, a vastly underrated drink.
In Brittany savoury pancakes or crèpes tend to be made with a proportion of buckwheat flour which gives them a nutty, savoury, faintly bitter flavour that picks up on the bitter apple notes in genuine farmhouse cider. Fillings such as cheese, ham and tricky-to-match spinach all work well.
When I was in France recently I was amazed at the range of artisanal ciders in the supermarkets, and at the ridiculously cheap prices they were charging - in some cases as little as 2 or 3 euros (£1.35-£2 or $2.60-$4) for a 75 cl bottle.
In the UK I’d recommend Duché de Longueville from Normandy (available from Sainsbury’s) or a home grown sparkling cider from Gospel Green, near Haselmere in Surrey (+44(0)1428 654120) which sells in local off-licences and farm shops and also from Partridges in London. It is also quite widely stocked in Brighton, they say.
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