CT Column 21/12/2011 : A Christmas Tale

IT doesn’t seem like a whole year since I wrote last year’s Christmas column. It has now become a tradition at this time each year for me to write about what I will eat and drink on Christmas Day. This year the hills of Brooklyn will again host a long day of gastronomic and fermented fun for the Haslett-Moore family and associated clans. Our day will start with the family tradition of smoked salmon and eggs hollandaise. This year breakfast will be matched with a champagne flute of tart dry, funky 3 Fonteinen Oude Geuze. Geuze is a type of Lambic beer, a very old fashioned family of beers that are fermented with wild yeasts that are carried into the brewery from the surrounding apple orchards on the wind. The resulting beer is sour, fresh and dry with a tangy hint of lime cordial, dry sherry and wild gamy notes. It has more than enough tart ‘cut’ to handle the rich oiliness of the salmon and buttery palate coating hollandaise. Then it will be on to a light lunch of mussels barbequed in garlic butter, prawns cooked with lemon grass and chilli, Chicken satay kebabs and a noodle salad. Here the newly released imperial pilsner Epic Larger will make an appearance. Epic Larger is a supercharged new world pilsner taking the hop accented new world pilsner style and turning up the alcohol, body, and hop character together resulting in a zesty, fruity, perilously drinkable 8.5%abv beer. The zesty fruity hop notes of the Larger will complement the zesty South East Asian flavours of the prawns, rich heat of the satay and the pungent garlic hit of the mussels while the crisp refreshing quality of the beer will help cool the palate ready for the next mouthful. By mid afternoon the Christmas mince pies, eccles cakes and aged cheddar will come out. To accompany this I will break out a bottle of Fullers Past Masters XX Strong Ale. XX Strong has aged beautifully through the year with its pronounced fruity hop character melding perfectly with the beer’s rich rounded soothing malt body and marmalade accented yeast profile. The rich sweet orange accented beer should complement the richness of the spiced fruit mince perfectly. By early evening our blended family will be filling the house ready for the evening meal. A ham glazed in a Jamaican jerk glaze will adorn the table alongside a range of salads, roast potatoes, crusty bread and cheeses. This will be accompanied by the classic English pale ale Timothy Taylor’s Landlord. With its fresh zesty heathery hop character and firm cracker like malt backbone Landlord will stand up to the spicy ham and the fresh salads. Importantly considering the toll that the day’s proceedings will have had by this point Landlord is very moderate in the alcohol stakes clocking in at a very seasonable 4.1%abv. After a dessert course where the booze will come with a trifle around it, it will be time to end the day with a slice of Christmas cake and a glass of the indulgently rich Rochefort 10. Rochefort 10 is brewed by monks at the Abby of St Remy in Belgium. It’s rich, dark and deeply fruity with a soothing warming character that will no doubt ease me off to bed. Merry Christmas.

CT Column 22/12/2010 : Christmas beer

LAST December I wrote a column on what I would be drinking and eating on Christmas Day. That column obviously captured the imagination of the drinking public as many people approached my family wanting to know if we really eat and drink that well at Christmas: we do.
This Christmas Sarah and myself will start the day with a Haslett-Moore family tradition, salmon, hollandaise and croissants accompanied by a glass of 3 Mont Bier de Flandres , a golden spritzy malt accented ale from the north of France. 3 Mont has a hint of earthy tangy cellar character and a high level of carbonation, which helps it cut the richness of the salmon perfectly.
At midday we will break out the Christmas mince pies and cream with a champagne flute of Three Boys Wild Plum. Wild Plum is a very individualistic fruit beer that uses wild plums from the Three Boys family farm in North Otago to create striking aromas and flavours of tart stone fruit and a prune note. With the mince pies Wild Plum taste dry and even more fruity with the prune character adding complexity to the fruit mince.
Late afternoon our families will arrive and the barbeque will be fired up. On the menu will be a boned out lamb leg marinated in cumin, coriander, paprika and peach and habanero sauce accompanied by a glass of the classic dry spicy Saison from Dupont, Paua fritters packed with garlic and coriander with a touch of chilli with the extravagantly hopped aromatic 8 Wired Tall Poppy, a garden herb marinated split chicken with the fruity hoppy rounded Emerson’s JP2010, and porterhouse steaks rubbed down in Richard Emerson’s own spicy beef rub accompanied by a glass of Yeastie Boys His Majesty 2010.
Then if we have any room left it will be time for a slice of Christmas cake with a nip of Fullers Vintage Ale 2009 a beer that absolutely bursts with marmelady orange fruit and rich fortified malt flavours.
After all that I think it will most definitely be time for a cup of tea!
Cheers, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Christmas Pudding

Inspired by Pete Brown and the Beer Widow this year I have made my own Christmas Pudding. Like Pete I blended recipes taking inspiration from Delia Smith but also Nigel Slatter. Sometime ago Wellington homebrew heavy weight Michael Nielson gave me a 600ml pet bottle of 17%ABV eis-imperial stout. Not being able to polish off the lot on my own I tucked the remaining beer into a bowl in the fridge for use in this years Christmas pudding. If the crumbs from the edge are anything to go by the result is fantastic!

Christmas Drinks

Any regular readers in the area are invited to the annual Christmas drinks at the bar this Thursday. See you there.

Christmas Thursday Drinks

On the Thursday before Christmas we generally tie a few on at the bar in my house. While the ritual of Thursday night drinks usually attracts a varied and revolving cast of ladies and miscreants the Christmas edition tends to get friends who wouldn’t usually come along.

This year due to some of the events of the last couple of months I had no draft beer ready so everyone brought along ‘riggers’ (plastic containers) of Emerson’s Bookbinder along which were then poured into a keg and served through a beer engine. The communal ‘people built’ keg appealed to my lefty nature.

For the toast I pulled out a 2006 bottle of Emerson’s Taieri George, a 6.2%abv spiced ale that’s released for Easter each year and is often described as tasting like liquid hot cross buns, it could equally be described as tasting like Christmas cake. With a year and a bit of bottle age on, the spices had mellowed and blended perfectly, a fantastic tipple for Christmas.