HB&B Blog — Claire Bullen
The Beer Lover's Table: Tahini Brown Butter Thumbprint Cookies with Dulce de Leche and Left Hand Peanut Butter Milk Stout
Beer Lover's Table Christmas Claire Bullen Left Hand Brewing Stout
I have hated peanut butter my whole life. This is a controversial statement, particularly back home in the US, where peanut butter seemed an almost inescapable part of growing up. The smell, the stickiness turned my stomach; everything about it revolted me. I used to pretend I had an allergy, because it was the only way to get pals, teachers and parents to stop forcing me to eat it. Mostly, I didn’t regret my preference – there was no love lost for those sad, soggy PB&Js, mashed up at the bottom of some kid’s backpack. But come Christmas time, I always longed...
Wine & Food Killers: Temaki Hand Rolls and Clot de les Soleres Garnatxa Rosato 2019
Claire Bullen Natural wine Natural Wine Killers Spain Sparkling wine
Pizza parties, taco parties, bagel-and-lox parties… If you ask me, there’s no better dinner (or brunch) party format than “food item you create and customise yourself from a spread of ingredients”. For the host, there’s the joy of simplicity, the release from pressure: Supply all the base components and let your guests take it from there. And for those attending, there’s the satisfaction in making something entirely your own, with only the ingredients you like most – no compromise needed. Beyond pizza and tacos, I’d like to enter one more dish into the do-it-yourself canon: the temaki hand roll. True...
The Beer Lover's Table: Middle Eastern Macaroni and Cheese and Gipsy Hill x Berliner Berg Oscillator Doppelbock
Beer Lover's Table Claire Bullen Doppelbock gipsy hill SE London
Until now, I was a macaroni and cheese purist. By which I mean: saucepan, stovetop. No breadcrumbs, not baked; certainly no broccoli. Just pasta and the gooiest, thickest, creamiest sauce it’s possible to make – the kind that makes filthy sucking noises when you stir it. But then I met this recipe, from Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love, the new cookbook from Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad. It makes several ingenious twists to the mac and cheese format, beginning with the fact that the pasta is not cooked separately but simmers directly in the milky sauce base; its starches aren’t...
Wine & Food Killers: Sri Lankan Pumpkin Curry and Kumpf et Meyer Utopiste Maceration 2019
Alsace Claire Bullen Natural wine Natural Wine Killers Orange Wine
We all know pumpkins can be turned into pies, baked into cupcakes, blitzed into soups and dumped into lattes. Pumpkin curry, on the other hand, doesn’t get as much airtime during the annual gourd onslaught – and that’s a real shame. As the holidays approach, when spices are already in the air and steaming pots on the stove have never been more inviting, what could be better than a warm bowl of pumpkin curry? There are so many variations too – I’ve had, and loved, Punjabi-style kaddu ki sabzi, Thai gaeng ped gai faktong, Japanese pumpkin curry and, most recently,...
The Beer Lover's Table: Pumpkin Bread and Left Handed Giant We Are Ghosts On The Moon Imperial Stout
Beer Lover's Table Bristol Claire Bullen Left Handed Giant Stout
Friends, it is pumpkin season. Pumpkin bread, specifically, burnished bronze loaves that taste to me like the very essence of autumn. If you’re unfamiliar, know that they’re bread in name but cake in experience, in a way that’s not dissimilar from banana bread. Think: easy to throw together, effortless to bake, even simpler to eat. Pumpkin beer and pumpkin spice latte haters, don’t wrinkle your nose at me yet. While the tinned pumpkin imparts its necessary musky, earthy sweetness, it is the combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, clove and ginger that really makes this dessert – and makes it a cousin...