Tag: beer

Categories
Mains Recipes

Steak & Real Ale Hotpot

This week I’ve had the electric slow cooker back in action, delivering another true winter warmer of a Sunday dinner.

For this variation on the Gastropub classic, steak and ale pie, I bought locally reared beef from a farm shop butcher, along with a favourite dark ale from a local craft brewery. Add hot beef stock and seasonal veg, and leave it to bubble away for several hours in the corner of the kitchen, filling the house and whetting the appetite with its satisfying aroma.

What’s more, I heartily recommend buying an additional bottle of the ale, so that the chef can relax with a glass while all that cooking is quietly underway. Preferably while watching the Premier League on Super Sunday. Hey, I earned it!

For the record, my choice was Meon Valley Bitter, brewed by Bowman Ales in the rolling countryside of the South Downs.

Cheers!

Servings

At least 6 adult portions here.

Timings

5 – 6 hours in an electric slow cooker on low. or fan oven at 140C (No slow cooker? See Customise it below).

You Will Need

  • 3 – 4 tbsp of plain flour
  • a few twists of black pepper
  • around 1kg chuck steak
  • a good drizzle of oil
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 onion
  • 2 carrots
  • 1/4 of a celeriac
  • 500ml bottle of real ale
  • 500ml beef stock
  • 100ml tomato passata
  • 2 tsp Dijon mustard
  • 1 tbsp dark brown sugar
  • salt, pepper
  • 1 bay leaf
  • sprinkling of fresh herbs – I used rosemary and thyme.
  • 2 tbsp cornflour
  • 2 tbsp cold water

Method

  1. Turn the electric slow cooker on at the high setting, and leave to warm up. Sprinkle the flour into a shallow dish and season with the black pepper.
  2. Chop the steak into bite-sized chunks. Roll the chunks in the flour and pepper mix until they are coated all over.
  3. Warm some oil in a large frying pan on the hob. Transfer the chunks of steak over and sizzle until the outsides are sealed. Place in the slow cooker bowl.
  4. Top up the oil in the frying pan if necessary, then crush in the garlic. Roughly chop the onion, carrots and celeriac into chunks a similar size to the steak, and add to the frying pan. Turn over a few times with a spatula to get all the veg warmed through and just beginning to sear at the edges. Transfer to the slow cooker bowl.
  5. Next, add the passata, mustard and sugar to the frying pan. Pour in the ale and stir to mix. Turn up the heat and, as it starts to bubble, transfer to the slow cooker bowl.
  6. Finally, pour the beef stock into the frying pan and bring to the boil, before tipping it into the slow cooker bowl.
  7. Place the bay leaf in the slow cooker bowl. Tear or sprinkle in the herbs, and give it all a good churn with the spatula.
  8. After about 40 mins, turn down to the medium setting and leave to bubble away quietly for 5 – 6 hours.
  9. After that cooking time, make up a roux by mixing the cornflour and water until smooth, then pour into the hotpot. Stir in and watch as the sauce thickens. Repeat this stage a few more times if you like, till the hotpot gravy reaches your preferred consistency. You will then be ready to serve.
  10. I served this with some roasted charlotte potatoes, as shown in my main photo at the top of the post.

Customise It!

Don’t worry if you do not have an electric slow cooker – just replace it with a lidded casserole dish. Start it off at 180C in a fan oven for 40 mins, then turn down to 140C for 5 – 6 hours.

I used celeriac, but you could just as easily use parsnip and a few sticks of celery, roughly chopped. The rosemary and thyme were the fresh herbs I had to hand, but you could replace these with mixed dried herbs.

The choice of beer is a matter of personal taste. My Meon Valley Ale is a locally brewed best bitter, but you can use any other real ale. Make sure it is brown or ruby though, to help provide the taste and the colour – a lager just won’t work as well.

Here’s a classic punk album I’ve been listening to again this week, featuring the inimitable voice of Poly Styrene. I could have chosen many tracks from their debut album, but have settled on this: X-ray Spex with Let’s Submerge.

Categories
Blog Mains

Gösser und Gulasche!

While here in Graz, we have moved indoors from the freezing, yet festive Christmas Markets (see Walk Out To Winter) for our next tasting of traditional Austrian food and drink. We are now at the Gösser Bräu, a long established beer hall and restaurant over towards the River Mur in the west of the city centre.

Originally the site of the Gösser brewery, it has been serving traditional Austrian fare since 1902, along with some terrific beers. The place has a warm, modern and stylish interior, but still carries the look and feel of a classic European, high-ceilinged beer hall, with the chink and clatter of glasses and echo of lively chatter from the bench tables, mainly occupied by large groups of friends.

There were 6 hungry people in our party, all in search of some warming, filling and tasty rustic fare. My starter was a dish I have had before in Austria and really wanted to have again on this trip. It is Styrian Bean Salad, a regional speciality from this part of Austria. It consists of dark pulses the size of butter beans, tossed in green, nutty-tasting pumpkin seed oil. The salad is topped off with grated white radish, raw red onion rings and segments of hard boiled egg.

It was as delicious as I remembered it.

For mains, the Gulasche (or Goulash), was a popular choice with our group. It is shown in my main photo at the top of the post – a hearty dish comprising chunks of tender, slow cooked beef in a rich gravy, served with a Semmelknödel, a bread dumpling. I have only ever eaten dumpling on a very few occasions, and here it was skilfully prepared and cooked, with a mild herb flavouring. It held its shape when sliced and did a grand job soaking up the tasty gravy.

The beers are excellent. I chose the Bock beer that is brewed specially for Christmas and holiday occasions, having had a reliable recommendation on this (thank you, Kelvin!). It is a little stronger than their usual beer and packs a memorable, caramelish taste. I was enjoying it so much that, er, most of it had gone by the time I remembered to take a photo for the blog (whoops).

I noticed they were also serving a darker beer, so tried some of that. I liked the colour, which was somewhere between brown and ruby, and the thick foamy head. Predictably, the taste was maltier than the Bock.

Both made a really enjoyable accompaniment to the Goulash. It says a lot that everyone was sufficiently full to render a perusal of the dessert menu unnecessary.

My final challenge, before leaving Austria for home, is to find some traditional local fare that is oriented around fruit and veg. Tune in to my next post to see how that search goes.

In the meantime, with all this snow around in Austria, I can’t think of a better time to add a track to the ADK Playlist by these Scottish and Northern Irish alt-rockers. I saw them live at the time the album A Hundred Million Suns was released, and this is one of the many tracks I enjoyed. Here’s Snow Patrol with Engines.

Categories
Blog Drink

Labour of Love

My motorhome tour of Scotland has now taken me, literally, the length and breadth of the nation to seek out some of the best Scots craft beers – a route taking in the famous John O’Groats.

John O’Groats is situated at the northerly end point of the longest journey that can be completed on the British mainland – a full 874 miles from Land’s End in Cornwall, south-west England. In fact, as we were leaving it in the motorhome, there was a hitch-hiker standing by the side of the road, holding a piece of cardboard on which he had scrawled, somewhat optimistically, in marker pen, ‘Land’s End’. That made me laugh!

Craft beer has really come on around the Scottish regions since I was last here. There is now an extensive range of locally produced ales, and most areas I’ve visited have their own home brewed specialities.

This being a food and drink-inspired blog, I’ve considered it my duty to sample a fair few of these on our travels, so that I can offer my readers an honest appraisal. A labour of love, I guess. I know, it’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. Don’t mention it – you’re welcome.

So we’ll start in John O’Groats itself, where the iconic signpost shown in my photograph is only about 100 yards from the John O’Groats Brewery Visitor Experience. It hosts an exhibition celebrating the range of beers that are brewed on site. This is a selection I took away to enjoy with my evening bbqs.

Here’s another beer I bought and enjoyed of an evening as the sun was setting in the Cairngorms National Park. Wildcat is brewed in Aviemore (the winter ski resort) and has a deep colour, good body and malty taste.

St. Andrews in Fife may be better known as the ancient birthplace of golf, but these days it is also home to the St. Andrews Brewing Co. I first discovered their tap room in nearby Dundee, just across the Tay estuary, and later picked up this tasty IPA while visiting St. Andrews itself.

My overall favourite on this trip, however (cue drum roll….) is the Joker IPA, brewed in Alloa by the Williams Brothers Brewing Co. I found it to be golden, well balanced, hoppy and full of flavour. Guaranteed to satisfy, and I was a repeat customer on more than one occasion.

I described making my critical assessment of some of Scotland’s best craft beers as a labour of love. What better track to add to the ADK Playlist than this one from Pat and Greg Kane from Lanarkshire, better known as Hue and Cry: Labour of Love. Cheers, lads!

Categories
Blog

Hamble Spring Market

This Sunday we went to our first Hampshire Farmers’ Market of 2023, at the nearby village of Hamble. It took place down by the waterfront, where the River (also named the Hamble) meets the Solent (which in turn flows out to the English Channel).

As the sign above shows, it is actually possible to walk or cycle there via the England Coast Path. You can also ‘park and float’ from Warsash (on the other side of the River) via a great little ferry.

I always like visiting these local markets. The food is original and high quality, and it’s an opportunity to support independent producers in a sustainable economy. You can buy as much or as little as you wish, and packaging is minimal, as shoppers usually bring their own bags.

The sellers are generous with tasters and free samples. This adds a lot of fun and, like the produce itself, is not something you’d normally find in the branch of a big supermarket chain.

I’ll start with New Forest Shortbread. This lady bakes all her own in a 200 year-old cottage in Burley, in the centre of the Forest. I particularly liked the coffee shortbread, blended with Mozzo coffee roasted in Southampton.

A few weeks back, we were having a tomato shortage in our local shops. No chance of that now however, with this array of beauties grown just across the Solent on the Isle of Wight.

Lovers of charcuterie were also well served by this selection of spicy cured meats.

And why not combine this in a tasty sandwich, with some fresh sourdough bread.

We brought home a box of four fishcakes by Catch, who are based in Calshot, a little way along the coast. You can mix and match flavours, my fave being mackerel and beetroot.

Brownies are always a hit, especially when you have this amazing range of flavours to choose from.

Basingstoke’s Longdog Brewery were attracting a lot of interest with free tasters of their excellent beers….

…so much so that I just had to take home a bottle of Longdog IPA, which I enjoyed later.

It went down a treat sitting in the back garden listening to some music. A track came on my headphones which I hadn’t heard for some time, and I was reminded how great a song it was. Time to add it to the ADK Playlist, therefore. All the way from Montreal, here’s Arcade Fire with The Suburbs.

Cheers!

Categories
Blog Drinks

Prickly Moses

As a foodblogger travelling around Australia, I have made it my mission to seek out and sample a range of local craft beers along the way. I know – an onerous responsibility, but you’re welcome. Don’t mention it.

In recent years, craft beer has really taken off in the UK, and one of the pleasures of travelling around the British regions is tasting the different brews being produced by local independents. It appears that the craft beer market is, at the very least, equally as buoyant in Australia.

On my first (post-jet lag) day in Melbourne, I stumbled upon Dan Murphy’s bottleshop (as they call it here) in Prahan, and went in to ask if they stocked any local craft beers. I was escorted to one entire wall of the store, lined with refrigerators all stocking local craft brews – see my photo below.

From then on it has been a similar story everywhere. Each town and region has its own incredible range.

A good example is the Great Ocean Road Brewhouse – a vast warehouse devoted to regional craft beer. It is in Apollo Bay, a golden-beached seaside resort on the Victoria state coast. Here’s a photo below.

Some friends had invited us for drinks and pasta at their beach house, and I wanted to find some good local beers to take along. The choice was bewildering, but with the aid of some recommendations from the staff, I settled on the Prickly Moses beers shown in my main photo, at the top of this post.

Prickly Moses is a generic name that covers a number of hardy, cactus-like shrubs that grow in Australia’s hot climate. The name has been adopted by a craft brewery in Barongarook , Victoria. In keeping with the prickly theme, their logo is an Echidna, a mammal native to Australia akin to a kind of cute hedgehog (and which, incidentally, we have already seen at least a couple of times in the wild).

As the photo shows, my selection included a good variety, from golden summer ale, red ale, IPA, organic pilsner and low alcohol. Every one tasted crisp and fresh, and went down well with the punters on the sun deck, overlooking the bay. These are probably my favourites tasted so far, based on consistency of quality across a variety of beer types.

A close second is this IPA from Port Phillip on Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula, which had just the right combo of colour, depth, strength and hoppy taste (see below).

This one probably tasted special as it became a regular accompaniment to barbecuing in the garden, in the evening sun!

It would be impossible to review every beer from the 740-odd craft breweries in Australia, but I hope this will at least give you, um, a taste.

The next track for the ADK Playlist, from an Australian band, was suggested to me at the drinks and pasta party. These are The Veronicas, originally from Brisbane, with Untouched.