Cooking With Belgian Beer

Whenever I travel abroad, I realize that, being a Belgian, I live in a blessed beer country.  

I am not one of those people who look for food or drinks they know. I’ll eat anywhere, whatever they’re having.  Generally I try to taste local specialties and as a rule I appreciate them (cutting down on dog and snake though). What I’m trying to say here: I will not get depressed if they don’t serve me my favorite beers, but hey, every now and then a guy wants something else than pastis or wine, being a beer lover and all. 

The intention of this book is mainly to show that there is a larger variety of beer dishes than Flemish beef stew or Flemish style rabbit (prepared with beer and prunes. Some Flemish, whenever they eat a prune, like to have a rabbit with it). However, you will also find those classics of Belgian cuisine in this book, and the same goes for fritter batter, another beer-based classic.

As an introduction I will also give an overview of Belgian beers that looks rather extensive at first sight, but is actually very concise. Other books that give an encyclopedic overview are being published regularly, and so my only intention is to give the ladies and gentlemen amateur cooks an idea with which material they are working. 

Maybe one has to be a foreigner (i.e. non-Belgian) to notice that in Belgium the offer of beers is displayed at the windows, that even in the smallest country pubs you get at least ten to fifteen different beers, that all beers are being served in their own type of glass, that most café owners follow courses to treat the beer as it should be.