Sunday lunch at BBC Radio Oxford – something for the beer and foodies

Bill Buckley – My on air lunch time companion

About once a month I get the chance to have a very nice lunch with BBC Radio Oxford presenter Bill Buckley.

For one hour live on radio, we munch, crunch, sip and swirl our ways through a variety of beers and foods on his Sunday Lunch show.

Bill is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable foodie, so it is always a challenge to come up with something different with which to challenge his experienced taste buds.

So for this Sunday’s show (24 June) my menu is:

Erdinger Wheat Beer http://www.erdinger.de/en/erdinger-weissbier-company/brewery.html paired with a sweet pickled herring. I did consider a more intense wheat beer, which would be even fuller of banana, phenolic and medicinal flavours but have decided to play safe.

Next comes a Ridgeway Bad King John – English Black Ale – brewed by one of Britain’s most creative masters of the malt and hops Peter Scholey. This will dance on the palate in a duet with some Marksbury Cheddar, bought from Oxford Cheese Company’s stall in Oxford’s Covered Market. Marksbury is a traditional cloth wrapped cheddar, made on a farm in Somerset and matured for at least 18 months and up to 24 months. Full of sharp tangy mustard notes, it is a foot stomping rock and roll, strong tasting cheese which when paired with the dark beer is as exhilarating as Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard and bassist Zack Cockrell letting loose with the BBC Radio Six favourite Hold On.

This is followed by Wadworth’s Beer Kitchen Orange Peel, http://www.wadworthbeerkitchen.co.uk/orange_peel_beer.php which is paired with a Gressinghasm Duck breast. http://www.gressinghamduck.co.uk/duck, which I will have to cook tomorrow morning. Duck is such wonderful meat. Why is duck so unused in this country? It is so lean, full of flavour, versatile and deserves to have a wider audience than just fans of Chinese takeaways. The Orange Peel beer is a perfect companion to the duck. Its sweetness comes from the Munich malt and the spellbinding rhythms of the American hops – Cascade, Willamette and Citra – which are underpinned by the zesty, tongue tingling intensity of natural dried orange peel.

And for the finale? Guinness Extra Foreign Stout, the beer is a classic, which deserves a wider audience. I thought of pairing it with spicy chorizo or even some chili flavoured chicken. Both would work, instead, I have decided on some homemade raspberry ice cream. I am hoping the vanilla and mocha notes in the beer will work well with the sweetness of the raspberries. Just got to go and make the ice cream.