Wednesday, 23 January 2019

Cooking with booze: Burns Night – Highland stew – Recipe and cocktails

Photo by Jun

I may not have an ounce of Scottish blood in me, but I’m always up for a good knees up, especially one that involves whisky. While many people will be tucking into the haggis this Burns Night, you may want an alternative dish to devour while you’re mumbling your way through Auld Lang Syne after one dram too many. 

I won’t commit the mortal sin of calling this a pie when it’s a stew with a puff pastry top, that’s for the gastro pubs of this world to do. But it is a very tasty Highland stew with puff pastry top, and is the perfect dish to serve this Burns Night.

Highland stew with neeps and tatties
(Serves four)




Ingredients

Stew
900g stewing beef (two packets)
100g smoked lardons
500ml stout
200ml ruby port
2 large white onions
3 garlic cloves
2 bay leaves
3 tbsp flatleaf parsley
5 pickled walnuts (and 2 tbsp pickled walnut vinegar)
60g butter
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp plain flour
Salt and pepper

Puff pastry top
Ready rolled puff pastry

Neeps and tatties
Half a swede
16 new potatoes
Butter

Method
1. Marinate your beef in the stout, with the garlic and bay leaves for around five hours in the fridge, or overnight if possible.
2. Preheat the oven (fan) to 130°C.
3. In a large pan, heat the oil and butter.
4. On a medium-high heat, brown and seal the beef. Once browned, remove and set aside.
5. In the same pan, fry the bacon and onions until the onions are soft and translucent.
6. Stir in the flour and mix, then add the port, stout marinade, beef, and season.
7. Transfer to an ovenproof casserole dish, fit the lid, and cook for 2.5hours in the oven, stirring occasionally.
8. Remove from the oven and pop back on the hob, so you can cook your puff pastry tops. Halve the pickled walnuts and add to the stew, along with the pickling vinegar. Simmer for around 30minutes. 9. Add the chopped parsley just before serving.

Neep and tatties
1. Roughly chop the swede into large chunks and boil for 50minutes.
2. Parboil the potatoes for 10minutes in salted water.
3. Pop the potatoes into the oven with the stew for 15minutes, then turn the heat up to 200°C when the stew comes out and roast for 30-35minutes.
4. Drain the swede and roughly mash together with a decent amount of butter.

Puff pastry tops
1. Unroll the puff pastry and cut into shape
2. Pop in the oven for 10-15minutes until golden brown

Drinks

If you don’t fancy a night on the drams, here are a couple of loosely-Scottish cocktails (they feature whisky), to get you in the mood.

Scotch Old Fashioned 



While rye or bourbon are the 'proper' choices for an Old Fashioned, it's Burns Night, so we're heading away from the whiskey and hitting the whisky. Granted, you're not going to want to use the Belvenie 50-year-old single malt you've all got lying around, but a smooth, clean, not-too-peaty, Scotch will work great.

Ingredients
50ml Scotch whisky
3/4tsp light brown sugar
A few dashes of Angostura bitters
Orange peel
A little patience

Method
1. Soak the sugar in the Angostura and begin to dissolve with a spoon.
2. Add a good handful of ice cubes and continue to stir.
4. Add around half the whisky and keep stirring.
5. Add the rest of the Scotch and stir some more.
6. Stir for another couple of minutes.
7. Garnish with a twist of orange peel.

Haig Clubman

For those of you who might not be quite into your whisky yet, this is an easy, light, accessible drink to start with. We can work you up to the Laphroaig in a couple of months...!



Ingredients
50ml Haig Club
35ml Appletiser
6 dashes ginger bitters

Combine all the ingredients in a highball or tumbler, with plenty of ice, and garnish with a very thin slice of root ginger.

How will you be celebrating this Burns Night? Hitting the haggis or using the night as an excuse to pull out that tasty Scotch?



Friday, 18 January 2019

The top ten mega mocktails for January


If you’ve been doing ‘Dry January’ and have actually stuck to it, then firstly, pat yourself on the back. Secondly, scream and shout because it’s nearly over (ish)! To make things a bit easier, we’ve rounded up the ten best mocktail recipes we could find.

The key to a mocktail’s success is down to intrigue; you can’t shove an average cordial in a glass, top it with soda, and garnish it with a slice of lemon, expecting to be wowed. Sure, we don’t need booze all the time, and there are plenty of top-notch soft drinks around to tantalise the taste buds, but cocktails work due to the balance of alcohol, sugar, acidity and bitterness - you’re not likely to get that with just an elderflower spritz, are you?

If you’re feeling like you’re missing out on all those lovely alcoholic delights that you keep seeing on Instagram, it’s time to get serious about mocktails. Fresh fruit, citrus and herbs are your heroes here, you want to be building your drink as you would a proper cocktail, and don’t be afraid to make your own syrups; they’re easy to do and will keep in the fridge for ages.

Just put in a teeny bit of effort before being able to smugly sip on something extra special... Your drunken pals will certainly be eyeing up your saintly glass!

We’ll start with something deliciously fruity and classically British: strawberries.


  • This floral fresh Strawberry Rose Water Fizz from Kitchenette Blog is simple but effective. And if you love it, when it gets to February, try topping with prosecco instead of soda water.
  • The Pink Panther from Nosh My Way is smooth, creamy and kind of retro. Strawberries and cream will always be a winning combo, but add pineapple into the equation and hello.

Another British classic - though a slightly more sultry - fruit, with its deep purple colour, is the blackberry. 



Next we have some zingy mocktails...



Herbs are where it’s at with these next three.



Finally, the indulgent creamy mocktails for any time that you require some comfort.


  • Lavender Hot Chocolate from A La Mode is a fragrant hug in a mug. You can buy lavender in the supermarkets now (with all the herbs and spices), but don’t over-do it or you’ll be in soap territory.
  • Sweep Tight have come up with the awesome Coquito, with coconut milk, evaporated milk and condensed milk. Anything made with that dreamy milk is going to be frickin’ ace. FACT.

Now go and have some booze-free fun.

Wednesday, 16 January 2019

New Year, No Alcohol - Alcohol Free Drinks (Part 2)


Welcome to the second part of my guide to staying dry(ish) during the lean month of January. 2 weeks in and its been tough....So tough that I fell to pieces 1 week and 6 days ago, so rather than this being a 'Let's get through this together' piece, this is now a 'I feel your pain, but will not join you in your suffering' piece. That has not stopped me from searching out some other non-alcoholic alternatives to your Wednesday night tipple in front of the big match.

I enjoy a good beer on a special occasion (Birthdays, Weddings, Tuesdays,..), so the hardest part for me was missing out on a nice tasting brew without the big percentage to go with it. With it being the season for abstention, there are so many low and non-alcoholic beers on the marketplace to choose from, finding one wasn't going to be a problem. Finding one with flavour, bite and refreshment within the liquid could have been.

Exactly like alcohol-free wine, non-alcoholic beer starts off as the real deal. The grain is steeped in hot water, sugars extracted creating the wort (sugary liquid). The hops are added with other spices to balance out the sweetness of the liquid with the bitterness of the hops. Yeast added, this starts converting the sugars to alcohol. The difference is that rather than alcoholic brews being bottled/canned/kegged, the newly created beer is heated (to boil the alcohol away) through 'vacuum distilling' so as not to alter the beautiful beery flavour too much.

Alcohol free beer is not really a new phenomenon. It was first produced on a large scale during the Prohibition period in the US during 1920s, where brewers needed something to keep their 'regular' drinking, whilst also keeping on the right side of the law. 'Near Beers' (as they were called) were so popular that near 1 billion litres were being produced by 1921, with all the major beer producers of the day (Miller, Pabst, Schlitz) getting in on the act. Nowadays, alcohol free beer is booming, largely thanks to changing drinking cultures and a considerable boom in the Middle East. In this country, a survey conducted by AB Inbev (owner of the non-alcoholic Becks Blue brand) showed that of people looking to cut back the drink, 34% will turn to alcohol-free beer, a 20% increase on the previous year and that 19% of the people surveyed admitted that they couldn't taste the difference between 'fake' beer and 'real' beer. Now, that either shows that the tastebuds of the people who were surveyed had either been obliterated by booze to the point they couldn't detect an ABV if it smacked them in the face, or that producers had started to create an amber nectar that had all of the taste of the real thing, with none of the headache-inducing side effects. Time for me to find out...


First up to face the bottle opener was the Erdinger Alkoholfrei 'beer' (available at beersofeurope.co.uk for £1.64 a bottle). I put the beer word in inverted commas as its technically not a beer at all, but an isotonic drink that looks and pours like a beer. The problem I've always had with alcohol free beer is that it is too sweet, and this also has a tinge of sweetness, but not overly so. It really does have elements of Weissbier, that slight grainy and wheaty taste and a very full and creamy texture. I would go as far to say that you could slip one of these into a Wheat Beer drinking fest and not notice that you had a 'ringer' in the midst.

Next was the San Miguel 0,0% Limon (available at Ocado, £3 for 4). The Lass persuaded me to grab this one, as she is fervently following the Dry January concept. San Miguel isn't really my tipple, but I have tried the 'added Lemon' fad with beer before and not found it too bad (Fosters Radler isn't a bad summery drop). This wasn't really my drop. Tasting slightly like cooled down Lemsip, you get bashed with a smack of sweetness and, although it is refreshing, it's just too artificial for me and you may as well be downing a pint of Lemonade.

Last in line was Sainsbury's own Czech Low Alcohol Pilsner Lager (£1.20 a bottle from Sainsburys). Now I know this isn't an alcohol-free beer, but I had heard really good stuff about this and at 0.5%, its still considered low alcohol, so I shall include it (na, na, naa, naaa, na...). I wasn't disappointed. Made by the Staropramen brewery, I like their own brew and this one is just as good. Clean, crisp, it has the sharpness you want from a lager and still has the slight bitter kick of a fully hopped version.

So, having tried both alcohol free wines and beers, I have to say that I am impressed with how similar some of the examples I have tried are to the real thing (or at least have crammed in some flavours that stop you from wishing they were). Is it enough to get me to quit the drink permanently? Evidently not from my statement at the start of this article. I am coming from a slightly biased point of view (as I obviously work in the industry), but my mantra has always been 'Drink less and Drink Better'. Binge drinking is always a bad idea, but if people feel they have to give up having a drop of the good stuff for a whole month to 'give their liver a breather', then they are really telling themselves that they are drinking too much in the previous 11 and feeling guilty about it.

However, will I turn my nose up at the offer of an alcohol free beer in the pub, in favour of over-sweetened carbonated brown fizzy slop? Not anymore...

What is your opinion of the alcohol-free drinks market? Have you tried any that would recommend to Vinspire readers? Comment on our twitter page or on our facebook page!

Sunday, 6 January 2019

New Year, No Alcohol - Alcohol Free Drinks (Part 1)

(courtesy of Stuart Miles and www.freedigitalphotos.net)

As the last bong tolled on Big Ben at midnight 31st December, 2018, many of you lovely people would have greedily been tucking into something tasty and boozy to welcome in the New Year. What you may have also been doing is saying goodbye to your beloved companion Alcohol for January; your partner through the good times and bad, the devil (or angel) on your shoulder guiding you through life's tricky decisions such as "I know I'm at work at 6am tomorrow, but should I really leave the bar yet? Nah..." or "Karaoke is definitely my bag, but will one more glass of plonk make me better? Damn right it will!"

'Dry January' has become a phenomenon that is really taking hold. As people shudder at the excesses that come with a bit of time off from work at Christmas and the excuse of over-eating and over-drinking, the charity Alcohol Concern and the government joined together to push the idea of giving up the booze for 31 days, in order to get the population to think more about their consumption and the effect it can have on them.

Now, not being one to be tight-lipped on questions of drink, I have my reservations with regards to it, which I'll come to later, but rather than give up in its entirety (even smokers have to have something minty to chew on to munch through the cravings), I have decided to see if there is something on the market out there to fill in the gap of 4 weeks where many of you will be abstaining and waiving the hand of 'no thank you'. Over two articles, I'm going to try some of the alcohol-free alternatives that you can get on the market at the moment (and I'm not doing a taste test on different flavours of Fanta, if that's what you think...).

There are 3 main ways in which you can get rid of the alcohol in wine, but it is important to remember that even de-alcoholised wines start off as normal 9%-12% beverages, and the removal of alcohol only happens after the fermentation process has been completed. The main way of doing it is through a process of 'Steam Vacuuming', where the wine is passed through a vacuum and heated to remove the alcohol (alcohol has a lower boiling point than other liquids), allegedly without getting rid of all the flavours of the wine. Other ways it can be done are through 'Reverse Osmosis' (forcing the wine through a membrane to separate the alcohol from the wine) and through centrifugal force (essentially throwing the alcohol out of the wine - this one is rarely done as it takes many attempts to get a finished product). Debate rages about whether these processes alter the flavour compounds of the liquid (one read of The Daily Telegraph critic Victoria Moore's opinions will have you running for the nearest Shiraz), but the best way to test to see is by quite literally 'downing the entire bottle'...



First off, me and The Lass (who is content to push alcohol to one side for January) popped the cork on Echo Falls Tisane (available at Asda for £3 a bottle). The USP with this is that even though it technically contains 10% grape juice concentrate, it looks like a proper sparkling wine and even smells faintly of a Cava-like drink. A bit citrussy, and a bit herby on the nose (it is infused with Green Tea, mind, so I'd hope it should do), it looks a faintly like apple juice in the glass. Tasting-wise, it isn't bad. Lively stuff and it has a clean taste. Nothing like the real thing though mind.

The following day, we consumed Eisberg Alcohol Free Rose (available to buy in Morrisons for £2.75). We'll start with the good point. Marketed at only 33 calories per glass, it seems to be the perfect tipple for the staunch Dry January-er. Unfortunately, the bad points seem to pile high. It has a slightly oxidised pink look to it, like someone has diluted crab paste. It smells of jelly babies and has a real sweetness on the taste. The taste isn't unpleasant, but it has a slightly fishy aftertaste. Not for everyone.

To finish off, we then tucked into Sainsbury's 'Winemakers Selection' Alcohol Free Red (on sale at Sainsburys for £3). What I found startling was how sweet the wine was. After having a sly butchers at the label, I saw that it has 7.5g of sugar per 125ml glass! Fine if you are trying to avoid the booze, but not so great if you are trying to keep the calories down. It has a slight undiluted blackcurrant cordial taste to it and quite light in body. Perfectly drinkable if you chill it slightly, but don't treat it as a normal red wine.

There are many different places where you can get 'de-alcoholised wines'. Not only are there specialist websites that you can peruse to see what percentage-less bottles you desire (a couple of the best ones are www.lono.co.uk or www.alcoholfree.co.uk), but you can easily wander into your local supermarket and get a good selection of products for you to choose from.

Next week, I'll give you a run-down on some alcohol free lagers that can hopefully tame the raging beer beast inside you.