Beer and Food Matching Fanny Style

This is my attempt at one of those "foodie" posts that beer bloggers make to make it look as though they're not bizarre drunks express their culinary prowess and show they're not one-dimensional as far as degustation goes.

It's my parents' 40th wedding anniversary in a year.  And what better thing to do than lay-on a 70s-style buffet to take them back to their youth.  But where do you find such...umm...interesting recipes?  Fanny Cradock was notorious for such over-decorated, garishly coloured and pretentiously named creations, and thankfully someone else is going through her works so I can see the results without having to try them myself first.

I saw a photo on Flickr, and decided to attempt the dish myself.  As far as I know it has no name, but I (and Google Translate) call it "Oeufs bleus avec mayonnaise à la moutarde et le poivre de Cayenne"

Method

Hard boil six medium-size eggs. Drink a can of Dead Pony Club while waiting.

Cool eggs in ice water bath. Use any excess ice for a large gin and tonic.

Shell eggs and cut in half. Put yolks on a separate bowl. Be careful not to get bits of shell or yolk in G&T.

 Put eggs in blue coloured water. Have an Adnams Innovation while you're waiting for them to blue up.

Mix up yolks, Mayo, cayenne pepper, mustard and salt until creamy. Best put the drinks down too.

If you find they're still not blue enough after 45 mins, play the ukulele at them until they are.

 As blue as they'll get. Celebrate with another Dead Pony Club.

Stick all the yolk Mayo stuff into the piping bag and finish off the Dead Pony.

Pipe the mixture into the blue egg halves. Make sure you have a double whisky available to steady your hands and nerves.

And there you have it. Blue Evil Eggs. Thornbridge Jaipur garnish optional.

Thankfully, you'll now be so drunk that this will look like a good meal.

To be honest, I didn't really like the texture of these much. Needs to go with something crunchy to offset the slight rubbery nature of the eggs and the gloopiness of the filling.  But they'd  look perfectly at home in a gaudy technicolor 70s buffet.  Thankfully, Fanny Cradock is now dead, and cannot eviscerate me in public for poor piping technique.  Next stop - Green Mashed Potato!

Food

The breakfast of champions

What with beer being almost fashionable these days, we now have a whole different type of "beer writer" than we had even 10 years ago.  Whereas the likes of Roger Protz and Michael Jackson would talk about a beer for its inherent taste and drinking qualities, today you'll get writers discussing "food matching".

A lot of this is down to an only partially hidden inferiority complex about beer. Wine was the drink of the well-to-do, and was consumed by the glass with a meal. Beer, on the other hand, was swigged by the pint by poverty stricken proles. So, when the whole crafty thing blew up, it was decided (probably subconsciously) that to make beer more " classy" , having it with food was the way to go.

I'm sure the foody beery types such as Yvan Seth and Melissa Cole, to name but two, get something out of this.  And I'm equally sure their audience understand it.  I would have thought "food matching" with any drink to be entirely subjective, as no two people's taste buds and sense of smell are exactly the same. But there you go.

As for me, I'd be terrible at it. I had many traumatic incidents involving food as a child, and thus now eat very little of what could be termed good food. I will happily eat pizza four days a week - goes well with Thornbridge Jaipur, I've found. I say four, because that's about the amount of actual meals I have.  The rest of the time, I'm out drinking, and subsist on beer, milk, chocolate and energy drinks. (My uncle once criticised me for this, saying I'd end up like my grandad, who lived on Special Brew and baked beans.  So, I'm going to end up dying in my own home after a short illness at 72).

I suppose the above marks me out as a philistine as far as food goes, and my opinions of how things taste should be entirely ignored. I will state, however, that I've only had one day off sick in 5 years. The reason why? Food poisoning. Lesson learned.