Cooking With Beer

Paul has a great fondness for beer and a wealth of knowledge about it. He has spent considerable time developing recipes in which beer plays a significant role, not as a gimmick, but as an essential flavouring. His recipes display a depth of knowledge about the flavours and qualities of various beers and the dishes that they best complement. The 80-plus recipes in Cooking with Beer include both bold and subtle dishes, from traditional beer-based favourites such as Lamb Shanks in Guinness, to variations on classics, such as Beer-Braised Beef Osso Bucco, to those that use beer in unexpected but wholly delicious ways, such as Birramisu and Sticky Date Pudding.

Paul Mercurio is best known for his lead role in the Baz Luhrmann blockbuster Strictly Ballroom, but he is a jack of many trades. Paul is on the judging panel for 'Dancing with the Stars' in Australia and New Zealand and his own culinary travel show Mercurio’s Menu is shown in several states in Australia where it has received consistently high ratings, and has now been sold to New Zealand and Israel. Paul is also a beer judge and has judged at International and New Zealand Beer Awards as well as participating in the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival and others. His first book was Mercurio's Menu, published by Murdoch Books in 2009.