Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

I think pairing beer with food is a great way to enhance both.  I also derive enjoyment from watching the reactions of pretentious wine drinkers when the subject of fancy beers and food is brought up.

For starters, there's this article in the SF Gate about why wine is inappropriate for pairing with cheese, and how beer is better, courtesy of a cheese monger friend :

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/02/17/WIGHKBA1OC1.DTL

Pilsner and Pizza anyone?

A friend of mine loves pizza and champagne.  I have to admit, having tried some, it is not half bad.  I think I would still prefer a beer, but it was not half bad.

One of my favorite "suprise" discoveries was with a expresso stout (my favorite beer that I brewed last year - I need to post the recipe).  I tried it with a pot roast and it was EXCELLENT.  The roasty flavors in the beer went very well with the complex and rich flavors of slow roasted beef.  Beer and beef - one letter difference and what a combo!

I can see where stout and beef would go well together.  The best I have had was Guiness and a Shepards Pie out at the ol' Pelican Inn & Tavern near the Muir Woods off of HWY 1 in Cali. 

However, I would not recommend Belgian Dubbel and Chicken Brocolli Divan.  Just tried it, had to switch over to Sauv Blanc.  Now, back to the dubbel.  Mmmm, dessert. 

If you're in the mood to drop some cash and have a great beer pairing experience, I recommend this place:

http://www.rusticorestaurant.com/

Rustico's in Alexandria is excellent. I went last summer with some friends and the food was awesome. Some of the pairings were surprising to me, but they all worked well. I don't see it on their website right now, but they offered "Trios" which were three mini-entrees, each with a 6 oz. beer paired to it. It rocked.

Hopefully they still do it but don't list it on their web menu for some reason, but even if not, their beer selection is impressive and the food is great.

I recently had a Beer Dinner for eight. I thought I'd post the menu:

Autumn Harvest Beer Dinner
October 13, 2007

Wild Mushroom Strudel
Prosciutto di parma & Meadowcreek grayson
Brooklyn Local One

...

Seared Sea Scallops & Spiced Apple Chutney
Avery Brewery Ellie’s Brown Ale

...

Slow Roasted king Salmon
Risotto Parmigiano-Reggiano
Celery Root Ragout & Ellie’s Ale Sauce
Saison DuPont vieille Provision

...

Charentais Melon Sorbet

...

Scharffenberger chocolate tart
Homemade Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
Lindemans Framboise

...

Maytag Blue, Candied walnuts, Gingerbread
Anchor Old Foghorn Barley Wine


While it was straight-up scrumptious, I'm equally inclined to toss a pizza in the oven and open whatever bottle is in my fridge.

Did you make all that yourself?  If so, when are you doing it again and how much money do I have to pay for an invite?  That sounded fantastic.

Yeah, I did make it all. It took about a week to prep but given that my bosses are pretty chill (2 little sweet kids) I found the time to cook a lot. Being a stay-at-home dad definitely helped give me the time to work on the menu. CAMRA homebrew paired dinners anyone?
On the flip-side I really like the simplicity of making "hearth style" thin crust pizzas even more..

I just started making my own pizza crusts with my recent bread making hobby (see post in the off topic forum) and I have found a killer pizza crust recipe.  It is out of Peter Reinheart's book The Breadmaker's Apprentice.  It uses a delayed fermentation technique the author learned from a baker in France.  It makes this unbelieavable light and airy crust.  I have not perfected the tossing technique to get the crust to the right thinness, but man it is good.  I would be happy to send you the recipe if you want.

EDIT: I see from your other post that you have the Breadmaker's Apprentice.  The recipe is in there, based on his pain 'ancient (or something like that).

As incredibly dorky as this may sound, I actually have a photo album of food I've cooked, and I think that in about 80% of the pictures there is a homebrew.  I take pictures for 2 reasons; 1) so I can remember my cooking experiments 2) because taking interesting pictures of food is slightly more difficult than taking interesting pictures of flowers.  I can post a link to the album, if anyone is curious.

Changing topics, I recently discovered that spaghetti and my SaazSquash (a variation on pumpkin ale) are a rather poor couple.  I think it's the subtle spices in the ale.  I'm planning to try the SaazSquash with some aged Mahon cheese soon.  Goat Gouda goes well with Nut Brown.

Bread : One day I made the mistake of trying to make homemade bread with some yeast leftover from a batch of homebrew.  The resulting bread was rather hoppy and kind of unpalatable, so if anyone experiments with that idea and gets something to work out, I'd be curious to know.

Please, do entertain us with some pictures of your food.

There's a Basic Brewing podcast about brewing with bread yeast and baking with ale yeast. Check it out. I'll probably stick with Wyeast/White Labs for my brews but wouldn't mind pitching a little ESB yeast into a loaf of whole wheat sando bread, maybe adding some specialty grains as well...Post some food pix!

The Food Album --

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2069126&l=d3ab9&id=1518533

The pictures improve as the album progresses.

Enjoy!

Those are some interesting looking dishes.  Do you make your own pizza dough?  I have recently gotten into homemade bread and we have homemade pizza every other week or so.  The dough turns out very good, but I have not gotten the process of tossing it or streaching it into the proper shape.  It ends up being too thin in parts and too thick in others.  I guess it is a work in progress, but we enjoy eating the results.