Ben McFarland samples some of Sweden's finest beer and food combinations.
If the “bork-bork-borking,” cabbage-shooting, moose-smearing and chicken-chucking chef from The Muppets is your sole experience of Swedish cuisine then, well, you should stop being so flipping childish and read on.
Not content with flooding the globe with reasonably priced, flat-pack furniture and ...
By Ben McFarland
from Issue 16 published on 25/01/2008
DORSET APPLE CAKE WITH
BADGER BLANDFORD FLY
A contemporary twist on an age-old classic. Serve on its own or with a crème
anglaise flavoured with Blandford Fly. Serves 6-8
INGREDIENTS
225g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
25g cornflour
110g butter
110g golden caster sugar
225g cooking apples (p...
By Sally Toms
from Issue 16 published on 25/01/2008
Beer and wine go head to head at the Ra!n Bar in Manchester, at an event organised by JW Lees brewery. Sally Toms was there.
It’s fight night and inside the Ra!n Bar, an elegant yet traditional pub in Manchester, a crowd begins to gather.
Invited by regional brewer JW Lees, a small group of brewers and wine merchants glance furtively at one another, wondering who is for the grape and who for the grain?
Two contenders st...
By Sally Toms
from Issue 15 published on 01/12/2007
Last issue we got stuck into one of the gastonomic world's greatest creations - beer and curry. Now we explore beer's other perfect partner - a Chinese takeaway! Ben McFarland picks up his chopsticks
Extortionately priced raw fish served on a conveyor belt is the new fast food; we‘re shifting our furniture about in a quest to improve our love life, career and bank balance; we’re necking Chinese herbal medicine to cure our ailments; chopsticks are the thinking man’s knife and fork; there are mini...
By Ben McFarland
from Issue 14 published on 04/10/2007
Few things are as well matched as beer and curry, but is it as simple as that? Sally Toms finds out
Beer and curry is widely believed to be one of the best beer and food combinations on earth, especially by the Brits. We just can’t get enough of it.
There’s a certain amount of delicious irony in the fact that today, there are more people in India speaking English than people in England, and more ...
By Sally Toms
from Issue 13 published on 03/08/2007
Dave Myers and Si King are the Hairy Bikers: two-wheeled, globe-trotting, beer-loving chefs from North East England. Jeff Pickthall spoke to them
The BBC has come a long way. For decades, British regional accents were frowned upon by the broadcasting powers-that-be who preferred the supercilious tones of Received Pronunciation.
Fortunately, strong and characterful accents now bless the airwaves and nowhere are they more evident than BBC tele...
By Jeff Pickthall
from Issue 12 published on 25/05/2007
Ben McFarland attends a beer dinner organised by Stone Brewing, a San Diego microbrewery making some big beers
Ten years ago, the Stone Brewing Company burst onto the West Coast brewing scene and defiantly thrust a hot poker into the behind of conventional brewing.
While hundreds of craft brewers were hitting the wall in the middle of the 1990s, victims of a small beer business running before it could walk,...
By Ben McFarland
from Issue 11 published on 23/03/2007
Richard Jones dons his gladrags for an evening of fine beer and food at the magnificent setting of Thornbridge
Hall in the Peak District
It only takes a cursory glance at the website (www.thornbridgebrewery.co.uk and www.thornbridgehall.co.uk) to discover that Thornbridge is not your usual fledgling microbrewery.
The clue comes courtesy of the words ‘Country House’ on the homepage and, my, what a house it is. Perhaps this is what Bl...
By Richard Jones
from Issue 10 published on 26/01/2007
We’ve talked about which beers to pair with your meal, but which beers should you use in your meal? Ben McFarland provides some recipes
Like Gordon Ramsay when he’s in a particularly grumpy mood, beer isn’t always the easiest thing to work with in the kitchen.
While masters of the culinary arts are forever sloshing wine into their gastronomic efforts, they tend not to reach for the can or bottle of beer with quite the same regulari...
By Ben McFarland
from Issue 9 published on 22/11/2006
A great deal of thought goes in to the Fuller’s beer and food menu. Purely in the interests of research, Ben McFarland went along to a tasting session
London brewer Fuller, Smith & Turner has a selection of pubs called the “Fuller’s Ale & Pie Pubs.” In these pubs you can get lovely ale. And you can get lovely pies. Put them together, and you’ve got something pretty special. In fact, you’ve arguably got the finest beer and food pairing known to hum...
By Ben McFarland
from Issue 8 published on 27/09/2006
Where in London can you eat good food and drink great beer at the same time? Ben McFarland found out
Decent drinking establishments that serve a good pint are twoa- penny in London and there are certainly plenty of places where you can get a good and tasty feed (the capital no longer plays second fiddle to Paris when it comes to elite eateries).
Yet venues that combine the two, let alone have the ...
By Ben McFarland
from Issue 7 published on 28/07/2006
Beer can make a great accompaniment to salty seafood. Ben McFarland reports
Don your flip flops and Ray-Bans, squeeze into those skimpy Speedos and pack your bucket and spade because, this month, Beers Of The World’s voyage of beer and food discovery is taking your tastebuds down to the coast.
Yes, after a winter nibbling on cheese, chocolate and curry, BOTW sharpening its...
By Ben McFarland
from Issue 6 published on 18/05/2006
Ben McFarland gets all gooey at a beer and chocolate tasting
Being a beer writer has its upsides. As careers go, it’s not quite up there with ‘serial lottery winner’ or ‘bed-tester,’ but there’s certainly shoddier ways to cough up for the mortgage, that’s for sure.
I’m sure there are ‘proper’ journalists dodging bullets in Iraq or working undercover in the M...
By Ben McFarland
from Issue 5 published on 24/03/2006
There’s nothing wrong with a quality lager as an accompaniment to Indian food, but as Ben McFarland reports, there are other options
Diners in the United Kingdom and a host of other countries have been in the throes of a love affair with the food and flavours of the Indian sub-continent ever since colonial pen-pushers and members of the armed forces returned home with tingling tongues and tales of a gastronomic world full of spic...
By Ben McFarland
from Issue 4 published on 27/01/2006
Cheese is far more compatible with beer than wine, so why don’t we serve the two together more? Ben McFarland goes on a road test
Wine and cheese parties were all the rage in the 70s. That’s when wine and cheese first really got together. For years the two were joined at the hip and happening social gatherings. Back then, they seemed such a nice couple.
But they were also impressionable, unripened and un-aged – far too young ...
By Ben McFarland
from Issue 3 published on 12/01/2006
Can beer really hack it at the poshest of dinner tables? Ben McFarland books into tthe three Michelin star eaterie Fat Duck and finds out
If this whole idea of bringing food and beer together is ever going to truly get off the ground then the great and the good of gastronomy must first give it the thumbs up.
There’s been plenty of chatter about the joyous wonders of matching beer with haute cuisine but much of it has come from the pa...
By Ben McFarland
from Issue 2 published on 16/11/2005
Increasingly people are experimenting with flavours and serving food with beer. Ben McFarland introduces our food column
It wasn’t too long ago that merely uttering the words “beer” and “gastronomy” in the same sentence would have men in white coats knocking on your door – and we’re not talking about curious chefs either.
Beer was about as welcome at the nation’s collective dinner table and kitchen as a severe dose o...
By Ben McFarland
from Issue 1 published on 26/08/2005
