A few weeks ago I got a nice surprise in the mail:

I don’t usually keep herbes de provence on hand, let alone a huge box of them, so I wasn’t sure what to do with my newfound friend. One whiff of the box and I was thinking one thing: pork. But how to ensure that each bite of pork would taste deliciously herbaceous? Stuff that pork!

The pork I ended up with was a very economical yet ethically produced pork butt from Beeler Farms via The Wedge. If I were feeling lazy and had a lot of time, I might just rub down the outside of the roast with herbs, salt, pepper and oil and roast it slow for a few hours, then pull the pork in order to distribute the herb flavor. But since I only had a couple of hours for roasting and was feeling slightly less lazy, instead I cut the roast into a big, flat sheet o’ meat. This is actually really easy: I just started making a cut into the roast about a half inch from the edge and kept cutting, always keeping 1/2″ of meat under my knife and rolling the roast away. If you want to get really fancy you can pound this to an even thickness.

At this point, the meat is ready to be stuffed, which is to say covered in stuff. Inspired by my herbs-by-mail, I made an herb paste. I used probably a third cup of herbes de provences, mixed with olive oil, a chopped shallot, lots of salt, and cracked pepper and slathered it liberally on the meat.

With herb paste covering the whole surface, I rolled it back together. With a little twine it was good as new, but with surprises hidden inside, peaking out the edges. At this point, it was practically begging me to sear it and roast it at 350°F to an internal temperature of 145°F.

The great thing about taking the trouble to stuff and roll a roast like this is that it distributes the herb flavor throughout the meat, rather than having it hang out on the surface. Additionally, because it doesn’t require flavorings to be applied to the outside of the roast, you can sear the meat without getting the bitter flavors of burnt herbs.

And then there’s the presentation. Each slice has a little spiral of green goodness encircling fields of pink pork. If you should be so fortunate as to be gifted with a box of herbs through the mail, there are worse ways to show them off.

Peter recently recommended The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food by Garrett Oliver and as Martha would undoubtedly tell you I am getting into it. While I haven’t gotten my homebrew operation up and running yet (yet!) I have been inspired to try to think about beer and food pairings. Oliver makes a very good case for pairing beers and food although his constant assertions of beer’s superiority to wine belie some kind of deep inferiority complex. I think his best point on that front is that a decent Barolo will cost you upwards of $80 while an outstanding, even superfluous lambic beer can be had for $12.

Oliver describes in detail the various styles of beer and the history of their production. He then offers general food pairing notes before going into a discussion of the most notable producers of a given style, with specific pairing notes for each brand he discusses. In a book on wine such detail would be useless since it is usually difficult and expensive to obtain the very same wine an author discusses but I can actually act on most of Oliver’s notes, especially since I discovered The Four Firkins in St. Louis Park. This store, while a tad on the claustrophobic side, is a beer lover’s paradise. I was able to find all of the styles discussed in the book as well most of the actual brands and specific beers.

This is the first of what I hope will be a series of posts where I explore beer and food pairings, with the help of Garrett Oliver and my local beereries.

Of the beers I brought home from the Four Firkins I was most excited about a French Abbey Ale (bière de garde) going by the name of St. Druon from Brasserie Duyck:

This beer was not specifically mentioned in Brewmaster’s Table, but the brewery was. According to Oliver, bières de garde are notable for their earthy, herbal notes. Tasting this beer, I definitely could get the earthiness, but the herbs were probably too subtle for a coarse palate like mine. This beer was very floral and bright in the way you’d expect an ale to be. You can see that the color is a golden orange and the head is foamy but nor formidable. A very refreshing, interesting beer.

Oliver insisted that this French beer be served with the herbiest, garlickiest, Frenchiest dish I could manage, and that screamed to me  Poulet aux Quarante Gousses d’Ail, Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic. I didn’t actually use forty cloves of garlic, just two heads worth.

Roasted garlic, roasted chicken, a vermouth sauce, and plenty of thyme and rosemary: the perfect match for a winter Sunday evening and a large bottle of beer. All you need is crusty bread for spreading that golden garlic. Excuse the blurry photo but this was so delicious that I literally could not stop shaking.

I thought this pairing worked very well; I almost felt transported to a rainy evening in a farmhouse in Provence. Bière de garde was an excellent first step in my exploration of “Real Beer with Real Food” but there are many more to try.