Beer and Food Pairing: Spontanbasil and Lasagne

First up, let's talk about THE BEER. Spontanbasil, crafted by the legendary combination of Mikkeller and Lindemans, is a spontaneously fermented wild beer that just completely sings of basil all the way through the drink, not just at the initial tasting (which is so often the case with this ilk of almost novelty additions into beers). The tartness of the wild yeast works incredibly well with the freshness of the herb and adds layers and layers of depth. It's the sort of beer that isn't just a flavour on the palate, it's an entire sensory experience, with a heady aroma that floods through the mind and makes it the type of drink that you won't forget in a hurry.

A beer this phenomenal needed a meal worthy of it to pair with. Having sampled a small amount before, we felt that a herb-ridden pasta sauce would be a winning flavour combination. So we decided to set ourselves a bit of a challenge and make a lasagne entirely from scratch. 

The key component to a cracking lasagne is surely a top quality tomato sauce. We cooked down 8 cans of plum tomatoes with two onions, a chilli and six cloves of garlic for a total of around 12 hours at 120°C... this made far too much for a family-sized lasagne, but we've got a bit of a sauce solera system situation going on in the freezer, which the remnants topped up perfectly. Whilst this might seem a ridiculously long amount of time, caring for a sauce in this way allows all of the sugars in the tomatoes and onions to break down and start to caramelise, leaving a wonderfully indulgent, almost "meaty" rich sauce. To give the sauce a fresher nature too, we added another tin of tomatoes just before assembling the lasagne.

We decided on ox cheek for the meat, but really anything that can be slow cooked will do, such as brisket or pork shoulder, something cheap and cheerful. The meat was browned a piece at a time (we used three cheeks in total) on all sides. To this a quartered onion and a stick or two of celery were added, along with a bottle of beer (Poacher's Choice in this instance, but really you could use whatever you have lying around in the cupboard). This was cooked on the hob at the lowest setting to blip away for 4-6 hours, meaning the meat was super tender and just pulled apart once cooked. Just before assembling the lasagne, the cheeks were pulled and added to the tomatoes to warm through and let the flavours mingle. We found we also needed a little extra water to keep the sauce easily workable when layering up.

Admittedly, making pasta from scratch is a bit of a faff, but totally worth it. For a large lasagne, we made about 500g of pasta, which is 450g of '00 flour' and the equivalent of 6 free range eggs. This can come in the form of 12 yolks or 6 full eggs - the yolks give the pasta a great texture and a more "full" flavour of pasta that you simply can't get in dried. If you fancy having a go yourself, here’s a quick little tutorial:

Bring the eggs and flour together in a bowl. Once they have roughly conglomerated, tip out onto a clean worktop (you can do the whole mixing process on the work top, but it makes a tremendous mess unless you have a decent space to do it on, which we do not). Knead into a dough and really work it hard to allow the gluten to become stretchy. At this point you can set aside in the fridge for at least half an hour until its ready to roll and assemble. It also freezes perfectly well, should you want to double the quantities – just be sure to defrost thoroughly overnight in the fridge.

Back to our meal. The final thing to prepare was the white sauce. A roux of 80g of melted butter and 65g of flour formed the base, combined with a litre of hot/almost boiling milk gradually incorporated in a ladle full at a time, with the aromatic additions of parsley, basil and a grating of nutmeg. Finally a good handful of parmesan was added before removing from the heat.

Assembly time! The pasta was rolled out into thin sheets and blanched for a couple of minutes (we’d recommend doing this in more water than looks necessary, one or two sheets at a time). To layer up the dish, we started with pasta, then meaty tomatoes, then white sauce and topped with a layer of fresh basil leaves. We repeated this three times, then topped the final layer of pasta with the last of the white sauce and a good sprinkling of parmesan and mozzarella. 

45 minutes in the oven later... ta-dah!

The meal as a whole worked superbly together. The richness of the dish brought out the tartness in the beer, which in turn cut through the lasagne and freshened up the palate beautifully. Adding plenty of basil to the lasagne provided a bonus complement to the beer and allowed all the flavours to absolutely sing. A triumph!

The Milestone Cookery School

The Milestone, for those who don't know, is one of Sheffield's greatest restaurants, serving high end food made from locally sourced seasonal produce, with a sincere passion (verging towards reverence) shown towards the ingredients. They run a variety of regular masterclasses, from day courses in pastry or pasta, to "A Pig in a Day", and half day courses in bread, Indian street food and the course I went on, all about sausage, bacon and black pudding. The cookery school experiences can be given as gifts in the form of vouchers bought from the restaurant or online here and this is how I found myself counting down the days to the visit.

When the day finally dawned, I arrived a little nervously clutching my golden ticket, to be greeted with a coffee and some pastries in the dining room downstairs, which is cosy and inviting for all occasions. After the full group of seven arrived, we made our way upstairs to what is usually another space for eating, which had been converted for the occasion into an makeshift cooking space with a single gas stove ring and a big knife each.


The Cooking

We started the proceedings by preparing the black pudding. This began its life as a tray of powdered blood and half a bottle of cider, to which we added lightly fried onions and some nutmeg, before passing it to Richard (our host for the day) to put in the kitchen's oven.

We moved on to the delectable bacon cure: a simple blend of equal parts sea salt and brown sugar, with the aromatic mixture of nutmeg and thyme to add a varied sweetness and a herby meatiness. Richard prepared the full pork belly joint for us, demonstrating an array of butchery techniques, leaving the short rib behind to provide us each with a tender fatty portion of meat ready to be cured.

As we placed the bacon to one side, word came from the kitchen that the black puddings were done, and they were brought forth, still in the steaming bain marie. As we were presented with the warm blood pudding, the next event was prepped. An exercise in plating up food, using the Milestone's very own burnt onion sauce, horseradish crackling and divine miniature apple jellies. I can't quite believe I managed to produce such a pretty plate of food!

The final activity was sausage making, an awkward skill for the clumsy set of hands I came with, but in the end a very worthwhile technique to know. We started by mixing to ground pork, a small amount of lightly fried onion with a great selection of fresh herbs, such as thyme and parsley as well as an ingredient that I had only heard in hushed whispers around whisky tastings... Smoke powder. This definitely lived up to my dreams - a seemingly magical white powder that filled the whole room with a smell of open fire. Once all the ingredients had been mixed and squeezed to the bottom of a piping bag we were ready for rolling.

The skin of these sausage was to be crepinette (known less exotically as caul fat). Rather than using the lower intestine, this French method of wrapping meat in bladder lining quickly became obvious as an easier method, than the filling of traditional sausage. Once piped as a strip onto the crepinette, all that was needed was a tight roll once and the outer would stick to itself. Once we had our sausages portioned, we cooked a few up and were presented with a hearty dollop of the restaurant's mash and their frankly delicious gravy.

Being able to leave with a bacon on the cure, a still warm black pudding and a fistful of sausages just meant I was hankering to cook it all.


The Eating 

What better way to eat a smashing homemade sausage than with Yorkshire puddings, roasted sweet potatoes, and lashings of tarragon gravy. The perfect Sunday tea.









Chicken, bacon and black pudding empanadas, and black pudding huevos rancheros.

The traditional English breakfast, remastered with a healthy dose of homemade bacon, some free range eggs and a pinch of chilli.


I'll definitely be making the bacon again, and would feel confident with the sausages and black pudding too once I'd paid a visit to a good butcher to acquire the right ingredients. All in all, the experience was a great day which taught me an array of new skills. Highly recommended.

Cheers,

Jim

Peddler: Street Food Market

It's been one of those weekends that's just made us realise how lucky we are living in such a fantastic city. There's always something new and exciting going on, and on the food scene this week, the first Peddler street food night market took place.

The event was held in a car park in a generally fairly desolate part of the City Centre, which sounded a bit odd, but the industrial style atmosphere worked really well and plenty of people had wandered down on the Saturday afternoon when we visited. Unsurprising really as there were live bands on throughout the day and the smell of all the delicious street food was wafting around the vicinity. Very inviting and well publicised.

Sheffield favourites Percy and Lily's and Nether Edge Pizza were among the treats on offer, alongside cocktails and coffees from Tamper and beers served from a quirky converted horse trailer, now The Hop Box. It was great to see traders from other cities make the trip too, so we deliberately went for choices we wouldn't ordinarily see on our streets.

Piggie Smalls hot dogs got instant points for their puns. Double smoked, pretty darn huge gourmet hot dogs served with a side order of pig-based wisecracks. Jim plumped for the Amy Swinehouse, which was topped with pulled pork (slow cooked for twelve hours) and a tangy yet sweet BBQ sauce. Top marks for crackling, too.

Mei Mei's Street Cart, hailing from London but currently based in Manchester, took Laura's fancy, with the Beijing classic Jian Bing on the menu. Not something we'd ever even heard of before, this was sort of a cross between a crepe and a Chinese omelette. I went for the fried chicken option, which was stuffed full of spring onions and coriander, beer pickled carrots (which we're seriously tempted to try to recreate ourselves), hoisin and chilli sauce, hot crispy chicken and a wonton cracker. It was vibrant, fresh, different, and really, really tasty. After eating the Jian Bing we went back for their sweet potato chilli fries, served with sriracha mayo. Just scrummy. Overall worth a trip to Manchester!

Peddler is set to be a monthly event, and we look forward to seeing this grow and hopefully have even more traders at the next one.

Cheers,

J&L

The Milestone

At the Sheffield Food Festival, we had our first taste of cuisine from The Milestone, with their "Piggy" dish. This was a delightful selection of pork, including braised head fritter, blood sauce with black pudding, and an array of miniature salads and shoots. After trying this, we couldn't quite work out why we hadn't been to the restaurant before, particularly as it seems a sort of rite of passage in the Sheffield foodie scene!

We wasted no time in booking ourselves on to the Early Bird menu, which offers a smaller but still very varied selection of dishes and even includes a pint or glass of house wine.

Whilst we perused the menu we went for some homemade bread and dripping, recommended by our waiter for the evening (and it's worth mentioning that the service throughout was exceptional, although a little more formal than we're used to!). Can't go wrong there really, can you?!

Second up on our meal, we went for a celebration of the humble chicken, with chicken ham, chicken liver parfait, and chicken thigh served with crispy skin. Very nice (although the liver was just a tad too rich for Laura). We also shared the pig's head terrine, which was served with a delicious selection of pickled veg, crackling and a wonderfully tangy apple sauce. We'd expected this to be quite similar to the Piggy dish from the Food Festival, but it was a totally different twist on the ingredients, which demonstrates the flair and originality shown by the chefs on a day-to-day basis.

Onwards to the main courses! Laura chose the coley, accompanied by buttery-soft new potatoes and sea vegetables. Gherkins and anchovies were also used in the dish which worked really well as seasoning and were a lovely touch. Jim decided upon a classic: sausages served with mustard mash, plus side dishes of quite dense but still delicious Yorkshire puddings, and fresh asparagus. The mash sang with a lovely kick and tang of mustard and worked really well with an excellent pair of sausages. The spring asparagus was sweet and fresh with a lovely crunch and nicely seasoned with Parmesan.

Having partaken in two sides, Jim decided on a calvados rather than a dessert, which turned out to be a very good idea when Laura's sticky toffee pudding arrived. As such emphasis is placed on presentation here (and everything arrived looking outstanding), we were expecting a dainty little pud. What was put in front of us was a veritable wedge of gooey, rich and utterly scrumptious toffee pudding, served with salted caramel sauce and really tasty droplets of date puree, which brought the whole dish together perfectly. Jim's assistance was required.


The Milestone have a great ethos, having an end goal of being self sufficient. Already having a pig farm and a lovely little rooftop garden, they are well on their way to achieving this. The garden provides the restaurant with many of the shoots and herbs used in the dishes and cocktails, meaning they are as fresh as you can possibly get.

The "From Garden to Glass" cocktail menu itself looked superb, and boasted some completely original cocktails that I've never seen anything like in Sheffield before, including the Walk in the Weeds (comprising gin, celery, cucumber, mint, and borage - or whatever else they can forage from the rooftop garden!). Whilst we had over-indulged quite enough for one night we will definitely be back to try some of these out.

Cheers,

Laura & Jim