Real Beer and Good Eats: The Rebirth of America's Beer and Food Traditions

Sausage-maker Aidells and Kelly ( Hot Links & Country Flavors ) here offer a cook's tour of new, impressive microbreweries and their products, and well as the saloons, pubs and restaurants devoted to ``the drink that gladdens the heart'' and the food that can go with it. Teaming these ``artisan beers'' with a variety of traditional and contemporary preparations, they amass a group of recipes (many using beer as an ingredient) that form the backbone of what's being called ``beer cuisine.'' In addition to instructions for how to smoke fish and make sauerkraut from scratch, some of the authors' best selections include: veal shanks and winter vegetables; stuffed duck legs in ale and bourbon gravy; and gingerbread stout cake. Good information is, however, marred by idiosyncratic presentation. Touring beer buffs may be dismayed when Aidells and Kelly rave about a Chicago ethnic nightclub (and beer purveyor), then fail to identify it. A section on the Pacific Northwest contains a recipe from a Fort Wayne, Ind., cooking teacher. Recipes in early chapters follow one format, those in the latter ones another. Illustrations not seen by PW. BOMC HomeStyle alternate. (Aug.)