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.
Roast lamb with a Douro red
Yesterday we had the family round for lunch and served a 2002 Douro red from Portugal with the main course of spice-crusted roast lamb with garlic and rosemary, roast potatoes (my youngest son managed to put away 15 but remains, annoyingly, as skinny as a rake) and in-season purple sprouting broccoli.
Now I know there are loads of reds which would have paired with that dish (Cabernet Sauvignon being an obvious contender) but the wine, a single vineyard Quinta do Vale Dona Maria made by Christiano van Zeller which came from English wine merchant Tanners was particularly delicious. It was soft and supple with rich, ripe bramble fruit: a sweet contrast to the cumin-dominated spicing and the slight bitterness of the greens or PSB as they now call it in the trade.
Sometimes it’s good to serve something that makes everyone sit up. My eldest son and his girlfriend are both doing wine qualifications so it was a chance for them to try a wine they hadn’t come across before.
For dessert we had fresh apricot pancakes I was testing for a book which I strongly recommend once they come into season. The apricot filling was laced with a gorgeous apricot liqueur made by the French firm Gabriel Boudier which really brought out the flavour of the fruit. (You can find it in Waitrose in the UK). It was so good I added an extra splash as I served them - plus a scoop of vanilla ice cream! (Well, it was the weekend . . . )
Image © sugar0607 - Fotolia.com
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