Match of the week

Mango shrikhand with Floris mango beer

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on June 3 2016 at 08:16

Last week I did another pop-up with Bristol chef Romy Gill - this time at the Butlers Arms in Sutton Coldfield which is owned by Twitter friend Chris Giles and his wife Paula.

This time I took a slightly different approach, matching a beer and a wine to each dish which worked really well, proving that lager is not the automatic go-to with a curry.

Desserts were always going to prove a bit of a challenge but I suddenly remembered that Floris made a mango beer which I thought would pair with Romy’s creamy mango dessert, a simple dish of strained yoghurt mixed with fresh mango pulp. (Beer, unlike wine, can replicate the flavours in a dish without having its own flavour stripped out because of its carbonation). Thanks to the sweetness of this particular beer it worked really well and was deliciously refreshing at the end of the rich, spicy meal. You can buy it online from beermerchants.com for £1.90 a bottle.

To be fair, the wine pairing - a Concha y Toro late harvest sauvignon blanc was excellent too - the mango brought out the tropical fruit notes in the wine.

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