Eggs Royale and St Austell Clouded Yellow wheat beer

I haven’t had a beer as match of the week for a while but with the British Guild of Beer Writers dinner and Dea Latis Beer and Breakfast tasting last week I could hardly have chosen anything else.

This combination edged it for me - and for the others who attended the beer breakfast tasting (Dea Latis is a group of women in the beer industry): Eggs Royale is Eggs Benedict made with smoked salmon rather than ham and, in this case, a light, lemony hollandaise sauce which paired perfectly with the citrussy beer.

Clouded Yellow is a 4.8% bottle conditioned wheat beer flavoured with spices and vanilla - St Austell's take on a witbier. (It’s generally served clear but you can enjoy the last remants cloudy by swirling the beer in the glass.)

It’s a very summery brew and a very suitable one for breakfast - or rather brunch. We didn’t get stuck in, you’ll be glad to hear, until 10.30!

According to the St Austell site it also goes particularly well with Thai curry and you could, of course, drink other witbiers with an eggs royale or straight smoked salmon on its own.

To read about the other contender for match of the week at a highly unusual champagne dinner click here.

Smoked, caramelised salmon with Disznókö Tokaji 6 puttonyos 1993

This week’s match is not mine but fellow wine writer Margaret Rand’s who also writes for Decanter. She recently went to Hungary at the invitation of AXA Millésimes who ownes the Tokaji producer Disznókö - as well as Château Suiduiraut - for what must be the most extraordinary wine dinner ever conceived: a Chinese meal, paired with sweet wine cooked by two Bordeaux-based chefs Tommy and Andy Shan of Au Bonheur du Palais, (which happens to be AXA proprietor Christian Seely’s favourite restaurant in the city).

Subscribers can read Margaret’s full account of the experience tomorrow including the Shans’ highly unusual philosophy of food and wine pairing but here’s what for her was the highlight of the meal.

The dish was described as smoked salmon in red pepper oil - ”not smoked salmon in the Scottish sense” explains Rand, but “a cube of salmon that had been smoked and caramelised on one side” The wine, being categorised as 6 puttonyos was the second sweetest in the Disznókö range (puttonyos are the baskets or hods of botrytised grape paste that are added to the base wine) and came from an exceptional vintage. Already 15 years old it had gone beyond the stage of mere sweetness to gain an extraordinary complexity evoking, according to Disznókö's own tasting notes, dried apricots, plum, dates and spice. Flavours that you can actually imagine working with salmon.

According to Rand the match was ‘sensationally good’ a perfect marriage with the ‘soft, melting’ texture of the salmon. “It was the star of the evening:- adventurous, imaginative and spot-on”

I suspect it took great skill to bring it off and may well be a case of ‘don’t try this at home’ but it does make one think differently about the roles that sweet wines might play beyond the dessert course. For more come back tomorrow . . .

Scrambled eggs and sparkling wine

If your New Year breakfast today includes eggs, especially brunch-type dishes such as scrambled eggs with smoked salmon or eggs benedict there’s no better partner than Champagne or other dry sparkling wine.

The bubbles deal with the one of the perceived problems with matching eggs and wine - the way the runny yolk coats the palate and can make still dry whites taste thin and sharp.

But it’s not just the bubbles: the crisp, refreshing quality of sparkling wine is just want you want with a dish like eggs. Sparkling Chardonnays and blanc de blancs Champagnes work particularly well because of their creaminess. You can also mix your bubbly 50/50 with freshly squeezed orange juice for a restorative and slightly healthier Bucks Fizz.

Image © Joe Gough - Fotolia.com