The High Noon Cocktail

So obviously Cinco de Mayo was yesterday, but I still had a good deal of mint from my Kentucky Derby party on saturday and since I had finally found the closest thing to REAL Peach Brandy (that I know of), thanks to Dogfish Head, I wasn't quite finished with my Georgia Mint Juleps. Read about them here: http://www.artofdrink.com/jerry-thomas/pg17.php
However, tequila WAS on my radar as I spent the first half of last week enjoying the St. Rita cocktail which is basically a margarita with St. Germaine instead of triple sec. Delightful.
Tonight, however, I thought I'd fool around with a recipe from the new issue of Imbibe. Saxon & Parole in NYC is one of my favorite cocktail spots and this recipe comes from S&P barman Naren Young. After the first one, I upped the amount of grapefruit a bit and, for me, that made it perfect.
The Campari works surprisingly well with the tequila and triple sec and the fresh taste of the ruby red grapefruit juice just balances them all wonderfully while adding a lovely pink color.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 oz blanco tequila 
• (I used Sauza. Not the best but not the worst)
• 1/2 oz triple sec (Cointreau)
• 1/2 oz Campari
• 1 1/2 oz fresh squeezed pink grapefruit juice

Combine ingredients in shaker and fill with ice cubes. 
Shake about 10 seconds, until chilled.
Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with grapefruit peel.

Not too bitter, not too sweet. I think I'll have another!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Going green with the Bijou Cocktail

So I'm not one for green beer and silly hats and St. Patrick's Day is the one day of the year you can be sure I will NOT be anywhere NEAR a bar. That being said, I do appreciate my fair share of Irish tradition. Corned beef and cabbage, banshees, Westlife...so I thought a green drink was in order and made myself a nice little hoilday-themed libation this evening. The Bijou Cocktail. Bijou means "jewel" in French and was named after the gin (diamond), vermouth (ruby), and chartreuse (emerald). The original recipe dates back to the 1890s. I modified it slightly, swapping the sweet vermouth for dry. Thus making it drier and, more importantly, green. FUN FACT: Tanqueray Malacca was introduced in 1997, and was similar to an "old tom" style gin, which was a bit sweeter and lighter than a london dry. A few years ahead of its time, it disappeared from the shelves in 2001. Thanks to the current cocktail resurgence and demand from craft bartenders, it is back, albiet in limited quantities in numbered bottles. I think the sweeter style of this gin lended itself to my tweaking of this well respected classic.

Ingredients:

• 1 oz Gin (I used Tanquerey Malacca, obviously)
• 1 oz dry vermouth (this should always be refrigerated!)
• 1 oz green Chartreuse
• 1 dash Regan's orange bitters

The original garnish would have been a cherry but a lime seemed right. So it's all green. Slainte!

Tonight: The Filby Cocktail

Our kitchen is being gutted tomorrow and I had to have some help moving my liquor collection to the basement as I have been laid up for a few weeks. During this (delightfully OCD) process, I learned that my bottles clocked in at 217 so I decided to set aside the few bottles that had a maximum of one or two drinks left in them and use them up in a couple well-chosen cocktails. If there is one thing better than getting a shiny new bottle, it's finishing an almost empty one.
The Filby is a drink I have made before but forgot how much I liked it. I received a HUGE bottle of Disaranno a couple years ago that I have never opened due to the fact that it's too really too large to even really handle and i also already had two open bottles of amaretto, for whatever reason. One of these bottles, I noticed, had the required amount left, and I had a bottle of Beefeater that really was on it's last leg. So, back to the Filby. I rarely drink amaretto but this is a good reason to do so. It's Negroni-esque in that it follows the classic recipe but pairs amaretto and dry vermouth instead of the sweet vermouth in the standard 1:1:1 recipe. It is surprisingly delicious. RIP random bottle of unknown amaretto....

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 oz dry gin (I used Beefeater because I was almost out of it)
• 1/2 oz amaretto (I used E Dolce. I have no idea where this came from but it was almost empty when someone apparently left it at my house)
• 1/2 oz dry vermouth
• 1/4 oz Campari

Combine all ingredients in an iced cocktail shaker. Shake and strain into cocktail glass and garnish w/ orange peel.

The Hemingway Daiquiri

When we think of a daiquiri, some of us may envision the super sweet, frozen, machine-dispensed concoctions or something you get at Red Lobster with whipped cream on top. The original daiquiri was an entirely different animal, consisting of mainly rum, lime juice, and a little bit of sugar.
Ernest Hemingway was a huge cocktail connoisseur, ordering the creation of new cocktails everywhere he went. This particular variation of the daiquiri is the only one to bear Hemingway's name and was created in 1921 at the famous El Floradita in Havana by Constanino Ribailagua in honor of his daiquiri-loving regular. According to the story, Hemingway often worked his way through a dozen or so of these, sometimes ordering doubles, which were called Papa Dobles. Interesting facts, eh?

 

Ingredients:

• 2 oz white rum (I used Bacardi)
• 1/2 oz Luxardo maraschino liqueur
• 3/4 oz freshly-squeezed lime juice
• 1/2 oz freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice
• 1/4 oz simple syrup (not in the original recipe but added to several variations and I think it rounds things out nicely

Shake hard with ice and and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lime and/or brandied cherry.

And if I may quote Hemingway (not something I pull out often), "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut".

"How about a nice Swedish Punsch?"

Tonight I have been playing with my new bottle of Swedish Punsch, a sharp, smoky, rummy liqueur produced and sold in Sweden where it used to be very popular and is enjoyed in cocktails or sipped straight, warm or cold. It is an essential ingredient in several recipes in classic cocktail books. In the US it became somewhat of a lost ingredient after Prohibition but is now making a comeback. The base spirit of Swedish Punsch is Batavia Arrack, a southeastern Asian liquor derived from sugar cane and red rice.I have since made my own homemade, adding black tea and citrus and sugar and demerara rum to the arrack, to varied results. Personally I LOVE the already marketed Kronan. I have tried several recipes tonight, trying it with gin and brandy and rum, but my favorite is the one from my "Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails" book, simply called "Doctor Cocktail", after the author. I adjusted the lime juice slightly and found this to be a good decision. I LOVE this drink and I really feel it is just waiting for the right audience, which I plan to find, one way or another. Get me behind a bar and I will put this to good use.

Doctor Cocktail Ingredients:

• 2 oz Jamaican rum (I used Meyers dark)
• 1 oz Swedish Punsch (Kronan)
• 1/2 oz freshly squeezed lime juice (adjusted)

The book's recipe calls for 1 ounce of lime juice but I found that even taking it down to 3/4 oz, the lime hijacks the drink. I love the taste of the Punsch and I prefer the lime to be just a buddy and not overpower. Trust me, I did the legwork. Sometime in the 19th century, the Swedish tradition was to warm it up and enjoy it with pea soup on thursdays. Punsch and Pea soup thursday. Sounds pretty good to me.

"Punsch has fallen out of flavour in mainstream Swedish society, but is still big at formal dinners at the oldest universities and engineering schools. There it is served ice cold to accompany very strong drip coffee. While waiting to be served the guest sings a song in anticipation."

Tonight: The Alamagoozlum Cocktail

Now that I have managed to secure nearly every ingredient needed to make the cocktails in my "Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails" book, I'm starting at the beginning and working
my way through the recipes that only a couple months ago seemed so out of reach.
This cocktail, containing a very long list of ingredients including raw egg white and an unusually large jolt of bitters, was first published in "The Gentleman's Companion" by Charles H. Baker, Jr.,in 1939. Unless you are committed to classic cocktails and acquiring these uncommon spirits, you will most likely not have half of the bottles on this list, so i'll just make you one sometime, as this recipe makes 2-3 drinks. As far as the egg goes, do not be afraid. It creates a soft foam at the top. It is not slimy and it will not give you food poisoning or taste like scrambled eggs. What it will do is provide a delightful silky texture as you enjoy tasting every ingredient in this complex drink. I have been using the carton egg whites from the supermarket. Super easy and you don't waste the yolks.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 egg white
• 2 oz genever gin (Holland gin- I used Boomsma Oude Genever)
• 2 oz water
• 1.5 oz jamaica rum (I used Appleton)
• 1.5 oz Chartreuse (yellow or green)
• 1.5 oz simple syrup
• 1/2 oz orange curacao
• 1/2 oz Angostura bitters

Shake very, very hard for a minute or so in a large iced cocktail shaker and strain into 2 or 3 glasses.
And then smile and pat yourself on the back. 
This one took some doing.

Drink Of The Month: The Proverb

How has it been almost a month already since I lasted posted? It has definitely been a month full of new recipes and learning a great deal of new things about this cocktail journey I have embarked on. It's hard to believe that just a few short months ago, I was free-pouring flavored vodka and adding Fresca and calling it a cocktail. I still have an enormous amount of flavored vodkas (30 something?), a number I used to be proud of, and am now saddled with as I struggle to find room for a more distinguished variety of spirits. This is an ongoing learning process for me. Since I last posted I have realized how important a garnish is to a drink, how extremely important exact measurements are when using so many unique ingredients, and that maraschino liqueur and apricot brandy are indispensable components in every classic cocktail lover's home bar.
So dust off those old bottles and stay tuned...

In the meantime, I am giving the Drink Of The Month honor to a wonderful cocktail that I posted about a couple months ago. It put me on the hunt for a few uncommon ingredients and, I am happy to say, was totally worth the trouble. The Proverb was in the holiday issue of Imbibe magazine and was created by 2012 Bartender Of The Year, Russell Davis of Rickhouse http://www.rickhousebar.com/ in San Francisco. Luxardo Maraschino was kind of my starting point for my classic cocktail adventure, and paired with Maurin Quina, a mysterious (to me) spirit of which I only knew from the famous image of the poster of the dancing green devil by Leonetto Cappiello. It was invented in 1884 and has been only recently reintroduced. It is a sweet fortified wine infused with cherries and quinine with cherry brandy, lemon and cherry juice added. There are also notes of almond and I can only describe it as tasting almost sinful and of the past...it is not a modern day taste.
The Proverb pairs Maurin Quina with a wonderful cognac, Luxardo maraschino, Angostura bitters and black walnut bitters. This drink feels like velvet in your mouth and commands you to just sit back and take in all the flavors.

Ingredients:

• 2 oz H by HINE Cognac
• 1/2 oz Maurin Quina
• 1/4 oz Luxardo Maraschino
• 1 dash Angostura Bitters
• 2 dashes Fee Brothers Black Walnut Bitters (not optional) available on Amazon or at http://www.feebrothers.com/

Place all ingredients in a mixing glass, add ice and stir. Strain over a large ice cube in a rocks glass.

Garnish with a brandied cherry on a pick.

This one is worth the trouble.

Happy New Year: Red Snapper

Hair of the dog this morning (afternoon). Last night I hosted a small gathering and made a classic old punch, Fish House Punch to be exact, and it Kicked. My. Ass.  When I was still waiting for the New Years toast at 12:30, that I had been a part of 30 minutes prior, I decided to make a french exit and leave my guests to the rest of their evening.
So this morning, I decided the best way out of this hole is to crawl back into it. My new favorite take on the bloody mary, Red Snapper, is just a lighter, more refreshing version, though made with gin rather than vodka and without all the extra rigmarole.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 oz. gin
• 3 oz tomato juice
• juice of half a lemon
• 2 dashes worcestershire (or to your liking)
• 1 dash celery bitters (optional)

Shake and strain over ice. Garnish with lemon peel. 
Happy New Year