Kate's Global Kitchen: Cooking with Beer

the appetizer:

Kate explores cooking with beer, including a beer cooking guide, plus picks a few favorite German recipes in What To Eat This Month. She also presents her new line of handmade Dreams of the Dead sugar skulls.

Guide to Cooking with Beer

by Kate Heyhoe

Designer beers and artisanal ales pack flavors ideal not just for drinking, but for use in cooking too. Beer expert Lucy Saunders says when beer is used in recipes, it can bring three types of flavors to the dish: bitter (from hops), sweet (from malt), and a yeasty bite from fermentation.

Our Global Gourmet Beer and Food Guide below offers more tips for cooking with beer. And to jump straight into a beer dish perfect for cooler weather, whip up my recipe for Belgian Chicken Braised in Beer. It delivers the balance of bitter, sweet and yeast described above in one easy, tasty dish.

Recipe: Belgian Chicken Braised in Beer

Beer

Cooking with Beer:
A Global Gourmet Guide

From previous Kate's Global Kitchen articles:

Beer Recipes

Kate's "Dreams of the Dead" Sugar Skulls
Featuring tiny "skullscapes" illuminated by LED lights

Introducing my Dreams of the Dead panoramic sugar skulls filled with tiny scenes and lit by LED lights, at InsideMySkull.com.

Inspired by Mexico's Days of the Dead sugar skulls, my Dreams of the Dead skulls are cast in sugar, with most outer adornments made from icing and sugarpaste. Finely detailed interior elements and headdresses are handcrafted using antique papers, feathers, bones, hand-tinted parchment, found objects, and pretty, shiny things. Each skull undergoes 20 stages in its development, from sugar casting to food-colored icing, drilling, headdress construction, and LEDs. They are preserved with a coating to prevent UV and humidity damage. They are not meant for eating, and will last indefinitely with proper care.

See the whole collection at InsideMySkull.com. For prices and availability, email me at .

Each piece is unique and varies from $18 for the mini skulls (ping-pong size) to $300 for the near-life size corded-nightlight skulls. (In Austin, Texas you can buy selected pieces at Authenticity Gallery and the Mexic-Arte Museum, both on Congress Avenue downtown, and at Yard Dog Gallery on South Congress.)

Days of the Dead Special!

Papel Picado Mini Sugar Skulls (left) and Bat Memo-Clip Mini Sugar Skulls (right)

Papel Picado Mini Sugar Skulls and the special Bat Memo-Clip Mini Sugar Skulls (for holding business card or note) now just $14 each (limited time; regularly $18-25 each); plus $5 shipping/handling within the U.S. (Skulls are ping-pong ball size). Handmade by Kate Heyhoe.

Inside Kate Heyhoe's "Dreams of the Dead"

Peering into each skull is like looking into a tiny theater, complete with characters, stage sets, and lighting, and waiting for outsiders to invent the narrative. Like real dreams, the meanings and relationships are open to interpretation.

Not everything is as it seems. You may need to look inside many times before seeing each element: What looks like a tangle of roots is actually an octopus' arms, wrapped around a mermaid...Inside a Fine Young Cannibal, a tiny witch doctor rides a giant beetle through a sea of glitter...A giant's hand drags a submarine through a steampunk sea, as Darwin's creatures eyeball a collection of antiquities...These panoramic "dream skulls" turn traditional sugar skulls on their head.

"Dream skulls" trigger the imagination. If as a kid, you delighted in panoramic sugar eggs at Easter, searched for hidden animals in Highlighter magazine, loved tunnel books and pop-ups, or fantasized about other worlds, you're sure to be enchanted by Dreams of the Dead Sugar Skulls.

Get inside my skulls. Collect them all! Each is original and signed. I've never seen these types of skulls made elsewhere. I also make custom skulls, using your own objects and photos, as shrines to loved ones, as gifts, depictions of your business, or as arty conversation pieces.

For prices and availability, email me at .

Spätzle