Cooking with Lambic: Shepherd's Pie, 'Grandma' style

Shepherd's pie is one of those wonderful foods, like miso soup, where everyone has their own recipe, so they're all 'authentic,' and more importantly, it's delicious! And what a perfect meal for this suddenly chilly autumnal day in Tokyo.

Some tasty friends ready to go into the cozy baked dish

The Belle-Vue Kriek made the perfect accompaniment to the making and baking of One Woman's shepherd's pie. Whiffs of morello cherry, mulled boysenberry, dried apricot, and late summer forest make this kriek an extremely mellowed-out member of the lambic family. It has a dusty raspberry color with a frothy strawberry-mousse colored head. Tasting like it looks, there's a muted sweetness alongside a welcome little nip of bitterness. I think it would make a perfect beer for a victorian-themed afternoon party featuring homemade wild-berry scones paired with kriek. Maybe even bring out the crochet needles.

However, for this particular evening, the kriek was the secret ingredient to One Woman's shepherd's pie. Actually, it's adapted from the website, Cooking for Engineers (adapted from the Joy of Cooking, plus awesome pics by Michael Chu) check it out if you love to cook following charts like this, or just be inspired by the amazing organized brains behind the site:

For One Woman's version, the crucial thing is to add lambic during the beef-broth step. Can you taste it? Not really... Does the beer make a difference? Not sure...

But will it you happy? You bet! Ha.

Musical accompaniment: Grieg, Op. 43-1 "Sommerfugl," aka, butterfly. Sommerfüegli?! What a funky and lovely way to depict a butterfly--kind of like grandma's ash-pink lace creation: full of wisdom, inspiration and wit that you'd never notice unless you looked really closely. In this sweet little youtube version, you can hear the finger-traces of Grieg himself, forever etched into a piano roll. Somehow the thought of movement and gesture preserved in the form a physical piano roll for posterity is much more visceral and freaky than hearing an old record of someone who is no longer alive...