Beer and the Mountain Tortoise
by KF Seetoh

Recently I had a beer for dinner that tasted like someone dropped a sng buay (cured prune) in it. I looked around and noticed the food served was nouveau cuisine with an Austrian touch (meaning…no sng buay used). And Katrina Karim next to me wasn't pregnant with sour cravings either. So, after a couple of gulps (which initially felt strange, like, sucking on a sour kana and drinking beer at the same time), I realized beer isn't beer as I know it from the mountain I come from. Especially with the enlightening anecdotes on beer pairing with food by celebrity Chef Herwig Van Hove with the makan by Robert Mayer of Regent Hotel. The event was fancy, the Gourmet Beer Masterclass by the World Gourmet Summit as part of this year's Singapore Food Festival. It featured beers from Pacific Beverages which include my fave Hoegaarden, Stella Artois, Sol and Leffe. Basically, we were served six beers to match six tastes.

Among the lot, they served a Sucking Pig saddle braised in Hoegaarden White Beer with sauerkraut. This I like. They matched it with the Leffe Blonde beer.

Not a dumb choice as it is creamy, strong bodied and has a dry, light fruity taste (I might as well be talking about some Pinot Noir but this was how the beer was described to us). It was a nice marriage. It made me think of good roasted cha siew and our real sucking pig with a sweet dip, to be washed down by this heavy yet refreshing beer.

Then came the Cod Fillet in Leffe Blonde Beer Batter with fingerling potato chips (read..fish and chips!). It was to be washed down with the easy Stella Artois…a piece of cake. Light crispy cod fritters and un-skinned chunky chips flushed with the female friendly beer (it does not have that duh! male bonding beer aftertaste and feel).

By the time it hit the fourth course and fourth beer, everything began to make sense.

You know the beer story. You take the bucket off the beer in the ice and open the bottle from the cap. Then u proceed to pour the hic! lamb from the rack gingerly so as to be able to taste the spicezzzz. Then the match between the beer and the Ginger Spiced Rack of Lamb was postponed 10 minutes due to weather and seafaring conditions (high tide in the bladder). By then you return to next same table and wolf down someone else's suckling pig. Red faced, not because you ate at the wrong table, you return and realise the humble truth about beer, alcohol and food. They all taste hic! drunk! So, there you go. And I thought beer was a Manchester United merchandise which is also useful in fighting and preventing Sars (that's what they will have you believe in after six pints of the frothy).

But hey, as a mountain tortoise from no beer land, I've seen the local yeast, hops and barley experts at work. They don't match the beer with the food, but the food with the beer. They are ubiquitous, spoilt for choice and they appear at coffee shops and hawker centers after 11pm on most nights. They begin with a starter of menglambu peanuts (preferably the thumbs-up brand) with whatever-is-available-beer. Then it is followed by a rich earthy platter of rich fried Spanish Mackerel roe to go with whatever-beer accompanied by loud chatter with loutish overtones in unfettered aplomb.

A momentary silence of the louts followed as the evening's piece de resistance is served… a cold dish of the long, slender, savoury and smoothly texturised plate of stewed goose neck, chopped up to bite sized pieces. Usually it comes with a side accompaniment of goose liver ( which the Hokkiens call or kua, not quite the French forced fed goose version, foie gras).

The chatter resumes as thumbs and index fingers nimbly negotiate a piece of the stewed neck to be gnawed like corn on a cob. This, they wash down with whatever-beer again. "Desserts" to them, comes in the form of crackers, crisps, kuehs, sweet and sour prunes etc…

So while the refined cherry Belle-Vue Kriek beer may be alien to them, beer filtered through sour prunes in the mouth is not. They decide what the beer taste like, fruity or earthy or nutty. And everything they choose to go with beer, is carefully and perfectly matched by these kopitiam ah cheks and beer masters of the night.