It is one thing to marinate southern ribs or grilled meat with beer, and a completely different thing to prepare a seven course high quality menu based on the most popular and oldest alcoholic drink. And on top of that to be served exclusively alongside a glass of beer.

The craft beer industry has been booming in recent years and even the best restaurants in the world no longer find it difficult to serve beer along with their dishes (Noma even has its own beer!). But it is still much easier to combine plates with beer, than to actually incorporate beer into the dish itself.

One of the best Slovenian chefs, Igor Jagodic (Strelec), was handed a doubly difficult task last week. He had to prepare a thematic evening with beer, more specifically with Laško's Special line of beers. The brewery launched its boutique beer brands at the end of 2014 in order to join the craft revolution that has swept Slovenia with small breweries such as Bevog, Pelicon, Human Fish, Reservoir Dogs, Tektonik and others.

The challenge of cooking with beer
With six different beer types Jagodic had a wide enough pallet to choose from for which drinks to accompany the lighter sea food or more heavy meat dishes. However it turned out that the kitchen chef found it easier to deal with the wild, unexpected reactions of beer exposed to heat treatment, than choosing which beer to accompany which dish. The dark beers from Laško's Special line were especially aggressive and often overpowered Jagodic's sophisticated, but otherwise also intense tastes.

A lager with sea food
A previous thematic evening with cognac, also prepared by Jagodic, seemed like a walk in the park compared to the beer challenge. Jagodic found it least difficult to work with the lighter and more refreshing beer types - the Citra and Golding Laško specials. Citra - a lager with a hint of tropical fruit flavours and the eponymous American hop variety - was used for preparing red trout fillets to which he also added trout caviar, cucumbers and cucumber juice, pickled radishes, spring herbs, horseradish and crunchy toasted bread with barley malt.

Golding - a rather spicy lager with a mix of three Slovenian hops - was served alongside tenderly boiled noodles with cuttlefish and asparagus, a traditional »trdinka« polenta with hops, dashi broth with the juice of young corn, a cream of young corn and shallot, pickled shallot and lightly baked chanterelle mushrooms.

"A cognac among beers"
And then things really started going! Striptis - a dark, low carbonated bock with a good 8 percent of alcohol ("a cognac among beers") - was an excellent choice for the slow all-night cooking of pig tail. Later, Jagodic roasted the tail, added onion puree, »kifeljčar« French beans boiled in beer and rolled in pork rind, fried French bean shells, burned spring onions and rhubarb - which gave it all a final touch with its tart flavour.

Perhaps the more ideal combination for many at the table was Laško's slightly lighter but more caramel dark lager called Dark, which was also the basis for the foie gras beer sauce. Marinated in it were delicious rosy beef ribs (cooked previously for one day at a temperature of 54 degrees and then grilled) with duck liver, a reduced beef stock and Jerusalem artichokes.

Beer plates at Laško Castle
The desserts and cheese plates posed a bigger challenge. Although Jagodic managed to play all the right notes with the fragrances of the Laško Special "Sour cherry and chestnut" with a combination of ice-cream and beer cream, cherries and buckwheat, the type of beer itself failed to convince with its slightly artificial sugary flavour.

Most difficult for the guests to swallow was the evening's strongest beer by far - Krpan. Its name alone indicates strong aggressiveness. Jagodic managed to balance the 11 percent triple bock (essentially barley wine), which has an imperfectly balanced fragrance of berries, caramel, honey and spices, with an equally intense aged »Jamar« cheese with pear jam and hazelnuts.

The former head of the Villa Bled kitchen, and member of the famous “3 chefs” trio (originally from Bled, also made up of Uroš Štefelin and Bine Volčič), will include some of the new successful dishes on the regular menu of his Strelec restaurant. Until then you can also find out how another chef incorporates beer in his dishes – that's Marko Pavčnik from the Pavus restaurant. After all, the restaurant is located at the castle in Laško.