Beery endings
Holly Berman Markowitz reports.
| More Front Burner in this issue |
| Discovering America bite by bite |
| Let them eat cake |
| My dinner with the pope |
| Beef, bees, and buffalo |
| Sustaining farms |
Philadelphia—Pastry chefs reflexively grab liqueurs for flavorings. Wines and alcohols also have well documented places in the sweet pantry, but beer rarely finds its way into the last course. That is, unless you visited XIX in Park Hyatt Philadelphia at the Bellevue during Philly Beer Week in March and sampled Dan Pino's beer dessert creations. (OK, Mindy Segal at Hot Chocolate in Chicago is a pioneer in the beer in dessert and with dessert department, but the idea is still pretty novel.)
Researching his desserts was far from taxing, says Pino. "Some beers just spoke to me right off the bat. When microbrews first became popular, they tended to be too hoppy. But now brewers have scaled back, and beers today are more balanced. I took something a craftsman has already perfected and brought out its amazing flavors."
When he sampled local Sly Fox's O'Reilly Stout, Pino got sesame and chocolate notes, which steered him toward macerated raspberries with O'Reilly Stout Cream, sesame powder (made from tahini powder and maltodextrin), and shaved chocolate. Pino sought out another local brewery, Weyerbacher, located in Easton, for their Old Heathen Stout. The chocolate and espresso tones of the stout ice cream he churned was a natural match for his sticky toffee pudding, and he rounded off the plate with pineapple braised in Brooklyn Brown Ale for some acidity.
Not all beer/dessert match-ups need gravitate toward heavier flavors well suited for winter menus. Pino demonstrated this with a delicate and floral Redhook Ale sorbet that was light, refreshing, and multidimensional. Someone devouring it would be hard-pressed to guess the main ingredient. The sorbet was paired with spiced mango cream, apricot marmalade, and an airy milk chocolate mousse.
Philly Beer Week ran 10 days from March 7 to 16 and featured everything beer related, both high- and lowbrow—from special tours, dinners, lectures, and brewer meet-and-greets, to movies, a five mile run, a beer chili cook-off, a Philly Beer Geek Competition, and much more. At a book launch event for He Said Beer, She Said Wine held at XIX, authors Marnie Old (wine educator and consultant) and Sam Calagione (owner of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery) paired all five courses with a wine and beer option and the guests voted on the best match (beer won). Pino should have gotten the winning vote for his giveaway gift of caramel coated malt. During his beer research he learned that tasty dry malt has a texture similar to popcorn. So he made a dark caramel, threw in some butter, and tossed in the malt. What a sweetly delicious way to say "Cheers!"
