How much beer and beer-related ingredients can one put into a chicken? I might now have the record, but I’ve got a few ideas on how to beat it.

For starters, try marinating the chicken in beer. I used stout for the gravy, but for some reason crappy lager seems like a good marinade. You don’t use vintage wine when cooking so you probably don’t need to use quality beer.

My beer cheesecake had a lot of really intense flavours. If you want a really intense gravy, start reducing the beer 20-30 min. before the chicken is ready.

Personally, I’d prefer the intense beer reduction sauce with pork or maybe game, but if you’re trying to break a record.

Use your favourite roast chicken recipe and try the recipes below for stuffing and gravy.

Barley-Fennel Stuffing

The fennel and barley in the stuffing were decent matches. The moisture in the fennel helped soften the barley while the spent barley from brewing soaked up moisture from the chicken.

The combination worked well with the chicken and gravy, but I wouldn’t hesitate to try more typical seasonings with a barley base.

The barley was still little dry and, if you’re not trying to break a record, try using a 50-50 barley-rice mix as the base of your stuffing in place of bread crumbs. With the gravy, though, it didn’t seem so dry.

As with anything I cook, quantities are approximate.

Remember this recipe when you have guests with wheat allergies.

Ingredients

• 1 cup of barley (after brewing)
• 1 stalk fennel
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp salt

Chop the fennel and mix with barley and salt. Peel and add the whole garlic cloves to the stuffing. Then stuff the beast.

Stout Gravy

I can’t say it’s the first time that I’ve used beer in gravy, but it’s definitely the best beer-gravy I’ve made to date.

Hoppy beers seem to bitter even more when cooked. The stout I used this time was bitter, but not hoppy, and worked just fine.

Ingredients

• pan drippings from chicken
• 300 ml of stout
• 1.5 tsp salt
• 2 clove garlic

Mix drippings with stout and salt and boil at high for about five minutes. Once it comes to a boil, whisk corn starch with warm water and add it to the gravy. Crush and add garlic about 30 seconds before removing from heat and serving.

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Brewmaster’s Chicken

Labneh Cheesecake with Beer Glaze

Tasting the Labneh Cheesecake

The first thing you notice is strong expresso notes from the chocolate porter glaze. The espresso blends into raisin, chocolate, vanilla, and other flavours all balanced across the palate no one taking prominence except when you look for them. Then the flavours all fade into the pleasantly bitter aftertaste of high quality espresso. I can still taste a hint of espresso bitterness now, half an hour after eating.

The very healthy cheesecake only retains the slightest tinge of yoghurt tartness from the Labneh. It serves as an excellent platform for the chocolate porter glaze unifying all the strong flavours from the glaze. The fat helps cleanse the palate letting you appreciate new flavours as they develop. Sour is about the only flavour not in the glaze so the light yoghurt tartness is very refreshing against all the heavier flavours competing on the tongue.

Even though the spent barley was from a stout, I could only detect a slight flavour of the base malt. It worked fine as a crust, but it was a little moist and crumbly. It feels fibrous in the mouth, but not unpleasantly so.

It was very good. And there were a number of firsts for me and original experiments:

1. My first cheesecake (I’m a good cook, but don’t normally do desserts).
2. My first cheesecake crust.
3. The first Labneh cheesecake that I know of.
4. The first spent barley crust that I know of.
5. The first dessert beer glaze that I know of.

It may not have been perfect, but all things considered this first try deserves an A+.

Recipes

The Crust

This recipe is slightly modified from what I made today. I didn’t use flour originally, but I think the addition of flour will help soak up the liquid and make it easier to spread the crust up the side of the pan. If you or any guests have gluten allergies, then leave out the flour and maybe dry out the barley in the oven before mixing it.

• 1.5 cups spent barley
• 1 small egg
• 0.5 cups suger
• 0.5 cups flour
• 3 tbsp melted butter/margarine

Mix all the ingredients together. Spread thinly in a greased cake pan. Cook for about 20 mins. Remove from oven before adding cheese.

The Cheese Filling

You can make Labneh with light or full fat yoghurt. Either way Labneh is alot healthier than cream cheese normally used in cheesecake.

• 2 litres Yoghurt
• 3 eggs
• 0.5 cups sugar
• 0.5 tsp vanilla
• 0.5 tsp salt

Start the Labneh at least a day before making the cheesecake. 2 days is even better. Sling the yoghurt in a clean hankerchief or put it in a coffee strainer-lined colander and let the whey drain from the yoghurt. Make sure you Google whey so that you know not to waste it. The curds that remain after the whey has drained off is Labneh.

When you are ready to make the cheesecake, mix all the ingredients together. They should soften up a little and expand as some air gets in to the mixture. Mix more or less depending on how light or heavy a cheesecake you want to make. Put the filling in the crust and bake at 350 for about 40 minutes or until lightly browned.

Chocolate Porter Glaze

I used Phillips Brewing Longboat Double Chocolate Porter, but I’d be willing to try this with any porter, or sweet stout. I also wanted to use agar as a thickener, but couldn’t find any nearby so I fell back on corn starch. This glaze would also work really well over pork.

• 500 ml Chocolate Porter
• 0.25 cups sugar
• 2 tsp corn starch

Cook beer and sugar in a sauce pan over medium heat until the liquid has reduced to about 1/3 the original volume. Dissolve the corn starch in water and add to the sauce pan. Cook for another 3-5 minutes, cool, and pour over cheesecake.

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Barley Crust Chocolate Porter Labneh Cheesecake

Duck Breast Prosciutto

Making Duck Breast Prosciutto

After checking a number of different recipes online and also consulting at the local salumeria, I made a few adjustments to the Mad Fermentationist’s recipe:

• salted for 28 hours
• washed salt off with wine
• coated with white pepper, garlic powder, fresh thyme and rosemary
• aired for 13 days at °37 F (°3 C).

I followed the Mad Fermentationst’s recipe in every other way.

Tasting the Duck Prosciutto

The meat is quite firm and jerky-like at the narrowest edges, but the texture of most of the meat is very close to prosciutto.

The big difference between duck and regular prosciutto is that the fat in pork is marbled throughout the meat whereas duck fat all sits on top of the meat. There’s also a lot more moisture in duck fat than pork fat. Normally prosciutto is sliced thinly, but this is even more important with duck breast prosciutto because a large mass of moist duck fat in your mouth isn’t very pleasant. But the fat on thinly sliced pieces almosts melts in your mouth and blends in with the meat.

My duck prosciutto tastes like cured pork with a slight overtones of game. The white pepper comes through quite nicely and it is noticably salty. The thyme and rosemary are really evident in the aroma, particularly when opening the package, but they blend well with the other flavours in your mouth.

Modifying the Recipe

I’m pleased with how this recipe turned out, but there are a few things I’d like to try.

I think it would be better if it weren’t quite so dry. Next time I make this I’ll reduce airing time to 10 or 11 days. From what I can gather after reading a number of different recipes online, the airing time seems to depend on the temperature and humidity. I’ve seen instructions ranging from “hang in a dry area” to “hang in a moist area” and “hang in your refridgerator” to “hang at room temperature (in a warm region no less!).” I decided to play it conservatively and keep everything (salting time, airing time and temperature) on the safe side.

Another thing I’d like to try is to marinade the duck breast in wine or beer and herbs before salting. It seems a little silly adding liquid before drying, but it also might be the best way get milder herb flavours in to the prosciutto.

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Duck Breast Prosciutto Recipe