HB&B Blog — Lager
The Beer Lover's Table: Tom Yum Pozole and Utopian Brewing Small Pils
Beer Lover's Table Claire Bullen Lager Utopian
I think about pozole a lot for someone who doesn’t eat it that often. This soup hails from Mexico and the southern US, and is notable for its starring ingredient: hominy, or extra-large, starchy, nixtamalised corn kernels. From there, its components vary. It can be made with chicken or pork or offal; it can be verde (made with tomatillos and green chillis) or rojo (made with dried red chillis).But what unites all pozoles is that irresistibly tender-chewy hominy, and their perfect balance between warming spice and citric brightness. Pozole is easily one of my top-five dishes of all time and...
The Beer Lover's Table: Baja ‘Fish’ Tacos with Pineapple Salsa and Basil Avocado Crema with Two Flints x Willibald Clara Mexican Lager
Claire Bullen Lager Two Flints Vegetarian
Normally, I don’t cook with beer – I like it more as an accompaniment than an ingredient – but Baja fish tacos are an exception to the rule. There’s nothing like a beer batter for golden crunch, while the carbonation adds a lightness that stops the batter feeling too claggy. It’s no wonder these tacos are a hit in California (Baja and otherwise) – but would they work as well without the fish? In an effort to cook more vegetarian meals at home, I was curious to try a tofu variant on this West Coast classic. Recently, I read that...
The Beer Lover's Table: Singaporean Chilli Crab Pasta and Sureshot Brewing Whimmy Wam Wam Wozzle Pilsner
Claire Bullen Lager Manchester Pilsner Sureshot
Recently, inspired by the recent tteokbokki à la vodka recipe we made together, my partner and I were riffing on ideas for hybrid dishes - food that doesn’t neatly fit under the slightly naff “fusion” label, but which playfully juxtaposes elements of dishes from different culinary traditions, teasing out surprising moments of overlap or resonance. We stumbled upon an interesting possibility: Could we turn Singaporean chilli crab into a pasta dish? Singapore’s national dish, chilli crab was created in the 1950s and features mud crabs cooked in a tomato base that’s sweet, salty and a little spicy. There are as...
The Beer Lover's Table: Tteokbokki à la Vodka and Donzoko Super King Smoked Helles
Beer Lover's Table Claire Bullen Donzoko Lager Scotland Smoked beer
You can take the girl out of the Mid-Atlantic, but you can’t take the Mid-Atlantic out of the girl. It’s been more than 10 years since I relocated to London from New York (and before that, Philadelphia) and I still have not lost my love for vodka sauce – a staple of East Coast Italian-American cooking, sometimes known as “pink sauce” owing to the fact that it’s made with a base of both tomato and cream. Recipes vary widely, but – true to name – most are made with an enlivening shot of vodka. As much as I love making classic...
The Beer Lover's Table: Italian Sausage Hoagies and Weihenstephaner Festbier
Beer Lover's Table Claire Bullen Germany Lager Oktoberfest Weihenstephaner
Oktoberfest is back. For the first time since the pandemic began, the annual festival is returning to the Theresienwiese in Munich. The event is a larger-than-life spectacle of supersized beer “tents” and roller coasters and litre upon litre upon litre of golden festbier. Given all that drinking, there needs to be plenty of food to sop it all up; to no one’s surprise, Oktoberfest staples (think roast chicken and spaetzle, ham hocks and bratwurst) lean hearty and gut-busting. Rather than do an exacting recreation of the traditional fare, this year I decided to channel Oktoberfest via Philadelphia. Meet the Italian...