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Tuesday, August 23, 2016

* FOOD BOOK OF THE MONTH! * (Cooking with Beer, 2016)

 
COOKING WITH BEER (Dog 'n' Bone, 2016, 144 pages, ISBN 978-1-909313-89-7, $19.95 USD hardbound) is by Mark Dredge, a multiple UK beer writing award winner for 2011, 2013, and 2014. He has written other books, such as Craft Beer World. One of his earlier books was Beer and Food, all about pairing beers with foods. Here, he is actually cooking with beer, specifically, lagers, IPAs, wheat beers, stouts and others, in about 65 recipes. Every occasion is covered, from brunches to mains and desserts. He's got an Ultimate section, for preps that use a variety of beers. For example, the Ultimate beer burger prep will have a beer cheese sauce (p105), beer brioche buns (p114), beer ketchup (p118), snakebite pickles (p60), smoked beer mayo (p90), beer-baked fries (p34), beer onions (p102) and beer-caramelized bacon (p102) – using eight different types of beer! Beer is added to everything except to the beef itself, which of course should be top quality needing only salt and pepper. What goes with the Ultimate beer burger, as a drink? How about an IPA he writes? But in my mind, I picture a bock beer. There's an Ultimate beer pizza and beer quesadilla too – all that guy food. Preparations have their ingredients listed in some metric with avoirdupois measurements, but there is no table of equivalents.
Audience and level of use: beer lovers, those looking for a novel twist.
Some interesting or unusual recipes/facts: for dessert, try a milk stout ice cream or IPA honey cornbread, or PBK crumble cakes.
The downside to this book: too short, needs more preps.
The upside to this book: covers all courses.
Quality/Price Rating: 90.
 
Chimo! www.deantudor.com

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