When I was young, GUINNESS® was always the drink of choice to go with a good meal for my late dad. The association of the world’s No. 1 international premium black beer with good food etched into my memory since a long time ago. However, it was only many years later that cooking with GUINNESS® caught on in Malaysia with the now classic GUINNESS® pork ribs.

ze chef in black Emmanuel Stroobant working his magic

Little did I know you can cook way more than just pork ribs with GUINNESS®, as demonstrated by the famous Chef in Black from Asian Food Channel, Emmanuel Stroobant. Cheesie, Kenny, and I attended the Guinness Gastronomic Workshop at Mandarin Oriental to find out just how the celebrity chef gets it done.

We even got our hands dirty busy and tried a little kitchen magic ourselves.

ze assistant Antoine Maillet preparing tuna

Chef Stroobant and his assistant Antoine Maillet get things kicking by demonstrating the preparation a starter, tuna tar-tar taco with GUINNESS®. This dish is pretty straight forward and you can try it at home without having a degree from kitchen academy.

my team and I making the tuna tar-tar

Why don’t I just tell you how to do it instead, very simple really.

The ingredients:

• Sashimi grade tuna, 1kg, diced
• small gherkin, 10
• shallot, 10, peeled and diced
• liliput caper, 4 tbps
• tacos, 1 gab
• Japanese mayonnaise, 300g
• ketchup, 5 tbsp
• Worcestershire sauce, 3 tbsp
• GUINNESS® Foreign Extra Stout (FES), 3 tbps (drink the rest!)
• Tabasco to taste

Just mix all ingredients and serve on taco!

cheesie grilling chicken

The two chefs then demonstrated a slightly more complicated dish – Kakuni style braised chicken with GUINNESS®, fresh herb risotto and GUINNESS® poached oyster.

It is a dish with a touch of Japanese style in preparing the chicken, having the skin crispy while not over cooking the meat. A pint of GUINNESS® Foreign Extra Stout is used, with other ingredients such as sugar, soy, garlic, ginger, and black pepper to complete the dish.

kenny with his risotto

The risotto is pretty straight forward, with risotto rice, olive oil, onion, parsley, chives, chervil, salt and pepper cooked in chicken stock and some white wine to perfection. It actually goes really well with the braised chicken.

After the good chef demonstrated to us the preparation of the dessert – GUINNESS® sorbet (it was actually very good!), it was time for us to get ourselves busy.

We were split into four teams of three and tried cooking the dishes above in front of at least 200 people! It was actually a little bit intimidating. My team did the taco tar-tar, Cheesie had to dodge some burning oil in preparing the chicken, while Kenny tried hard not to under cook the risotto. It was some experience, and lucky we didn’t burn down the kitchen (fire extinguisher was available)

parmesan crusted chicken, chicken liver parfait, Guinness sorbet

After the cooking demonstration, the good people at GUINNESS® treated us to a sumptuous dinner with GUINNESS® infused dishes inspired by the celebrity chef himself, Emmanual Stroobant (probably just in case we were not able to eat our own creation?).

We started out with chicken liver parfait with GUINNESS® jelly, aged balsamic with small brioche. I never really liked pate (chicken liver), but the combination with GUINNESS® jelly was actually pretty nice.

Next came the GUINNESS® sorbet to cool things off a bit before the main dish was served, Parmesan crusted chicken with GUINNESS® dough baked green asparagus and tomato nage.

fraindises, chocolate tart with Guinness cherries, olive oil ice cream

We ended the night with soft centered chocolate tart with GUINNESS® cherrie and the rather interesting olive oil ice cream. It was lots of fun and certain gastronomically satisfying! I think some of the Western food places should start looking to adopting the idea.