Filed under: Events, Yorkshire Dales Food, beer | Tags: ale, grassington, brewery, appletreewick, tasting, festival, beer, jane, peyton, craven arms, Ventnor, batemans, craigmill, brakspear, fullers, dark horse brewery, grozet, bubblegum
Grassington Festival 2009 here in the Yorkshire Dales is now well under way with a varied choice of events from the arts, entertainment and even some food and drink events. Last nights event was “Beer Tasting with Jane Peyton” at the Craven Arms, Appletreewick out the back in the beautiful Cruck Barn. Jane is originally a local lass from Skipton but now living in London, Jane is an author, beer & wine tasting tutor, events producer and public speaker.
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- Jane Peyton Beer Tasting Tutor
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- Grassington Festival 2009
What did we learn?
How to taste beer of course and a little about beer ingredients and flavour, colour, aroma, taste, feel and head. We tasted and marked 6 beers and tried to guess if they originated from the North or South! the bees and results are shown below.
Jane was an excellent tutor and speaker and kept us amused throughout with gems of information and beer anecdotes, great fun and very informative.
The main ingredients of beer are water, hops, malted cereal and yeast.
Beer was the third alcoholic beverage to be invented, the simpler process of making Mead and Wine coming along first. The word Honeymoon is about beer! from the suggestion that to aid fertility you should drink Honey Beer for a month after your wedding.
The UK is the 5th biggest beer drinking nation by capita and whilst we import 99% of wine we produce 92% of our own beer!
Food and beer matching suggestions :-
Traditional Porter and Oyster or chocolate e.g. Fullers London Porter and chocolate, really brings out the flavour in good quality chocolate.
Smoked beer and bbq food, Chinese black bean sauce dishes and smoked food in general.
Fruity beer and cheese e.g. Brakspear Triple and Blue Wensleydale.
The six beers we tasted :-
- Hetton Pale Ale, Dark Horse Brewery, Hetton, Yorkshire Dales, ABV 4.4%
- Sand Rock from Ventnor in the Isle of Wight, a smoked ale, ABV 5.6%
- Combine Harvest, Batemans, Lincolnshire, a multigrained beer of malted oats, malted rye, and malted wheat, ABV 4.7%
- Grozet, Craigmill brewery, a fruity gooseberry ale with a hint of honey, Scotland, ABV 5.0%
- Triple, Brakspear, Oxfordshire, ABV 7.2% a triple fermented, triple hopped strong beer with a hint of Fruity Bubblegum, HubbaBubba maybe!
- London Porter, Fullers, Smooth, rich, and strong, ABV 5.4%
and the scores on the doors, not everyone appreciated the smoked beer therefore coming in at 6th place, some very close scoring put many of the beers on a par but the winner was the Brakspear Triple with that hint of bubblegum! looking forward to next years event already and I do have the Grassington Festival Champagne tasting still to look forward to and I won a prize – dinner for 2 at the Craven Arms so I will be back again soon!
Filed under: Food, Yorkshire Dales Food, butcher | Tags: Steak, pork, skipton, pie, settle, pudding, gravy, butcher, drake, macefield, kidney, steam
Drake & Macefield Butchers in Skipton & Settle produce my favourite Sausage Roll, they are very popular and always run out when I arrive so tried the pork pie and I spotted one last lonely Steak & Kidney pudding, had to try that as well and they were both excellent. You must try the Steak Pudding, full of steak and some nice chunks of kidney, enrobed in a rich meaty gravy and a light herb suet crust, steam over a pan of water for 20 minutes and make some rich gravy to go with it, fantastic!
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- Drake & Macefield Pork Pie
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- Drake & Macefield Steak & Kidney Pudding
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- Drake & Macefield Steak & Kidney Pudding
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- Steak Pudding Dinner
Filed under: Recipes, Yorkshire Dales Food | Tags: bacon, asparagus, black pudding, homecured, leeks, pork loin, stuffed, drycured
After the Take 3 chefs event at Settle thought I had to try the recipe demonstrated by Richard Wallbank from Ravenous, I’m not sure my attempt looked as professional as his but it was very very tasty all the same!
Trimmed pork loin stuffed with black pudding and wrapped in bacon, cling film and roll and refrigerate for a couple of hours before roasting. Cut the pork on an angle to give larger slices.
I served with fried potatoes, griddled asparagus and leeks in a white sauce.
Richards original recipe was :-
Black N Blue Pig (serves 2)
- 1 lge pork tenderloin
- 2 rashers of streaky bacon or shoulder bacon
- 1 slice black pudding
Richard used all of the above from the Blue Pig Company
- Trim the tenderloin of any fat and push a long blade knife into the fat end of the meat making a caviyt along the fillet
- Break the black pud up into small pieces and push into the fillet until it is full
- Wrap the tenderloin with the bacon and place on a baking tray.
- cook at gas mark 7 for about 20 mins
- slice diagonally into 1/2 inch slices
- serve with mustard sauce or a red wine gravy or apple sauce or anything you like really
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- Pork Loin stuffed with Black Pudding and coated in bacon with asparagus and leeks
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- English Asparagus
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- Pork loin stuffed with black pudding and wrapped with bacon in cling film ready for the fridge
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- Cooked stuffed pork loin
