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.
