Another Unlikely Pairing

Unlikely in the sense of 'unlikely anyone reading this will lay hands on the specific beer in question,' much like the homemade Pale Old Ale I was going on about recently. Unless one comes over to Casa Del Cicerones, I guess.

The beer in this case is Saison St. Clair, brewed by Dan Rogers of Big Rock in Birmingham. We're lucky to have a stash of a few bottles of this tart, spicy, effervescent beer, and we pulled one out to complement the lentil pie that Mrs. Cicerone made for dinner last night. The pie contains a mixture of lentil, onion, fennel, and red bell pepper cooked in beer, which is combined with some goat cheese, thyme and basil, seasoned with a bit of red wine vinegar and some S&P, wrapped in a phyllo crust and baked. The tartness and spicy, peppery phenolic flavors in the beer are similar to the tangy and peppery flavors of the fennel, pepper, and cheese in the pie. Similar, but not identical, which is important, as identical flavors tend to cancel each other; variations on a theme play off of one another and enhance one another. This worked well, and there's half a pie left to use in further experiments....