This week's St Kilda food specials...

Here are this week's main dish specials in the St Kilda restaurant (from Friday):

Free range pork chop marinated in Flying Dog Double Dog Double Pale Ale (!) & aromats with sweet peppers and salsa verde
Chef's notes: Thickly coated in Double Dog, fennel seeds, coriander seeds & rosemary and marinaded overnight. The pork takes on a spectrum of flavours that are hard to describe in their complexity. At 11.5%, this pale ale breaks down the proteins in the pork to deliver the flavours through the entirety of the chops, not just on the surface. It's finished off with a mouthful of sweet peppers, lightly blistered, to freshen up the palate and combine with the malt in the beer.

Brewboys GT Lager & broad bean risotto, with goats curd stuffed piquillo peppers
The grains of arborio rice absorb this lager like sponges ready to explode in your mouth with every bite. You would think that bitterness in a risotto is not a good thing but when you fold a broad bean & pea puree through the rice you immediately see that the coolness of the beer brings back the savoury flavours to what could potentially be quite a sweet (maybe too sweet) dish. We cut it all with a bit of acid from the goats curd whilst making it still creamier.

Confit duck leg with Murrays Nirvana Pale Ale steamed puy lentils and Ace Of Spades Stout honey glaze
This is a beer take on a very traditional French way to eat duck. Normally steamed with chicken stock or broth, puy lentils puff up like pillows full of flavour. Instead we've opted for a well balanced beer with citrus notes and light spice to bring life to a simple dish. Finished off with a stout glaze made by reducing the beer till it's thick like a syrup, then emulsified with honey to take the bitterness off the reduction. The honey acts like a vessel for the beer and holds the flavour intact, delivering it evenly throughout the meal.

Snapper fillet served with petits pois a la Francaise made with Brewboys Maiden Ale
Petits pois a la Francaise is French style peas made with scallions, lettuce and, of course, peas. Normally you would cook all this in chicken stock or vegetable stock but we've decided to try beer. Brewboys Maiden Ale was the perfect choice for this. So many fruity & caramel malt flavours from this beer make it hard to think of anything which could work better. With the sweetness of the flesh from the snapper fillet and savoury crispy skin, we add a simple touch of lemon juice.

St Kilda's new menu and restaurant changes launched. Here are this week's specials (featuring beer):

St Kilda's new menu has been launched and we've also made a few changes in the restaurant. It now has a lovely curtain to improve the ambience and we've shuffled the tables around a little.

Head Chef Richard Smith continues to experiment with cooking and matching with beers. We've made some changes to how the menu works which allow him to use any tap or bottle beer and each week at least two new weekly specials will feature beer as an ingredient.

The new menu will be posted on our main website very soon but here are the first week's specials, along with Richard's notes:

Osso Bucco stewed in Maudite and green tomatoes with grana & polenta dumplings
Chef's notes: Stewed for over 4 hours in Maudite Belgian Strong Dark Ale, the osso bucco takes on the flavours of the beer as if it was made with a bouquet garni. Subtle flavours of caramel also come through, to deliver longevity on the palate.

Papardelle with olives, semi dried cherry tomatos, fresh herbs and a Murrays Icon 2IPA demi-glaze.
Starting with confit garlic oil then with the marinated olives (Sicilian & Ligurian), a Mediterranean sauce starts to emerge. Later, de-glazed with the Murrays Icon 2IPA to create an extremely rich and mouthwatering flavour and smell. To take the bitterness of the beer I added sweet Sicilian semi dried cherry tomatoes.

Crispy skinned ocean trout served in a citrus and Hoegaarden nage with roasted fennel and fresh herbs
Using the juices of oranges, lemons and limes I made a reduction to infuse into a clear fish broth (made from king fish). Hoegaarden was then added to top up the spectrum of flavours and add richness to the nage.

Lamb Shanks braised in True South Aged Porter and served with creamy mash
The relative lightness and higher carbonation of the beer break down the fattiness of the lamb shanks very nicely. Since the shanks are braised for so many hours you are usually left with a heavy fatty residue and usually have to make a separate sauce to accompany. However, by using nothing but beer and adding carrots 20 minutess from completion, I was able to maintain the natural sauce of the braise and cut the bitterness with the sweetness of the carrots.