FAB POW! Okell’s Aile with Fish Pie and Spaghetti Bolognese

FAB POW! No. 2 coming at ya! That's the Food and Beer Pairing of the Week, by the way. And as it’s St Paddy’s Day it’s a pint of black stuff. But not Guinness. I’ve got nothing against Guinness, I just find it a tad heavy to be a quality food pairer. Instead, we’ve got one of the finest porters I’ve had this year (and I’ve had some good ones – Elland’s 1872, Meantime’s London Porter, the Porterhouses’s Plain Porter): Okell’s Aile, a smoked Celtic porter (which I first had here). The pairing is not just for one dish this week, it’s for two classics, both of which are spot-on matches.

FAB POW! Okell’s Aile with Fish Pie and Spaghetti Bolognese

The beer is a great looking deep brown with a cappuccino head. It’s got a sweet nutty aroma with hints of charcoal and burnt toast. It’s incredibly drinkable, the smoke is very delicate and smooth, there’s candy sugar sweetness and chocolate in there along with an earthy hop quality. It’s a real moreish glugger, packed with flavour and the perfect buddy for plenty of dinners.

It’s great with the fish pie because it pulls out all the sweet fishy flavours and lifts them up, especially if you use a bit of smoked fish in the pie. It also cuts through the richness of the white sauce and clears the palate leaving a really pleasant nutty, smoky flavour. Tomato-based pasta dishes, I think, are difficult matches, but the smoke in a porter like this softens the sweet sharpness of the sauce, bringing out the earthy nuttiness in the beer and grabbing hold of the charry flavours and seasoning (especially the black pepper) in the meat.

It’s a really superb and versatile beer for pairing or just for drinking. It also does the job against mild spice and with a barbeque. I got my bottle from Utobeer but you can also buy it from Beers of Europe and Hi-Spirits. The beer is definitely worth hunting down. Yum.

Anyone had anything good to eat and drink this week?