A HARTE APPETITE; KERMIT WOULD FIND IT EASY TO BE GREEN TODAY

After opening the can of beer it must be poured into a glass immediately. Before drinking, wait for the beer to settle in the glass so it can form a creamy head.

"It's not easy being green," Kermit the Frog lamented. Except, of course, for today. For today, the 1,538th anniversary of the death of St. Patrick, green is the color of choice.

Though green is the color of spring, shamrocks and the Emerald Isle itself, let me suggest that on this St. Patrick's Day, as we pay homage to the patron saint of Ireland (who, by the way, was not really Irish, being born in either Wales, Scotland or Roman Britain), there's another color that should come to mind: black. Black is the color of that yeasty ale with the creamy white head that is without question the most popular beverage in Ireland. I'm referring, of course, to stout, specifically Guinness, which is, in any Irish pub, an equivalent term. (Actually, as Monica Sheridan notes in her book, "The Art of Irish Cooking," the term beverage is a misnomer when applied in Ireland to anything other than a warm bedtime drink, lemonade, or Coca-Cola. The correct term is "drink.")

Guinness Stout is a drink that has become something of a rage in this country too, despite the fact that, for American beer drinkers at any rate, it is sort of an acquired taste, though that may be true for beer in general as Winston Churchill once noted. "Most people hate the taste of beer to begin with," he said. "It is, however, a prejudice that many people have been able to overcome." Such appears to have been the case with Guinness, which is now brewed in 35 countries and is consumed 10 million times a day around the world.

Stout gets its characteristic dark color from malted barley that is roasted not unlike coffee beans. It is classified as an ale, broadly speaking one of only two kinds of beer, a libation beer historian Alan Eames points out changed the course of human history by inducing our forebears to abandon their nomadic lifestyle. "Mankind was lured by intoxication into tending crops and establishing settlements," he observes. (The other beer type is lager. Lagers are made with bottom-fermenting yeast while the fruitier and more complex ales are made with a yeast that ferments on top.) Stout is darker, stronger and more full-bodied than just about any other beer (at the opposite end of the spectrum from, say, Heineken Lager) though its alcohol content is relatively light.

The drink was not that well known in Ireland when Arthur Guinness began brewing it in 1759 in a dilapidated plant, which he leased for 45 pounds a year, on the outskirts of Dublin. Actually developed in London, the drink was known as porter because of its popularity with the porters and stevedores of Covent Garden. Within 10 years Guinness porter, later referred to simply by the adjective stout, dominated the market in Ireland and had made such inroads into the English market that by 1799 the brewery ceased producing other kinds of beer and specialized in this one kind. Before long Guinness was exporting millions of barrels of the stuff all over the globe, and for a time its St. James' Gate Brewery was the largest in the world. It is still the largest producer of stout. And in an effort to increase its reach, the company launched in 1989 a so-called draft-in-a-can product that purports to offer the taste of freshly tapped beer in a can. The device that makes this possible, something called a widget, a plastic insert containing nitrogen, won the Queen's Award for Technological Achievement, a first for a brewer.

Perhaps some of this phenomenal success can be chalked up to the luck of the Irish, but in any case, Guinness has achieved near cult status among beer aficionados worldwide. Some of them claim that, in keeping with a company advertising slogan hearkening to an earlier era when the drink was prescribed as "liquid bread" for nursing mothers and wounded soldiers, Guinness really is good for you. They cite recent research done at the University of Wisconsin which shows that dark beer, just like red wine, contains flavonoids that are supposed to prevent blood clots and thereby reduce the incidence of heart attack. Other devotees argue that you can determine the nationality of a Guinness drinker by examining the residue or rings left on the inside of the glass with each swig of the brew. Conventional wisdom has it that whereas Americans leave 17 to 20 rings because they tend to sip (behavior frowned upon by true connoisseurs), the Irish leave only 5 to 6 and the English 8 to 10. Australians, it is said, leave none, preferring instead to drink the entire glass in one quaff!

All agree that attaining the perfect pint of Guinness depends upon precisely followed ritual. The drink must be served in a 20-ounce glass, which under no circumstances has been chilled. And it must be poured in two stages wherein the glass is first filled to about 80 percent capacity and then topped off once the beer has settled completely. (The uninitiated, to the amusement of veterans, often start drinking after the first stage.) Tradition also maintains that one should never drink just one Guinness, but at least two.

But you don't have to be a fanatic to agree that in Guinness, which claims to be Ireland's most famous export, the Irish have yet another source of pride, another example of how, in William MacQuitty's words, "Ireland throughout her centuries has made a contribution to the world out of all proportion to her size and numbers." Indeed, the harp that symbolizes the country and appears on the back of its coins, now adorns, albeit facing in a different direction, every Guinness product. (Folklore suggests that in return for using this logo, which also appears on the Trinity College Dublin coat of arms, the company provides a complimentary glass of Guinness for Scholars and Fellows of the College at their traditional evening meal.)

So what better way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day than with a pint or two of Guinness, either consumed directly out of a glass or as an integral ingredient in recipes such as the following?

Steak and Guinness Pie

This easy recipe, an adaptation of one on Imladris, a Celtic site on the Internet, is a typical Irish favorite.

Ingredients:

Double crust pie pastry

2 pounds round steak, cubed

1 tablespoon flour

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 tablespoon raisins

5 small onions, peeled and chopped

1 bottle Guinness stout

8 slices bacon, chopped

3 tablespoons shortening

Directions:

Roll steak in flour and brown in shortening with bacon. Cook onion until golden and add to meat. Add rest of ingredients, cover tightly and simmer over low heat or in 325-degree oven for 2 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally and adding more Guinness if gravy gets too thick. Line deep pie dish with half the crust and bake at 425 degrees until just starting to color. Add beef mixture, cover with top crust, and bake until golden, about 10 minutes.

Pork Chops with Guinness Stout and Onion Gravy

This recipe from Guinness' official American home page on the Internet listed a full cup of stout as one of the ingredients, but the directions called for only 1/4 cup. The remainder, I presume, must be for the cook, in which case one could hardly be blamed for increasing the proportion to two cups!

Ingredients:

8 pork chops, 1-inch thick

all purpose flour

1 tablespoon butter

3 large onions, sliced

1/4 cup Guinness Stout

1 tablespoon coarse-grained mustard

1 1/2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon oil

3 large garlic cloves, minced

1 cup chicken stock

1 tablespoon fresh parsley

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Season pork with salt and pepper and dredge in flour, shaking off excess. Melt butter and half the oil in heavy skillet and brown pork in batches, about 6 minutes a side. Set aside. Dredge onions in flour, shake off excess, and saute with garlic in remaining oil. Cover and cook 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add stout and 3/4 cup stock and bring to boil, scraping up brown bits. Return pork to skillet, add additional stock to bring liquid halfway up sides of pork, cover and simmer 20 minutes. Turn pork over and cook 25 minutes more. Transfer pork and onions to platter, boil pan juices until thickened slightly, whisk in mustard, parsley, and vinegar, and pour over meat.

Stout Cake

This traditional spiced fruit cake from "The Baking Book," a beautiful work by Linda Collister and Anthony Blake, will keep well and, in fact, should be stored in an airtight tin for 3 to 5 days before cutting.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups raisins

1 1/4 cups golden raisins

7 tablespoons stout

3/4 cup butter

3/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed

3 eggs

1 2/3 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoons apple-pie spice

1/3 cup chopped mixed candied peel

3/4 cup walnut pieces

Directions:

Soak raisins in stout overnight. Beat butter until light, then gradually beat in sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in eggs. Sift flour and spice into bowl and fold in. Add fruit and soaking liquid, then peel and walnuts. Pour into 8-inch round deep cake pan, greased and lined with greased parchment paper. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours until tester comes out clean. Cool and turn out of pan. Wrap in wax paper to store.

Golden Cream

Though I have seen a recipe for Guinness ice cream, this concoction strikes me as a quicker way to get the same result. Invented by Tim and Ned Gamble, it won a Guinness recipe contest a few years ago. The brothers advise that the ice cream should never be put in the glass first.

Ingredients:

8 to 10 ounces bottled Guinness

several scoops vanilla ice cream

Directions:

Pour Guinness into glass and allow to settle so there is no head. Slowly add ice cream. Wait 1 minute and serve.

Got a culinary question you'd like to ask or an idea you'd like to see treated in this column? Send your suggestions to A Harte Appetite, c/o The Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, MO., 63702-0699 or by e-mail to tharte@semovm.semo.edu.