Monday 17 January 2011

Oi Herby No!

 Bath Ales Festivity with Irish Sausages and Mash.



The Food
Sausages from Paul Rankin's Range produced by Finnbrogue with creamy mash, broccoli and my own recipe herby sweet caramelised  onions. Onions cooked with thyme, bay brown sugar and a splash of beer (recipe may come in another blog). I have to say that the sausages were magnificent easily the best supermarket packaged sausage I have had in a long time. Firm in texture but still juicy and packed full of pork goodness and just the right amount of herbs and spices.

The Beer
A seasonal beer from Bath Ales Festivity is a robust full bodied porter with plenty of chocolate and coffee. It is one of my favourite dark beers. I was lead to believe that they were sold out a few weeks ago but found 4 bottles on the shelves in Waitrose so bought them all!  Unfortunately this batch seemed to have very little carbonisation and poured with no head, I don't remember it being so flat before so perhaps a slight fault with this batch. I did however drink it and feel the need to test another bottle straight away afterwards.

The Match
Porter and Sausages seems a natural combination in my mind bringing to mind thought of pubs on a Sunday lunchtime in front of a roaring fire. The combination was pretty much a success. The little carbonation tried its best to cut through the rich sausages and the butter in the mash and the chocolatey bitterness played well with the caramelisation on the fried sausages. I thought the difficult match might be the thyme heavy, sweet onions and while the porter held it's own again the sweet onslaught I'm not sure that it was not slightly overpowered by the herbs.

So not quite the outstanding match of my previous attempt but not bad. Lose the herby onions and it would be much better.

Note for next time...work on the food presentation.

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