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@JerzeeTomato There's hundreds of fantastic Belgian beers and you choose Stella as your go to for cooking? Yuck!

No matter what you're cooking think about what job the beer is performing in the dish, it's there to add flavour. With that in mind it doesn't seem like a great idea to use a mass produced lager like Stella, Carlsberg, Heineken, Tennents or similar American beers like Bud, Coors or Miller for cooking as they don't taste of anything!

Look for Indian pale ales, session ales, stouts, imperial ales. Anything with a bit of guts about it is usually good. Darker beers are better for rich sauces like in a beef and ale pie and I imagine they'd be great in a chilli as well. Avoid the big brands! The only thing I'd remotely consider using a fizzy, well known lager for is maybe in batter.

breakfast->dinner->tea where I'm from (Aberdeenshire, Scotland).

Supper was a light meal you had before going to bed occasionally.

@eaguk About fizzy drinks, I was in Tescos earlier looking for a can of diet coke and asked the assistant if they had any tins of juice or if it was just bottles :)

My favourite regular single-malt is Balvenie 12 year old doublewood. For a little more money the signature is awesome as well.

For a peaty island malt I love Talisker.

Generally the more its aged the more you pay. If you want a good deal that's a bit special try and find independently bottled expressions. Gordon and MacPhail or Duncan Taylor are two that often have rare or expensive whisky at reasonable prices (they buy a keg when it's made, age it themselves then bottle it).

To the person who said it's expensive to buy whisky in Scotland, it depends where you buy it. There's a huge difference in price between the rip-off tourist shops (like most in Edinburgh) and a specialist drinks retailer. Supermarkets often have good deals on the most popular brands as well.

Second the haggis, oh and if it's from Scotland it's spelled whisky. No e.

Moving away from haggis it probably depends what kind of whisky you're drinking. A strong, peaty island malt would probably need something that will stand up to it as well. Smoked fish or game perhaps. With a light Speyside you would get away with shellfish or pork. Might work well with food that's a bit spicy (like haggis).

Look for recipes that use it as an ingredient, that should give you a good idea as well for food that goes well with it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/search?keywords=whisky

The Guardian did an article on making perfect gravy just the other day:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/oct/07/how-to-make-perfect-gravy

In Richard Corrigon's "The Clatter of Forks and Spoons" there's a recipe for Bentley's Fish Pie. This is pretty much the flagship recipe in the whole book and one that most people who own it are going to try. Yet when I gave it a go I ended up with Bentley's fish soup.

It calls for a colossal amount of liquid to be used. Truly epic. It must be an error, but I can't imagine they didn't test that one recipe. After draining a lot of the liquid it was much better but I think they use at least twice as much milk as is actually needed. No-one else seems to have noticed though and it's a very beautiful book which is wonderful to read. So perhaps everyone who has a copy just has it on the shelf to thumb through every now and then and they never get round to cooking from it.

It's greatly worrying that most people in this thread say they don't eat in the car because it makes a mess, rather than the more obvious danger that it's a distraction that can cause fatal car accidents.

Crazy.

Pull over for 5 minutes if you're hungry.

Definitely par boil them for 5 minutes then drain put back on the heat (to remove excess moisture) and shake to rough them up a bit.

Then dump them in a bowl with some olive oil and seasoning (also some rosemary if you like, it's amazing on roast veg) then into a baking tray and roast in the oven until golden brown. Remember to turn them now and then as well.

It's entirely possible that when serving dinner my portion ends up slightly bigger than the others.

I used to eat loads of these things when I went to the Haven for chips at lunchtimes from school. Really sweet and probably atrociously bad for you, but an excellent occasional treat.

Anyway just to correct a couple of points in this excellent article. I was a regular customer when these were invented, the local story is that a guy (a local teenager the same age as me) went in and asked for one as a joke and they made it. But it wasn't over 20 years ago, it would have been the mid 90s. So probably about 12 - 15 years ago. Also I don't think the guy that invented it is still working there as he was the owner when it was the Haven, not the current owner now it's the Carron. Still a great chip shop though.

Also the last paragraph "Not really a worthwhile destination for an American tourist.". I'm sorry you didn't enjoy your visit, but there are lots of excellent reasons to visit Stonehaven (as busloads of American tourists seem to have been discovering for as long as I can remember). From the brooding Dunnottar Castle on top of the cliffs above the town, to sitting on the harbour wall drinking a pint in the summer sun, the unique fireballs ceremony at Hogmany or the Stonehaven Folk Festival in July.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehaven
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunnottar_Castle

Apart from that thanks for featuring my hometown on Serious Eats! A nice surprise when I was browsing for delicousness today.