Cookbook features famous chefs cooking with Abita’s best

Some of the recipes come from Louisiana’s most famous chefs, including Emeril Lagasse, Paul Prudhomme and John Folse. Some come from Lafayette’s own Marcelle Bienvenu. And some come from just plain folks.

But all the recipes have one thing in common – they all contain Abita Beer.

More than 60 recipes are contained in Abita Beer: Cooking Louisiana True.

Bienvenu, a well-known food writer, cookbook author and food historian, kitchen-tested the recipes and compiled them into the book that made its debut in November.

“Every year, Abita puts on several beer dinners at restaurants in Lafayette, New Orleans and Baton Rouge and they ask chefs to create a menu using Abita Beer products or to pair them with a recipe,” Bienvenu said. “We invited all the chefs who had participated in the beer dinners to submit recipes.”

The book also contains the history of the Abita Brewing Company, which opened its doors in 1986 in Abita Springs, about 30 miles north of New Orleans, and other Louisiana breweries.

“I went back to the Historic New Orleans Collection and did some research there,” Bienvenu said. “There were many breweries in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I researched the ones we thought people would recognize – Falstaff, Dixie Beer. I found some wonderful old photographs from the Historic New Orleans Collection.”

Another section of the book deals with beer pairings.

“It’s kind of like wine pairings,” Bienvenu said. “People have their own personal taste. We gave some general information about how to pair (beer with food).”

The beer-centered recipes in the cookbook range from savory to sweet.

“We did a lot of braising meats,” Bienvenu said. “It acts like a tenderizer and it’s great for using in dishes you cook for a long time.”

The beer doesn’t impart its own flavor to meats so much as it intensifies existing flavor, as well as having a tenderizing effect, Bienvenu said. “It just imparts a flavor that’s deeper than cooking with water.”

Abita’s strawberry beer is used to make a vinaigrette salad dressing.

Another beer called Pecan Harvest was used in a recipe that uses Konriko’s Wild Pecan Rice.

Purple Haze, a sweeter beer, is an ingredient in a bar cookie that layers pudding on top of a crust.

Some recipes use beer to cook rice, instead of water or broth.

“Some of the recipes, you would never think would work,” Bienvenu said. “For the longest time, beer was called ‘liquid cake,’ because of the yeast and stuff in it that reacts. We made biscuits, bread and Bananas Foster Cake.”

The book also contains a brief guide to different types of beer, from ale to lager.

“It’s kind of interesting for people that are beer people,” Bienvenu said, “if they want to learn a little about different beers.”

Cookbook features famous chefs cooking with Abita’s best