Cheers to the Publican, Repast and Present: Recipes and Ramblings from an American Beer Hall [A Cookbook]Hardcover (2024)

Winner of the 2018 International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Cookbook Award for "Chefs & Restaurants" category

The highly anticipated narrative-rich cookbook by Chicago's superstar chef, Paul Kahan, whose destination restaurant, The Publican, is known for its incredibly delicious pork- and seafood-centric, beer-friendly cooking.

The Publican, often named one of Chicago's most popular restaurants, conjures a colonial American beer hall with its massive communal tables, high-backed chairs, deep beer list, and Kahan's hallmark style of crave-worthy heartland cooking that transcends the expected and is eminently cookable. Cheers to The Publican is Paul Kahan's and Executive Chef Cosmo Goss's toast to the food they love to make and share, the characters who produce the ingredients that inspire them, and the other cooks they honor. Larded with rich story-telling and featuring more than 150 evocative photographs and 150 recipes for vegetables and salads, fish and seafood, meat, simple charcuterie, and breads and spreads, Cheers to The Publican is sure to be one of the most talked-about and cooked-from cookbooks of the year.

ISBN-13: 9780399578564

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed

Publication Date: 09-19-2017

Pages: 336

Product Dimensions: 8.60(w) x 11.10(h) x 1.20(d)

Mussels in Sour Beer

Just after we came up with the idea for The Publican, a few of the chefs started coming over to my house to play around with different dishes, trying them over and over again until we got it right. We probably went through fifty or sixty mussel preparations, riffing on the traditional white wine version but also experimenting with other spirits. The winner was a variation using Gueuze (sounds like gooze), a sour Belgian beer that’s a little cidery and a little musty and has just the right amount of acidity that we balance with a good amount of butter, garlic, thyme, and chile flakes.

Serves 4
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon sliced celery
1 tablespoon sliced garlic
1 tablespoon sliced shallot
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon thyme leaves
½ teaspoon chile flakes
2 pounds mussels
1 ⁄4 cup Gueuze beer
Sea salt
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons chopped celery leaves or lovage
Baguette, for serving

In a medium pot—ideally something ceramic or cast-iron that can go right onto the table—heat 1 tablespoon of the butter over high heat. When the butter foams, add the celery, garlic, shallot, bay leaf, thyme, and chile flakes and sweat for 1 minute.

Add the mussels to the pot, flip all the ingredients together, pour in the Gueuze, cover the pot, and cook until the mussels are open, 3 to 5 minutes.

Pull off the lid, stir in the remaining butter, and finish the mussels with a pinch of salt, the lemon juice, and celery leaves.

Serve piping hot with hunks of baguette.