Mango shrikhand with Floris mango beer

Last week I did another pop-up with Bristol chef Romy Gill - this time at the Butlers Arms in Sutton Coldfield which is owned by Twitter friend Chris Giles and his wife Paula.

This time I took a slightly different approach, matching a beer and a wine to each dish which worked really well, proving that lager is not the automatic go-to with a curry.

Desserts were always going to prove a bit of a challenge but I suddenly remembered that Floris made a mango beer which I thought would pair with Romy’s creamy mango dessert, a simple dish of strained yoghurt mixed with fresh mango pulp. (Beer, unlike wine, can replicate the flavours in a dish without having its own flavour stripped out because of its carbonation). Thanks to the sweetness of this particular beer it worked really well and was deliciously refreshing at the end of the rich, spicy meal. You can buy it online from beermerchants.com for £1.90 a bottle.

To be fair, the wine pairing - a Concha y Toro late harvest sauvignon blanc was excellent too - the mango brought out the tropical fruit notes in the wine.

Bakewell tart and Liefmans Kriek

It’s been hard to pick a single pairing from the beer and food matching dinner I attended at the Anchor in Walberswick last week but I reckon it’s got to be the perfect pairing of Bakewell tart and Liefmans Kriek.

Liefmans, which is based in Belgium used to make two fruit beers - Kriek which was flavoured with cherries and Frambozen or framboise with raspberries. Now it seems to make just Liefmans which is blended with cherries and other berries and what they call Liefmans Cuvée Brut which is wrapped in the distinctive red paper.and is, so far as I can tell, the old Kriek. Either would have gone with the tart, which contains a layer of raspberry jam with an almond topping. I’ve previously matched it with Frambozen but the Kriek is equally good.

We were also served a glass of Meantime’s very chocolatey chocolate beer which went well with a number of the desserts on this highly indulgent dessert plate (right) but particularly, I thought, with a white chocolate mousse on shortbread. Something you just couldn’t pull off with wine.

The dinner was part of an all day beer experience called ‘Beer Safari’ organised by a Suffolk-based company called Food Safari and included a trip to the local Adnams brewery in Southwold. I’ll be writing more about some of the other beers and pairings I tasted later this week.

I attended the dinner as a guest of The Anchor and Food Safari.

Raspberry beer with chocolate and raspberries

If you’re looking for something really original to impress your Valentine next weekend try this fabulous pairing.

You might, if you were a wine drinker, think beer was hardly romantic but you’d be wrong. Belgian style raspberry beers like Liefmans Frambozen and New Glarus Raspberry Tart (only available in the US, as far as I know, sadly) have a wonderfully refreshing tart raspberry flavour that makes a brilliant counterpoint to a rich chocolate dessert.

I like to serve them chilled in a martini glass or other pretty dessert glass paired with a chocolate roulade filled with raspberries and cream but given that a whole chocolate roulade is a bit big for two - even two ardent chocoholics - you could just dress up a shop bought chocolate dessert with cream and raspberries. Easy, stunning and seductive!

Image © Mariusz Blach - Fotolia

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.