Beer and Food - Game Plan

With game now in season, Sue Nowak suggests some ways to team it up with beer

It's the time of year when all sorts of game comes into season. And what could be more tempting in cold weather

than wild rabbit, duck, pheasant, venison, or pigeon cooked with beer?

Game is an ideal pub dish, particularly when teamed with a local brew. It is popular with diners who like to try traditional rural flavours but are wary of preparing game at home. It can also be very cost effective as game from a local shoot or estate (we won't mention poachers!) is often cheap. You get a lot of portions from a hare while pigeons translate into a handsome profit on the plate at a pigeon breast per serving.

If you flinch from skinning it yourself, your butcher or supplier will deliver game ready prepared in all sorts of cuts, including mixed packs.

Game can be an easy pub dish when left to casserole slowly in ale. Or be bold and really use beer to glitz up game this

autumn.

Instead of boring chicken pâté make pheasant or wild boar pâté enriched with barley wine, juniper berries and cream.

To make a seasonal soup simmer discarded game carcasses and offcuts in spicy winter ale for a hearty game soup, or a

flavour-packed broth containing tiny stuffed pasta "ravioli".

Wafer thin slices of smoked venison or wild duck on red leaves with a cherry beer dressing, or served with red onion and Old Ale marmalade, make brilliant starters.

Game pies are irresistible. Try rabbit with prunes, wholegrain mustard and honey beer; venison with a vinous, Belgian Trappist beer and chestnuts; pheasant with wild mushrooms and cherry beer. Flavour the pastry topping with mustard powder, herbs or grated cheese - alternatively, a

suet crust to soak up that lovely liquor.

Cheap pigeon breasts are a luxury main course, flash-fried for two minutes each side, then served pink and tender, fanned out on a sauce made with porter and the pan juices - and finished with cream.

Grouse or guinea fowl get a Scottish touch from simmering in Fraoch heather ale until just cooked, then glazing with

heather honey and finishing in a hot oven until crisp and golden.

Old game birds or tough venison can be tenderised by marinating for at least 24 hours in O'Hanlon's Original Port Stout, along with currants, sultanas and raisins. Then casserole in the marinade, adding diced crystallised ginger.

Sausage, mash and onion gravy is a pub classic. Ring the changes with a duo of venison and wild boar sausages served

with shredded red cabbage and diced apple cooked together in raspberry beer.

Instead of beef steaks, pan-fry tender venison steaks, or supremes of pheasant breast, and serve with Stilton, cream and smoked beer sauce.

Don't forget beer is not just for cooking game, but for drinking with it. These powerful flavours can be accompanied by high strength, spicy winter or Christmas ales; dry porters with a roast malt edge; India Pale Ale; dark Bavarian wheat beers; Belgian cherry beer or even a drop of barley wine.