For New Year’s Eve this year, we teamed up with our friends Chris and Grace to do a beer pairing dinner to close out 2010. Ingrid’s sister Jessica and our friend Charlotte joined us in the festivities as well. I took four courses and Chris tackled four as well… here is what happened:
Chocolate cakes cooling…
…we don’t have one of these, so we have to improvise…our version of sous vide pork belly.
…a beet chip that will show up later for dessert.
…candied walnuts that will also end up on the dessert plate.
…Ingrid decided to make edible nameplates out of leftover gingerbread.
…part of the beer lineup to start the night.
…the first course- mushroom tartine paired with the following beer:
…a close-up of the tartine.
…a caged cork from one of the bottles.
…a close-up of the dessert cooling.
…the sous-vide pork belly cut into small pieces and seared on a non-stick pan over high heat.
…the first pairing with the pork belly. The dish was smoked paprika cured pork belly, seared over high heat with marscapone polenta, pickled carrot, cucumber, red pepper and a smoked pepper and cayenne tuile. This was paired with a 2008 Alaskan Smoked Porter…the idea was to match the smokiness of the paprika to the flavor of the paprika…it worked out OK, but the next iteration was better:
…the second- go-round was paired with Southern Tier’s Gemini…the double IPA cut the smokiness and the heat of the tuile and lended to a better pairing than the porter. Score one for the IPA!
…close-up of the bottlecaps…gotta love the bears on the Alaskan Porter cap!
….third course was Chris’s potato-garlic soup with clarified butter and parsley garnish. There was four heads of roasted garlic in this dish!!!
Chris paired this with the Bruery’s Trade Winds Tripel brewed with Thai Basil. The herbal quality of the beer was a nice compliment to the soup.
…for the next course, I chose a Weizenbock to pair with a talleggio angnalotti with apple/celery/prosciutto sauce. This beer did not pair so well…it did not detract nor add to the dish, so we’ll call it a wash…
…the angnalotti.
..next up was the fish course…I chose Idle Hands Golden Strong Ale brewed by Chris himself. I thought it might match some of the vanilla notes in the sauce, but this fell a little short because it did not match up with the fattiness of the butter. We pulled out a Wtitkap Tripel to test that out and it cut the fattiness in the sauce much better. But don’t discount the Golden Strong…it’s still a great beer!
…the fish course up close- haddock, a spinach ball, mashed parsnip and a saffron-vanilla sauce.
…next up was the pairing of the night…Chris chose Unibroue’s Quelque Chose brewed with cherries to pair with his dubbel-braised duck legs and smashed sweet potatoes. The cherry lent itself to a perfect flavor match to the braised duck.
…the duck ready to be eaten!
…dessert was beet ice cream, walnut sauce, candied walnuts, beet chips and flourless chocolate cake pulled from the French Laundry Cookbook. I paired this with a doppelbock…
…it matched up OK, but was not a strong pairing. I thought the earthiness of the beet ice cream would go with the beer, but it missed the mark…
…Ingrid’s name plate is slowly disappearing!
…final course was Chris’s wonderful cheese board with matching accompaniements…paired with his Idle Hands “Double Happiness” English Barleywine….who doesn’t like stinky cheese at 1 AM! The beer went well with the cheeses and capped off a perfect ending to 2010!
…the first beer consumed of 2011!
-Josh
