The Backyard Bartender

2011: A Year in the Backyard

2012-01-31T19:45:00.000-06:00

In case you missed any of this boozy goodness - here's a review of last year's very best cocktails from the Backyard Bartender.

1. Celery-Infused Tequila
2. Carmen Sandiego
3. Cranberry Spice Sangria
4. Lillet Blanc and the James Bond Martini

5. Five Classic Cocktails to Order 'Off the Menu' at the Anvil
6. Mezcal Cocktails
7. Maple Strawberry Rhubarb Mojito
8. Even More Harry Potter Cocktails
9. Kool-Aid Cocktails
10. Cocktailing Chicago: The Violet Hour. (And check out Chicago bars Whistler, Matchbox, and the Drawing Room.)

11. Mojito MADNESS
12. The best of the infused vodka, and what to do with it.
13. The Bachelor Cocktail
14. His and Hers Gin and Tonics
15. Winter White Sangria

2011: A Year in the Kitchn

2012-01-30T23:38:00.010-06:00

I know it seems a bit late for this year-in-review stuff, considering that 2012 is already 1/12 over. But in defiance of convention, here's a retrospective of my work for The Kitchn, the cooking site where I am now a real, bigtime, bona-fide, professional cocktail blogger. A review of this year's work here at the Backyard Bartender is coming soon. Happy (belated) New Year!

1. Easy Pitcher Cocktail: Strawberry Basil Margaritas
2. Halloween Pitcher Cocktail: El Diablo
3. Spiced Pear Margarita
4. Apple Spice Bourbon Infusion
5. Pumpkin Buttered Rum

6. The Summer Sage
7. Blueberry Rum Smash
8. All About Chartreuse
9. Beer Cocktails!
10. Fig Old-Fashioned

Happy Holidays from the Backyard Bartender.

2011-12-24T15:18:00.009-06:00

Here's a warm and bright little sangria, perfect for sipping with the family this Christmas. The cranberry is a tart and tasty complement to the wine, a little bit of spice adds holiday cheer, and a cup of Lillet makes everything just a little more deliciously grown-up.

Cranberry Spice White Wine Sangria
serves 8
1 bottle (750 mL) dry white wine (such as Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc)
1 cup fresh cranberries
1 orange, sliced and cut into quarter-wheels
15 whole cloves
3 cinnamon sticks
1 cup Lillet Blanc
1 cup white cranberry juice
1 cup red cranberry juice (I used cranberry juice cocktail, since real cranberry juice is very tart and a bit hard to locate.)

Combine all ingredients in a pitcher and allow to steep overnight. Serve over ice.

Thanks for reading, friends. I appreciate you all, and hope you have a wonderful, safe holiday filled with good friends, good times, and good drinks.

Beer Cocktails: Redneck Mother

2011-11-03T23:54:00.008-05:00

Ever since I first had a "beer-tail" at Beaver's Icehouse, one of my favorite places in Houston, or the world, I have longed to create one of my own. It seemed so simple, and yet so terribly difficult - I know which liquors go together, but what goes with beer?

I started with sloe gin, beloved of Anglophiles and snooty mixologists, and Lone Star, beloved of me, while floating down the river. While some friends had suggested that 'Down the River With Nancy' would be a delightful name for a cocktail, I was stuck on 'Redneck Mother', and sloe gin (which is red) and Lone Star (which is a little redneck) seemed to fit the bill. To this I added ruby red grapefruit (newly in season - buy local!) and ginger beer. I confess I was inspired in this by the Shiner brewery's summer seasonal, the Ruby Redbird, which is (was) brewed with ginger and grapefruit. So it's unsurprising that the finished product is a bit reminiscent of Shiner's summer brew - but that's not a bad thing. I could use a little remembrance of summer right now.

Redneck Mother
1 oz Rio Star ruby red grapefruit juice (fresh-squeezed!)
.75 oz sloe gin (Get the Plymoth, if you can. It's a bit hard to find, but completely worth it. If you can't hunt down the Plymoth, use a bit less, as other brands tend to be sweeter.)
Lone Star beer
Ginger beer

Add the sloe gin and grapefruit juice to the bottom of a pint glass (or mason jar). Fill the remaining portion of the jar halfway with Lone Star and top with ginger beer. Cheers.

All You Ever Wanted to Know about Chartreuse.

2011-11-03T23:32:00.004-05:00

Those polled had mixed opinions about Chartreuse.

Betty: "This tastes like food. Kind of like herbs de provence." (But she really liked it.)

Luke: "I don't want to drink anything that sounds like 'shart'."

If you can see past the 'shart' (and the prohibitive pricing - a bottle of this stuff cost me nearly 60 dollars) - Chartreuse will unfold its strange, age-old secrets to you. Its taste is distinctively herbal, not quite like any other liqueur you've ever had, and its history is old and rich. (Chartreuse has been made exclusively by French monks since 1605, and its formula is known only to two people. Take that, Coke.) Read all about it at the Kitchn, where yours truly expounds upon the mysteries and wonders of this mysterious and wonderful libation.

Much Love - And a Blueberry Cocktail - To You.

2011-10-25T21:22:00.022-05:00

Some of you might have noticed that I appear to be taking a bit of a break from backyard bartending. But worry not, because I've actually been very busy, and I have many, many ideas. This fall, I'm going to be plying my craft over at The Kitchn for another eight weeks, as well as (hopefully) getting up some reviews of NYC and DC bars, along with some original content just for the site.

In the meantime, just so you don't go thirsty, here's a lovely little cocktail from the tail end of my last stint at the Kitchn. It was originally published right before labor day as a sort of last-ditch summer cocktail, but you have my permission to fall-ify it by using a spiced rum. In fact, that sounds so delicious I might just make one right now.

The Summer Sage

2011-09-12T21:32:00.003-05:00

Here's part 2 of my series of cocktail posts for the Kitchn. It's a re-jiggering (see what I did there?) of one of my very first drinks, a delicious combination of red plums, sage, and rye whiskey. If you're wondering what, exactly, the difference is between rye whiskey and plain old whiskey, flip back to this post for all the details. To see the new recipe (and more delicious photos), check out the Kitchn post here.

Warning: looks like pink lemondade. Will knock you on your ass. (So...pretty much the perfect cocktail.)

Cocktailing Chicago: The Violet Hour

2011-08-30T22:35:00.002-05:00

Just a few El stops away from the Whistler is the Violet Hour, known as THE Chicago cocktail bar. The Whistler and the Violet Hour were my two very favorite bars in Chicago, and Sarah and I hit them up in the same night, which, of course, begs a comparison, The Whistler was delightfully chill, probably the most relaxed atmosphere I've ever found at a dedicated cocktail bar. The whole vibe was very laid-back, very under-the-radar. In the very best way, the Violet Hour is the Whistler's exact opposite; they are both hard to find, both have amazing cocktails, and that's where the similarities end. The Violet Hour is dramatic, from the velvet curtains at the entrance to the Alice-in-wonderland decor to the painstaking presentation of the cocktails. Does it feel like a neighborhood bar? Absolutely not. Does it feel like an experience? Oh, hell yes.

A copy of the Violet Hour's 'House Rules'. Don't ask for a Bud Light.

In keeping with other Chicago cocktail bars, the Violet Hour is a bit..obscure. You'll definitely notice it if you walk by, but you might not know it's a bar. The exterior of the bar is covered with a lovely textured wood paneling (architect Nancy approves), and the lower part is painted with a mural which changes with the seasons. Concealed within the mural is the front door; find the handle, give it a tug, and you will be greeted by the hostess, who will usher you into the depths of the bar.

image: Metromix

Entering the Violet Hour is like passing into another world. Push your way past not one, but two sets of velvet curtains, and you will find yourself in a dimly lit, indigo-hued space that's a bit reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, if Alice's wonderland was a craft bar filled with mixologists ready to satisfy your every boozing whim.

Our bartender was not actually headless.

Sarah and I were seated at the bar, where our bartender, Rob (I'm not quite sure his name was Rob, but we'll go with that), was ready to assist us. You know how older folks are always talking about how air travel used to be so wonderful, back when flight attendants were so gracious and flying on an airplane felt special? (Well, I've actually never had this conversation with an old person, but I've imagined one, based on my readings about the golden age of flight. Yes, I'm a huge nerd.) That's how the service at the Violet Hour compares to the service at any old bar; it's very personal. After we had a chance to look over the menu, Rob asked us what sort of alcohol we liked. Sarah wanted something light and refreshing, so for her he recommended the Juliet & Romeo, a combo of gin, mint, cucumber, and rose water that's one of the bar's most popular drinks. It came in a cocktail glass, with mint leaves and drops of bitters artfully scattered across the surface. At the Violet Hour, no detail goes ignored.

Juliet & Romeo.

I scoured the menu and decided to order a Old One, a combination of pisco, lime, Cocchi Americano (an Italian aperitif that's a cousin to Lillet Blanc), and Peychaud's bitters. My drink was a perfect, delicate mountain of crushed ice, surmounted by just a few drops of bitters. So how did these perfectly presented drinks taste? The Juliet & Romeo was delicious, delicate and subtly floral, and the Old One started out sweet, owing to the pisco, and finished with an elegant, lingering bitterness, like a particularly poignant Russian novel.

The Old One.

The drinks were very good. You can't have a cocktail bar without good drinks. But really, I think what sets the Violet Hour apart is more than just the drinks - it's a feeling. Deep in the dark, past the velvet curtains, sipping your perfectly constructed cocktail in the flickering candlelight, you're far away from the noise of the street, far away from mundane, everyday things. You're a part of the drama, too; you're you, but for a little while, you're starring in a more sophisticated, more glamorous version of your life. I didn't want it to end.

Cocktailing Chicago: The Whistler

2011-08-30T22:30:00.004-05:00

One of Chicago's best cocktail bars almost wasn't a bar at all.

Most bar owners decide that they want to open a bar, and then search for an appropriate space. The owners of Chicago's Whistler did it the other way around - they found the space, and then figured out what to do with it. They decided they wanted to open a live music venue - one that would sell wine, and beer, and maybe a few mixed drinks. Well, on the night of the very first concert, the cocktails were a smash hit. A star was born.

Like other Chicago cocktail bars, the Whistler is a little hard to spot. Look for the changing art installation in the store window in front.

Sarah and I showed up at the Whistler at 6 PM on a Monday night, right when the place opened. Not exactly prime time for any bar - in fact, we were the only customers there. "Could you print out a few menus?" Billy Helmkamp, one of the co-owners (I later discovered), yelled to the only other employee in the bar. Print the menus?, I asked. You have a different menu every day? Yes, Billy told me - a new menu is printed every day the bar is open, reflecting the availability of the different kinds of local produce they use in their drinks. Right away, I knew this was my kind of place.

The Whistler is really serious about local ingredients. They get a lot of their produce from a Chicago-area nonprofit that teachers inner-city kids how to garden, and like The Drawing Room, they're always looking for locally made spirits. One of their sources, Billy told me, is a Chicago-area attorney who makes cocktail bitters in his spare time. He distributes them to local bars, free of charge, apparently. He's in it for the love of the game.

But the Whistler, at its heart, is a live music venue. That's what the owners intended when they opened it, and they have live music every single night (although Sarah and I had to jet after about an hour and unfortunately did not witness this). This makes it a sort of hipster's paradise - laid-back location, delicious cocktails made with local ingredients, live music. Although I'm unable to confirm or deny the reports from Yelp that the Whistler is always full of painfully trendy, bearded types, I can report that, when Sarah and I were there, 100% of the other clientele (consisting of...1 guy) had beards.

Southern Exposure (l) and the Pago Pago.

While staying true to its roots as a live music venue, the Whistler is also an excellent place to get a drink. I had a Pago Pago, a classic tiki cocktail with...chartreuse?, which was as delicious as it was unexpected, and Sarah had a Southern Exposure (pisco, mezcal, lime, raspberry syrup, and allspice dram), whose pink hue and delicious smoky flavor made me exceedingly jealous. After only a single round of drinks and about 45 minutes of chatting with Billy about beer, booze blogs, and bitters, I was very sad to leave. If you live in Chicago (or are just visiting), do yourself a favor and soak up some live music (and some very good drinks) at one of my new favorite bars, the Whistler.

Cocktail University: All About Sloe Gin.

2011-08-26T12:49:00.008-05:00

Sloe gin, the liqueur that is the base for the lovely Hermione Granger, is a bit of a mystery to even my most booze-educated friends. "Um...what's that?", I always get asked, when I tell them that delicious tartness comes from sloe gin. Like a lot of forgotten cocktail ingredients resuscitated in recent years, sloe gin has a pretty interesting history. Read all about it at the Kitchn, where I'll be guest-writing a cocktail column for the next three weeks.

Enter the Dragon (Fruit)

2011-07-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

The latest exotic fruit taking the culinary world by storm is...dragon fruit!!

After reading this sentence, you probably had one of two reactions:
1. There is a fruit called dragon fruit?
2. There is a such thing as...fruit trends?

Well, yes, and yes. Dragon fruit is so of-the-moment that the New York Times wrote a whole article about how cool it is. And you can hardly blame them - dragon fruit is a really, really cool-looking fruit. On the outside, it's hot pink with wavy green spines. Inside, the flesh is white (or pink, for some varieties) and studded with tiny black seeds.

It's got a great backstory, too - the cacti that the fruit grows on only blooms at night, under a full moon. (In the cacti's native lands, the flowers are pollinated by moths and bats; to grow the fruit in America, California farmers have to go out under the light of the moon and pollinate the flowers by hand.) And who wouldn't get excited about a foodstuff with "dragon" in the name?

Unfortunately, I didn't hear about dragon fruit from the New York Times, or some exalted food publication. I heard about it from watching the Bachelorette. (That's right - this is my second drink in less than a month to be inspired by reality television programming. (Here's the first - and a shameless plug for my snarktastic Bachelorette blog.) In a recent episode, Ashley and one of her would-be paramours are seen sitting on a beach in Thailand, drinking champagne and eating dragon fruit. My curiosity was piqued. So when I ran across some dragon fruit at a local Asian market, I thought, hey - why not give it a try?

Of course the big question with any exotic fruit is: what's it taste like? In this case: not much. Even the NYT admits that despite all the hoopla, dragon fruit doesn't really have much of a flavor. I found the texture to be pleasing, which was a surprise given all those seeds, and the taste to be slightly sweet and very, very mild. A little bit strawberry, a little bit melon, a little bit grassy. But veeery mild.

Then there was the issue of what to pair it with. I thought about tequila. I was worried that it might overwhelm the dragon fruit's delicate flavor - I don't think anyone would describe tequila as "mild" - but I had good luck in the past pairing tequila with another unusual pink fruit that grows on a cacti. So I gave it a try.

Dragon Fruit Margarita
Flesh of 1/4 dragon fruit
1.5 oz silver tequila
1/2 oz triple sec
1/2 oz simple syrup
1/2 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice

Combine all ingredients in a blender. Add 5-6 ice cubes. Run the blender, adding ice cubes as needed, until you achieve the desired slushy consistency.

Verdict: My gamble paid off. It's mild, it's sweet, it's refreshing - the tequila is definitely there, but, ever-so-subtly, so is the dragon fruit. In fact, I can almost taste the dragon fruit more in the margarita than I could in the plain old fruit. Maybe it's because dragon fruit and tequila both come from cacti, so they're buddies. Whatever it is: this is good.

Now if anyone needs me, I'll be drinking one of these bad boys on the beach. In Thailand.

More Delicious Margaritas:
The Sweet & Spicy Southwest Margarita
Key Lime Margarita
White Peach and Basil Margarita

Backyard Bartender in the Kitchn

2011-07-23T14:35:00.007-05:00

This week the regular cocktail blogger over at the Kitchn was away, so I filled in with a post about my strawberry basil margaritas. Mosey on over there and check it out. These are seriously some of the easiest cocktails I've ever made - you can throw together a whole pitcher in a few minutes. And they're so popular with my friends that I have to make a pitcher for pretty much every party I have.

Longtime readers may recognize this as a re-do of this earlier post. Longtime attenders of Nancy parties may recognize this as one of their favorite drinks.

Cheers.

Even More Harry Potter Cocktails.

2011-07-10T23:25:00.011-05:00

It's that time again, y'all. Time for EVEN MORE Harry Potter cocktails. If you're looking for the big 3 (that would be Harry, Ron, and Hermione), get yourself over to this post and check out the cocktails I made for them. This time around, I selected four more of our favorite fictional persons to be immortalized in liquid form.

The Luna Lovegood

Luna Lovegood: a little strange, a little spacey, and infinitely lovable. Unaged corn whiskey (also known as moonshine) seemed like the perfect expression of Luna's particular brand of home-grown wackiness. It was only after I made the drink that Garret pointed out to me that Luna means moon, which makes it even more perfect.

Luna Lovegood
8 mint leaves
1.5 oz unaged corn whiskey (I used Georgia Moon)
1 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
.75 oz simple syrup

Place the mint and simple syrup in your shaker and muddle. Add the lemon juice and moonshine, fill the shaker with ice, and shake and strain into an ice-filled glass.

The Draco Malfoy

I don't know about you, but when I think of a Draco-esque cocktail, I immediately think of a martini. But it couldn't be just a martini: that's boring. One night, while mixing up a test batch of Lunas for the roommate, I had a brilliant idea: pickle juice. I had a jar of pickle juice tucked away in the back of the fridge, hoping that someday at some party I could convince some of my braver friends to do pickleback shots (shot of bacon-infused bourbon, followed by a shot of pickle juice and a chaser of beer. really). Into the mix the pickle juice went, and out came a cocktail that was just like Draco: smooth, sleek, and a little bit nasty.

Draco Malfoy
2 oz gin (or vodka, if you prefer)
1/2 oz dry vermouth
1/2 oz pickle juice (I used the juice of a jar of Claussen Kosher Dill sandwich slices, which are, in my opinion, the very best pickles.)

Stir (or shake) all ingredients together with ice. Strain into a chilled martini glass. Drink deeply. Think evil thoughts. (Lauren, the roommate, came up with a brilliant idea: rimming the martini glass with salt will really bring out the savory flavors in this drink.)

The Neville Longbottom

Tea-infused gin and Pimm's: a little fussy, quintessentially British, and unexpectedly strong.

Tea-Infused Gin
In an airtight jar, combine 1.5 cups of gin and 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon of loose English Breakfast tea leaves. Seal the jar, shake once, and allow to sit at room temperature for two hours. After two hours, open the jar and strain out the gin.

Neville Longbottom
1.5 oz tea-infused gin
1 oz Pimm's
.75 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
.75 oz simple syrup

Combine all ingredients in a shaker. Shake and strain into an ice-filled glass.

The Severus Snape

Oh, Snape. Snape is by far my favorite character in the Harry Potter series, played to perfection by Alan Rickman, who is by far my favorite actor. Think about it: in the first book, Snape seems like some generic, greasy, throw-away villain, but then you learn that he's actually this hugely important character upon whom the whole series turns. Remember when you were anxiously awaiting the release of the seventh book, because you had to know whether Snape was good or bad? Well, if you haven't read the books and are waiting for the movie, I won't ruin things for you, but SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER I always knew that Alan Rickman would never betray me like that. And the delicious candy center at the middle of all Snape's turncoatery and snarkery turns out to be...unrequited love, which is one of the most romantic things ever. Snape is J.K.'s true masterpiece.

I held off on making a making a Snape cocktail last time, because how could I ever do him justice? And how could I ever make a cocktail that was an accurate reflection of Snape's personality and actually tasted good? Enter...Fernet Branca. Fernet Branca is a highly bitter, very complicated herbal Italian liqueur, and the very first time I tasted it I knew it was exactly what I need for my Snape. Add to that Blackstrap rum (a very deep, dark, molasses-y dark rum), falernum, and a dash of lavender bitters. Why the lavender? I wanted something floral to remind us of someone else with a floral name who Snape never forgot.

Severus Snape
1.5 oz Cruzan Blackstrap Rum
.5 oz falernum (I used Fee's)
.5 oz Fernet Branca
dash of lavender bitters (I used the Bar Keep Lavender Spice variety.)

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass over ice. Stir for thirty seconds, allow to sit for thirty seconds (I'm warning you - this one is strong), and strain into a cocktail glass.

I'm sad to think that the release of the last movie might be the end of all the Harry Potter madness. It's been a wild ride, and I hate to see it coming to an end. Whatever will we do? Well, I don't know. But have a drink.

Cocktailing Chicago: The Matchbox

2011-07-06T23:41:00.001-05:00

Chicago's matchbox is the cutest, tiniest little place you will ever get a drink that will knock you on your ass. It has the distinction of being the only bar we visited that actually looks like a bar from the outside, but you might miss it anyway, because it's about eight feet wide. Inside is a long bar with a single row of bar stools - there's about three feet between the first stool and the wall, and it only narrows as you go back.

It's even tinier than it looks.

I know this may sound like somebody's claustrophobic nightmare, but I just loved it. Somehow, squeezing yourself past other patrons to get to the bar, or the bathroom, breeds a bizarre sense of camaraderie. It's a feeling of community born from the shared experience of shoehorning yourself into this itty bitty bar to get a beer on a Sunday night. Maybe it's a trick - my shoulder is touching this person's shoulder, so we must be friends - or maybe I just liked it so much because it reminded me of college, where everyone seems willing to jam themselves into a tiny space with relative strangers as long as there's free food or drink involved. Whatever the reason, I completely fell in love with the feel of this bar - cool and insidery, but in a totally down, unpretentious way. A place can't be fancy if you have to make physical contact with 20 strangers to get to the bathroom.

By some stroke of luck Sarah, Rebekah and I managed to snag three consecutive barstools so we could get down to the business of drinking. The bartender was just the sort of woman you would expect to find behind the bar at a place like this - friendly but no-nonsense, chatting with regulars while slinging cocktails at alarming speed. The drinks were hit or miss. My gin blossom, a combo of gin, lemon, and elderflower liqeuer, was okay, but Sarah's lemon drop just tasted like vodka (okay, I guess, if you want a glass of vodka, but not if you ordered a cocktail), and Rebekah's Manhattan was overly sweet and watered down. My favorite drink I had here was just a plain old margarita, although I should probably qualify that by mentioning that by the time I tried it, I'd already had two other (quite strong) drinks.

The gin blossom.

The great thing, if you can find a drink you like, is that the bartenders don't skimp on quantity - the martini glasses are the same size you'll find at other bars, but with each order they give you the cocktail shaker used to make the drink, which has enough liquid in it to fill your glass over again. So it's really like getting two drinks for the price of one. Of course, they leave the ice in the shaker, so you'll have to drink your original drink first or your leavings will get a little watered down. Beers are bizarrely expensive ($4 for PBR? What?), so if your goal is to get the most buzz for your buck, you're definitely better off with a cocktail.

So: maybe not the greatest place for finely crafted cocktails, but definitely worth checking out. The whole thing just felt so comfortable - like I was always meant to be at this particular bar, with these people, sipping a Fin du Monde and melting into the music, and the atmosphere, and the perfect Sunday night.

Cocktailing Chicago: The Drawing Room

2011-06-29T19:24:00.006-05:00

Chicago cocktail bars are hard to find.

Although none of them are rocking the speakeasy feel quite as hard as PDT, the NY cocktail den with an entrance in the back of a phone booth, all the places we went felt a little bit...tucked away. Secret. Special. Like you were cool and in-the-know just for getting in the door.

Sarah, Rebekah and I started off our very first evening in Chicago at the (relatively conspicuous) Drawing Room, a basement hideaway with an entrance tucked between a club and a little French restaurant. We got there around 7 PM on Saturday night, just in time to stake out some prime spots at the bar. From there, we could watch our cocktails being crafted by some of the world's best bartenders (head bartender Charles Joly won a James Beard award in 2011, which is kind of a big deal), and also check out the scene.

image: esquire.com.

From the photos I found online, I was a little concerned that the decor would be a bit high-dollar Holiday Inn, but I couldn't have been more wrong. The Drawing Room feels loungey, intimate and wonderfully grown-up, like the kind of place you always imagined adults hanging out when you were little and couldn't wait to grow up. The space is a long, low room filled with plush furniture - it's modern but warm, fancy but not fussy. The perfect backdrop for for a night on the town with some good friends, and some very good drinks.

Let's talk about the drinks.

Normally, I feel pretty in my element when perusing a cocktail menu. Strange spirits, like cachaça, Fernet Branca? These do not phase me. I even know what a shrub is. But the menu at the Drawing Room threw even me for a loop, and that's a good thing. Cocktail experimentation with wild and wonderful ingredients? I love. And, it turned out, a lot of the things on the menu I didn't recognize because they were local spirits made in and around Chicago. This, I love even more.

Right off, Sarah asked me - what is Malört? Maybe a kind of whiskey? - I told her, totally flubbing. And then I remembered - Malört is that liqueur. Famous for tasting like tires, and for, well, being absolutely repulsive. People who taste Malört for the first time are usually so disgusted that they make what is called a Malört face, an expression of total disgust that is often captured by their friends and cataloged on this flickr site. Looking at it will give you a pretty good idea of what Malört tastes like to the first-timer.

This strange liqueur tastes like wormwood (also present in the extremely potent and supposedly hallucinogenic Absinthe), is freakishly bitter, and, I was told by Billy Helmkamp, one of the co-owners of the Whistler, is sort of the national spirit of Chicago. Seriously. There's even a Chicago flag on the bottle. Malört is to Chicago what Fernet Branca is to San Francisco. People in Chicago really, really love it. And, sure enough, ever bar I visited after the Drawing Room had a bottle of this stuff hanging around. Having seen all the faces on the internet, I was, of course, anxious to taste it for myself. Our bartender Sergio, whose service was impeccable, offered to pour me a bit so I could try it. I wanted to like it so badly. A taste for Malört is like the ultimate badge of cocktail snobbery; it's loved by hardcore cocktail enthusiasts and hated by everyone else. I...didn't like it. At all. In fact, I thought it was one of the foulest things I've ever tasted. Like rubbing alcohol, with a lingering aftertaste of pure hate.

Sergio plying his craft. Witness the Malört to the left.

Billy also told me that it takes until your thirties for the tastebuds that detect bitterness to fully develop, so you may not like bitter things until then. I am 27, so maybe my love for Malört is just waiting for my 32nd birthday to fully blossom. Rebekah, who is, for the record, younger than I am, thought the Malört "wasn't so bad". Perhaps she has a more advanced palate than I do? I am deeply ashamed. (Sarah can't actually taste anything at all, so to her the Malört just tasted like booze.)

I ended up ordering a Cake or Death, because how could you not order a drink with such a fantastic name? (And kudos to our man Sergio for pointing me to this Lego Version.) I'm afraid I can't do it justice in words - it tasted a a little bit like coffee, a little bit bitter, and mostly unlike any other drink I've had before. This, Sergio said, was exactly what they were going for, and they certainly achieved it. I drink a lot, and I am always looking for the strange. This was certainly strange. I'm not sure I liked it (like as in, I would readily order another one), but it was definitely interesting. Rebekah, of the advanced palate, fell in love with the Cake or Death, and agreed to trade me the last of my drink for the remains of her Nooner. People who have drunk with me might be aware of my love affair with bourbon, and the Nooner was near perfect - a wonderful little bourbon cocktail, with maple syrup for just the right amount of depth.

The Cake or Death. Nooner in background.

Sarah has a condition called anosmia, which means that she cannot smell at all: all of her taste sensations come from her tongue. (Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami, if you believe in that kind of thing.) This makes her the perfect barometer for balance in cocktails - Sarah is never swayed by taste associations. She only tastes the most vital things. Sarah bravely ventured off the menu and asked for a cocktail that was "light and refreshing". Sergio delivered, with a drink made from gin, lemon, cherry heering, and creme de violette. For the gin, he chose North Shore distillery's No. 6, a (locally produced!) gin that is very lavender and citrus-forward, to compliment the floral flavors in the drink. Sarah liked it, and so did we.

We decided to linger for another round, drawn in by the drinks and the atmosphere. Sarah's Floradora was definitely the best drink this round, but we all left happy - a wonderful start to our adventures in Chicago.

MxMo LVIII: Carmen Sandiego.

2011-06-20T22:59:00.008-05:00

Ever since I spent all that time making a balsamic syrup for that one cocktail, I swore that some way, some how, I was going to use that stuff again. It was, understandably, a bit tricky; you can't put a syrup made from balsamic vinegar in just any drink. Enter, propitiously, this month's Mixology Monday, whose theme is "Niche Spirits" (with your host Filip at Adventures in Cocktails). I'd long been wanting to do a cocktail with a pear-balsamic pairing, so this seemed like the perfect time to bust out the Poire William. Poire William is a brandy distilled from pears (translation: a hard liquor, that tastes like a pear) that is a bit underloved in the spirit world, but for some reason crops up quite a bit in this blog. (You'll also see it called Poire William eau-de-vie (a French phrase meaning "water of life", applied to many liquors distilled from fruits), or just plain old "pear brandy".)

To this I added cachaça (another off-the-beaten path liquor, so my entry doubly qualifies), a bit of lime, Cointreau, and a dash of orange bitters, for good measure. (I borrowed a little bit from my original balsamic vinegar drink, and also from this delicious pear sour by Vincenzo Marianella, the man behind the Santa Monica cocktail bar Copa d'Oro.) I put it all over ice and added a little soda, because it's hot as hell here in Houston. (Average daily temperature: about 102 degrees. And I'm only exaggerating a little.)

Then there was the difficulty of what to call my creation. I always run into this problem - interesting drinks, with no idea what to name them. I settled on "Carmen Sandiego", since this cocktail contains ingredients pilfered from all over the globe - Poire William from Germany, cachaça from Brazil, balsamic vinegar from Italy, Cointreau from France, bitters from oranges harvested in the West Indes. And can't you just see Carmen enjoying a cocktail after making away with Machu Pichu?

I know I can.

Carmen Sandiego
1 oz Poire William eau-de-vie
1 oz cachaça
1/2 oz balsamic syrup (recipe here)
1/2 oz Cointreau
1/2 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice
dash of orange bitters
club soda

Combine all ingredients together in a cocktail shaker. Fill with ice. Shake and strain into an ice-filled highball glass. Top with club soda (about 1-1.5 oz).

Verdict: It's well-rounded, it's interesting, it's...zippy. Definitely zippy. No less than what you would expect from that sassy, bridge-stealing broad.

Accidental Deliciousness: Courtyard Bar at Brennan's

2011-06-17T20:06:00.003-05:00

About a month ago, I strode confidently into the Courtyard Bar at Brennan's. I'm here to try the Brugal Anejo Rum drinks, I told them. My people talked to the bar manager. It's all worked out.

The bartender looked at me like I was crazy.

A few minutes later, along came the manager himself. He gently informed me that he knew of no such arrangement. Perhaps I meant to go to Brenner's? Imagine me going from confident to deeply embarrassed in about 3.5 seconds.

But I was already there, at the bar, with my schmancy camera, and the afternoon sunlight was slanting through the windows just so, and the bottles behind the bar looked oh-so-alluring. I had dinner plans a couple blocks away in 45 minutes. What was I supposed to do, wait in the car? And everyone had been so nice. So I did what any reasonable person in my position would have done: I ordered a few drinks.

I spotted a bottle of Fernet Branca behind the bar, which intrigued me because I have my own bottle of Fernet Branca, sitting unopened, waiting for the proper inspiration. So I asked the Bartender, Adam (who, despite the initial mix-up, was courtesy itself) to make me a cocktail with Fernet Branca that was "not too bitter". He presented me with something called the Problem Solver - not too sweet, not too bitter, just the perfect little whiskey cocktail. If you would like your problems solved as well, you're in luck, because Adam was kind enough to give me the recipe. (See, I told you they were nice.)

The Problem Solver
2 oz rye whiskey
1/2 oz cherry heering
1/4 oz Benedictine
Fernet Branca

Stir the rye, cherry heering, and Benedictine together in an ice-filled mixing glass. Strain into a Fernet-rinsed cocktail glass.

For my second drink, Adam made me a yellow plum daiquiri. Believe me, it tasted as light and beautiful as it looks. Unfortunately, I don't have the recipe for this one - you may just have to go to Brennan's and order one yourself.

I Love Drama.

2011-06-15T10:08:00.004-05:00

I do not watch much TV. But when I do watch TV, I like to watch TV that is, as Rachel says, "the TV-est of TV". I.e: reality dating shows. Yes, I watch the Bachelor, and I am not ashamed. In fact, I am so unashamed that I write a snarkerific blog recapping the Bachelor (and the Bachelorette). Maybe you should read it. I've been told it's quite funny.

Since last season I created a Bachelor cocktail to celebrate Brad Womack's return (and the launch of my snarkity blog), it hardly seemed fair not to honor this season's Bachelorette, dental student Ashley Hebert, with some kind of libation. (And after having taken a (emotional, not literal) beating at the hands of troll-faced bachelor Bentley last week, Ashley seems like she could really use a drink.)

Of course it had to be a champagne cocktail - champagne is all over every episode of the Bachelorette, and it suits Ashley's bubbly personality. I started with a classic champagne cocktail, the French 75 (especially appropriate since Ashley is french) and added mint, the flavor that most reminds me of going to the dentist. (Of course, my dentist also had bubble-gum flavored toothpaste, but there was no way in hell I was putting that in a cocktail.)

The Ashley
8 mint leaves
1.5 oz gin
1.0 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice (did you read the part where I said fresh squeezed? make it fresh.)
.5 oz simple syrup (don't be lazy. this stuff is super easy to make.)
Brut champagne

To make: Add the mint and simple syrup to the bottom of a shaker and muddle lightly (or smoosh with the back of a spoon). Add the lemon juice and gin and fill the shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a cocktail flute. Fill with champagne.

Verdict: Sweet, bubbly and delicious - the perfect accompaniment to a night of guilty-pleasure TV.

Chicago, IL: Three nights, six bars.

2011-05-27T10:34:00.009-05:00

Chicago! The windy city! The city of the big shoulders! And also, I hear, a damn good place to get a drink. I'm planning a four-day trip - here are the bars that made my shortlist.

Violet Hour
The Violet Hour (so named for a line in a T.S. Eliot poem) is THE Chicago cocktail bar. It is the Anvil of Chicago. When people review other cocktail bars in Chicago, they compare them to the Violet Hour. If you're going to drink cocktails in the windy city you pretty much have to go here.

I'm a teeny bit disappointed that this bar is blue, and not, in fact, violet.

Whistler
The word on the street: cocktails just as good as the Violet Hour, but cheaper! Awesome live music! Also supposedly chock full of hipsters at all times. Seriously, one reviewer said something like: "I've never seen so many beards in my whole life."

Hipster heaven. Booze heaven.

Matchbox
Super tiny and serves super strong classic cocktails. Yes.

The Green Mill
Not really a cocktail bar so much as a jazz club. Super old school - classic Chicago.

Sable Kitchen and Bar
If the Chowhound forums are any indication, this is the most buzzed-about new restaurant in Chicago. Several former employees of the Violet Hour have created cocktails for their menu, and word is they're quite good.

The Drawing Room
Decor looks a bit stuffy. Website is bleh. But they're supposed to have the best cocktails in town. (Head mixologist Charles Jolly won a James Beard award, which is kind of a big deal.) Looking at the menu is like wandering through a delicious boozy wonderland. And they have a drink called "Cake or Death?" - I mean, how could I pass that up?

My mission: to go, to drink, and to report back. I'll let you know what I find.

Images: Metromix, Starchefs, Esquire.

MxMo LVII: Barefoot in the Garden

2011-05-16T23:19:00.019-05:00

It's Mixology Monday time again, and this month's theme (courtesy of Dave at The Barman Cometh) is "Flores de Mayo" - cocktails with floral ingredients. Serendipitously, when I got word of this installment I already had a cocktail up my sleeve (figuratively, otherwise it could've gotten a bit messy) that would fit the bill. A little back story, if you will:

I love the smell of celery. When I was a little girl, one of my favorite foods was this tuna casserole my mom made with celery in it. I loved being there when she was chopping the celery and the aroma filled the kitchen. But I never would've dreamed of putting celery in a cocktail until that article in Martha Stewart living showed me how to make celery and bay leaf-infused vodka. It wasn't long until celery martinis became one of my favorite things. On my post about the the celery martinis, commenter Frederic, of Cocktail ~~Virgin~~ Slut, helpfully pointed out that celery pairs well with St. Germain, absinthe, and other similarly herb-rich spirits. Veery interesting. He also said that celery works well with...tequila??

I had to try this.

Celery-Infused Tequila
1 1/2 cups tequila
2 celery leaves
1 celery stalk, cut in half

I always get the celery for my infusions from the farmer's market - I swear it has more flavor. If you can't locate any locally, try using organic celery. Infuse the tequila in an air-tight jar for two days. Shake the jar occasionally. When the allotted time has passed, strain out the tequila, bottle it, and store it in the fridge.

Verdict: Surprisingly delicious. The agave and celery harmonize beautifully. It even tastes, bizarrely, a tiny bit sweet. Take the celery tequila, pair it with lime, St. Germain and a little Lillet Blanc and you have...

Barefoot in the Garden
1.5 oz celery-infused tequila
.75 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice
.75 oz simple syrup
.5 oz St. Germain elderflower liqueur
.5 oz Lillet Blanc

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker full of ice; shake and strain into a chilled glass.

I think I'm in love. This cocktail is a series of delicious contradictions - it's herbal but bright, sweet yet complicated. It's not quite like anything I've ever made before - and yet I can't stop drinking it. I think I'll make one to enjoy, while barefoot, in my little garden. Which might put me pretty close to perfect happiness.

Blanc. Lillet Blanc.

2011-05-15T19:38:00.022-05:00

"A dry martini," he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet."

"Oui, monsieur."
"Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large, thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?"
"Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea.
"Gosh, that's certainly a drink," said Leiter.
Bond laughed. "When I'm . . . er . . . concentrating," he explained, "I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink's my own invention. I'm going to patent it when I can think of a good name."

Thus spoke James Bond in Casino Royale, the very first novel he appeared in. Never mind that the Bond of the novels was really more of a whiskey man - the Bond films have since elevated "shaken, not stirred" to the stuff of legend. Sadly, though, this particular drink - later named by Bond for the lovely, ultimately doomed double agent Vesper Lynd - has sort of fallen by the wayside.

It's quite easy to make - Gordon's is gin, and vodka is well, vodka. Both of those are common enough. But what in the world is Kina Lillet?

Kina Lillet is (was) an aperitif wine produced in Podensac, France. It's fortified with citrus liqueurs made from sweet and bitter oranges and grapefruit peels, and is flavored with quinine, the stuff that makes tonic water taste so bitter. In the mid-80s, the Lillet company dropped the "Kina" from the name and also significantly decreased the quinine component. Now Lillet (pronounced "lee-lay") is available in blanc and rouge variations; the blanc is called for here.

Taste test time! I'm drinking my Lillet Blanc "well chilled", just like the bottle says.

Smell: Like white wine, but a bit grassy and herbal. Reminds me of dry vermouth.
Taste: A bit wine-y and very citrusy, with a slightly bitter finish.

So now that you know all there is to know about Lillet (or all the important things, anyway), it's time to re-visit the James Bond Martini.

The Vesper
3 oz London Dry gin
1 oz vodka
1/2 oz Lillet Blanc
2 dashes angostura bitters

David Wondrich, who wrote a very thorough and entertaining article about the ideal formulation of this drink, recommends adding the bitters to get a bit closer to the original, bitter-er Kina Lillet version. (The ideal, he says, would be to hunt down some quinine powder, but I'm a little too lazy for that.) He also gives the directions for mixing it thusly:

Shake (if you must) with plenty of cracked ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and twist a large swatch of thin-cut lemon peel over the top. Shoot somebody evil.

I'm Daniel Craig, and I approve this cocktail.

And since you've already comitted to a whole bottle of Lillet to make your James Bond drinks (and since I have basil running wild in the backyard), here's another Lillet cocktail for your drinking pleasure:

Sweet Basil
(from Todd Thrasher of Restaurant Eve, via Food & Wine Cocktails 2009)
10 basil leaves
3 ounces Lillet Blanc
1/2 oz gin
1 oz simple syrup

In a shaker, lightly muddle the basil leaves. Add the Lillet, gin and simple syrup and fill the shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a cocktail glass. Sip lovingly. Don't forget to store your Lillet in the fridge after you're done - it'll keep longer than way. (It is wine, after all.) Cheers.

Blog Love: Fudging It

2011-05-13T18:49:00.007-05:00

Do you suck at cooking? I suck at cooking. I could make absurdly complicated cocktails all day, but when it comes to anything involving a stove (except for simple syrup, which is stupid easy), I am completely inept. That's why I'm excited about Fudging It, a new cooking blog for and by "young southern cooks making it up as we go" that's curated by my cousin Mitch's delightful wife Sara. It's full of super delicious and super accessible recipes, perfect for a cooking novice like me, or for anyone who loves food but has not yet become Julia Child.

Mosey on over there and check it out, and while you're at it, take a gander at the El Diablo cocktail, a classic cocktail made with tequila, lime juice, creme de cassis, and ginger ale that is both easy to make and easy to drink. Mmm.

Kool-Aid Cocktails, aka CRUNK JUICE.

2011-04-28T00:31:00.010-05:00

At my old job (the one where I used to be an architect), my co-worker Nubia would tease me about making recipes for crunk juice. I had to ask her what that meant. I am not crunk. According to urbandictionary, crunk juice is a combination of Hennesy and Red Bull, preferably drunk from a pimp cup. In Nubia's experience, "crunk juice" refers to a highly alcoholic punch found at backyard parties, usually made with Kool-Aid. I like her version better, because honestly, Red Bull and cognac? Sounds pretty nasty.

I had kind of forgotten about the crunk juice when Kaye, my sister's sister-in-law (or my brother-in-law's sister, however you would have it), emailed me wanting suggestions for drinks to make with Kool-Aid. The words "crunk juice" were never mentioned, but still, my mission was clear. The people had spoken, and they wanted Kool-Aid cocktails.

First, I decided to do a little research (thanks, google!), just to see what was out there. Turns out the current Kool-Aid cocktail landscape is a barren wasteland of foul, sugary concoctions with names like "demon's blood" and "the purple panty dropper". With this in mind, I established some guidelines for my Kool-Aid cocktails. They had to:

A. have Kool-Aid in them (obviously),

B. be easy to make,

and C. bear at least a passing resemblance, taste and composition-wise, to real cocktails. This means I wanted them to actually taste like alcohol. The point of mixing drinks, at least in my mind, is not to doctor up booze with sugar and fruit juice so you can't taste it anymore - making cocktails is all about combining flavors, including the flavor of the spirit, into something new and different and hopefully delicious. Here's what I came up with:

The Tropical Storm

Inspired by that quintessential New Orleans cocktail, the Hurricane.

2 oz Tropical Punch Kool-Aid syrup

.75 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice

1.5 oz dark rum

To make the Kool-Aid syrup: Prepare a package of (unsweetened) Kool-Aid according to the directions, but add half as much water as the package calls for. (That is, one quart.)

To make a whole pitcher* of Tropical Storms (c'mon, you know you want to):

1 package Tropical Punch Kool-Aid

1 cup sugar

1 quart water

1.5 cups fresh-squeezed lemon juice

1 bottle (750 ml) dark rum

*Word to the wise: make sure your pitcher is big enough before you start adding stuff. This version will make about 16 servings, so also make sure you have lots of friends.

It tastes a lot like Kool-Aid...but with a little twist. Might actually be closer to the original version than whatever it is they're serving up on Bourbon Street these days. (I've made hurricanes according to the original recipe, and I've sipped some at Pat O'Brien's, and they are not the same. At all.)

and then there's...

Instant Kool-Aid Sangria

Let's face it, sangria is one of the greatest things ever. Wine? Good. Fruit? Good. Wine + fruit? EVEN BETTER. I've made sangria with pretty much everything else...why not Kool-Aid? After all, not everyone has time to cut up all that fruit. Everyone has time for this.

2 bottles red wine (try an inexpensive merlot or cabernet)
1/2 cup sugar
1 packet unsweetened lemon-lime Kool-Aid
1 packet unsweetened orange Kool-Aid

Combine all ingredients in a large pitcher. Serve over ice.

It's good. Not as good as real sangria...but still pretty good. And super easy to make. And did I mention super cheap? Bonus: throw some actual fruit into the pitcher, and see if your friends are fooled. Try substituting other flavors, too. I'm curious about lemonade + black cherry. (Updated to add: when using other flavors, you may need to add a little more sugar.)

And finally...

The Kool Blue Gin-Gin Mule
Of all the bizarre and off-the-wall ingredients I've sourced for my drinks, one of the hardest to find was - you're not gonna believe this - berry blue Kool-Aid. I went to three different grocery stores before I found this stuff. I thought it had been discontinued. But then there it was, like the holy grail of Kool-Aid, beckoning from the shelves of the very last store I tried.

2 oz Berry Blue Kool-Aid syrup (prepare according to directions above)

1.5 oz gin

.75 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice

1.5 oz ginger ale (or ginger beer, for a stronger ginger flavor.)

And the pitcher drink version:

1 packet unsweetened berry blue Kool-Aid

1 cup sugar

1 quart water

1 bottle (750 ml) gin

1.5 cups lime juice
3 cups ginger ale

Once more, berries + gin = win. It's highbrow meets lowbrow...meets delicious.

Oh yeah.

Maple Strawberry Rhubarb Mojito

2011-04-27T16:18:00.003-05:00

My fellow booze bloggers at Drinking in America were big fans of my Smo-jito, so they asked if I would do a guest post for them. I thought of a strawberry mojito, since strawberries are all over the farmers markets right now, and then it just kind of evolved into...the Maple Strawberry Rhubarb Mojito. I know, that's a lot of ingredients. But trust me - it is a monument of deliciousness. Click here to view the full recipe, and while you're at it, check out Drinking in America - "a blog about drinking by people who like to drink". I can get behind that.

Bartender's Choice @ Blue Bar at Brenner's

2011-04-19T09:51:00.014-05:00

One Thursday afternoon I found myself sipping rum cocktails at the bar at Brenner's on the bayou. I can't believe I didn't know about this place before - it's right in the middle of Houston, a stone's throw from Memorial Park, but when you're sitting on the deck, cocktail in hand, surrounded by trees and by the bayou, you can hardly tell you're in the city at all. "It's just like summer camp, but with booze!", I kept telling Kassie, because I am so much of a city girl that my only reference for a place when you can't see any other buildings is summer camp. (Church camp, actually, where there is definitely not any booze.) So when our bartender, Michael Manahan - the creator of the rum old-fashioned you saw in the previous post - asked us if we would stick around and try a few more of his cocktails, well, I was all over that.

First up: something called the Botany Bay. Michael introduced this by announcing that he was about to make "one of the prettiest cocktails you've ever seen". I was skeptical. I drink a lot. Then I was served this:

Ooooh.

The Bottany Bay - so named for a place in Australia where hibiscus flowers grow - is fairly simple: gin (preferrably Blucoat), elderflower liqueur (I'm assuming St. Germain, since it is the only elderflower liqueur), and hibiscus syrup (which sinks to the bottom of the glass to make this cocktail so, so pretty). It tastes almost as good as it looks, which is to say: it tastes quite good. It's hard to go wrong with gin and St. Germain.

Perhaps encouraged by the success of the very, very pretty gin drink, the bartender next served us a very pink combo of malibu rum, lemon juice, grenadine, and whipped cream vodka. His inspiration? A lemon cream pie. It was a little too sweet for my taste, but if you're in the market for drinks that taste like desserts, this could be just the thing - it really does taste just like pie. Then there's the little difficulty of what to call this drink - Michael told me he didn't have a name for it. So how do you order one, in the event you are craving a glass of boozy dessert? Fishing around for names, I came up with this gem - "Sex on the Bayou". Because 1. people always remember suggestive drink names (buttery nipple, anyone?), 2. it's place-appropriate, and 3. this drink certainly fits into the fruity, girly tradition of the sex on the beach. If you're too embarassed to go up to the bar and order sex (I probably would be, even though it was my idea), just ask for the pink drink that tastes like a lemon cream pie. They'll probably know what you mean.

One more thing you should know about the bar at Brenner's: their glasses are huge. (At least compared to the more moderate pours at the fancy cocktail bars I frequent.) Me, holding my giant glass in hand: "Kassie, this is so much booze." You'll get a lot of bang for your buck.

A survey of the damage after an afternoon spent drinking at Brenner's. Thank goodness I brought reinforcements.

Brugal Añejo Rum Old-Fashioned at Brenner's on the Bayou.

2011-04-15T14:41:00.021-05:00

A few weeks ago, I got an email from the folks who represent Brugal Añejo rum. There are some cocktails on the menu at Brenner's steakhouse featuring their rum, they said - would I like to try them? Why, yes. Yes I would.

So last Thursday, I headed down to Brenner's, accompanied by loyal drinking buddy Kassie. (Before this I accidentally went to Brennan's, because my reading comprehension skills are slipping. More on that later.) I met the bartender, Michael Manahan, who made me one of his own creations, the Brugal Anejo Rum Old Fashioned.

Now, I'm quite familiar with the concept of an old-fashioned. I've sipped plenty at the Anvil, and made quite a few of my own, including this lavender and elderflower version. But this? This was like nothing I've ever had before. All the nuance you would expect from the interplay of flavors in a bourbon old-fashioned, with a wonderful smoothness. I could drink these all day.

What, I asked Michael, while sipping my way to booze nirvana, inspired him to put rum in an old-fashioned? This is really a very unusual product, he told me - more like a whiskey or a scotch. It's a blend of rums aged between 2-5 years in American oak barrels previously used for Jack Daniels. So of course then I wanted to try the rum straight - maybe I should've done this first? - and he obligingly poured me a little glass. Holy crap. I took a sip and was in love. It was sweet like a rum, but oaky like a nice old scotch. And so, so smooth - no rocks, no nothing. Just super smooth, drinkable rum. (And, at about $18 a bottle, it's a little more accessible than that 18-year-old scotch I was similarly enamored with.)

Want to make some old-fashioneds of your own? Here's how it's done. First, muddle a slice of orange, a cocktail cherry, and a couple dashes of bitters together with 1 tsp of sugar.

Add ice and 2 oz rum; shake and strain into an ice-filled old-fashioned glass. Top with a splash of soda water. I understand this is a bit different from the usual procedure for an old-fashioned (which doesn't involve shaking) - but it's hard to argue with the results.

The best of the infused vodka, and what to do with it.

2011-04-06T00:20:00.014-05:00

If you've been following this blog, you might have noticed that for some time I've been working on perfecting a few different kinds of infused vodka. Along the way I made some infusions that were totally disgusting (beet and horseradish...blech), some that were just underwhelming (lemon and fennel), and some that showed promise. Those I tweaked, and tasted, and re-infused, and re-tasted, until I had honed them into delicious examples of alcoholic perfection. But what to do with all this wonderful booze? Sure, the vodkas I created were tasty on their own, but this is a blog about cocktails, not a blog about drinking straight hard liquor. Even if it's been infused with cardamom.

So here are the best of the infusions, followed by ideas for what to do with them. Feel free to use your imagination and come up with your own drinks. Or, you know, take the vodka straight. I won't tell anyone.

Celery + Bay Leaf
1.5 cups vodka
1/2 celery stalk
2 celery leaves
1 dried bay leaf

Infuse in a sealed glass jar for 2 days, shaking occasionally. Strain out the other ingredients and store the vodka in the freezer for up to a month. (Or maybe even longer. I mean, it's alcohol - doesn't it preserve itself?)

This recipe comes from the article in Martha Stewart Living that inspired all the infused-vodka madness. I've already sung its praises in a previous vodka-related post, so here I'll just say that it is delightfully savory, with just a tiny bit of spice on the finish. I will also say that it makes a pretty incredible martini.

Celery Martini
3 oz infused vodka
.75 oz dry vermouth

Shake (or stir) with ice and strain into a cocktail glass garnished with a celery stick.

Besides making recipes from the magazine, I also came up with some of my own. Such as:

Chocolate, Cinnamon + Chipotle
1.5 cups vodka
4 tablespoons cocoa nibs
1 dried chipotle pepper
2 cinnamon sticks, broken in half

Directions: see above.

So much going on here. Deep, rich, spicy, dark. Perfect for making a cocktail that looks innocent enough, but packs a little unexpected punch.

The Twisted Russian
2.5 oz infused vodka
.75 oz heavy cream
.5 oz sugar syrup

Shake (or stir) with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

And last but not least:

Vanilla, Cardamom + Cinnamon
1.5 cups vodka
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
2 cardamom pods
3 medium-sized chips of Vietnamese cinnamon

Directions: see celery infusion.

Where do I begin? This infusion smells amazing and tastes nearly as good. You have the sweetness of the vanilla balanced against the woody, earthy flavors of the cinnamon and cardamom. Both cinnamon and cardamom, incidentally, come from Southeast Asia, and you know what else comes from Southeast Asia? Thai Basil. Conveniently, I am cultivating some in the backyard, so I decided to throw it into the mix and see what happened.

The Thai Gimlet
4 leaves Thai basil
2.5 oz infused vodka
.75 oz lime juice
.75 oz simple syrup

Add the simple syrup and basil leaves to the bottom of a shaker and muddle thoroughly. Add the vodka and lime juice, shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Verdict: very interesting mix of flavors. The Thai basil brings a nice balance to a drink that otherwise might be a bit too sweet. Drink up.

Starchefs.com Rising Stars Gala Houston

2011-03-22T19:08:00.018-05:00

Every year Starchefs.com, the online food gazette, hosts galas in four different cities to honor "rising stars" on the culinary scene. The locations vary; there have been events in New York, Seattle, DC, and San Francisco, to name a few. This year Starchefs finally recognized what you and I have known for a long time: Houston is a really great place to eat and drink. The recipients of Starchefs' very first Houston awards include chefs from some of the most talked-about restaurants in town, as well as Bobby Heugel, the genius behind Houston cocktail institution the Anvil. So when I was offered the opportunity to attend the gala and sample some of this marvelous grub as a guest of Highland Park Scotch Whisky, I was pretty psyched. To say the least.

Let's take a moment to dwell on how fabulous the location was. (It's okay for me to do that. I used to be an architect.) The rooftop pool deck at the four seasons was full of beautiful young people - very Gossip Girl. And there I was. I only regret that I didn't take pictures of the scene. After taking it all in, Lauren and I got down to the real business: eating and drinking. Here are some of the highlights.

First off: a sangria made with Spanish Rioja, grilled mangos, vanilla bean, and cinnamon. This delicious concoction is the brainchild of Sean Beck, the sommelier from Backstreet Cafe and Hugo's and one of the honorees for the evening. Grilling, he said, brings out new flavors in the mango. And new ideas in my sangria-loving mind. Can a smoky sangria be far away? The food: Oh sweet heavens, the food. I sampled so many wonderful dishes I can't possibly describe them all. Lauren and I both agreed that the sautéed shrimp with white cheddar polenta, from chef Jamie Zelko of Zelko Bistro, was our favorite. A close second: the roasted venison with sweet potato-brussel sprout hash, bacon confit, and pomegranate jus, from David Grossman at Branch Water Tavern. Yeah, just read that over again. It's okay to drool a little.

The best damn shrimp and grits you will ever eat.

The cocktails: There were a couple of cocktails being poured for the evening, so of course I had to have one of each. There was the Orkney Opponent, made from lemon, maple syrup, Highland Park's 12-year-old single malt, and allspice dram, and then there was my personal favorite, the Anvil Paloma, made with tequila, lime, and grapefruit beer. (Not quite sure what "grapefruit beer" is but I think I need one right now.)

The Orkney Opponent (l) and the Anvil Paloma.

For dessert: Something truly odd. And I liked a cocktail with balsamic vinegar, so for me to say that - it must have been very, very, odd. When you read about a dessert composed of carrot and grapefruit mousse, grapefruit marmalade, candied sesame seeds, hay sherbet, and clove meringue, what stands out to you? If you answered "the hay sorbet", then you win. Look, I consider it a part of my job to be open to trying unusual things. Even after seeing Lauren's face upon taking her first bite, I gamely ate this. I made sure to get a bite with a little bit of everything. And you know what? The flavors really complimented each other. I just couldn't get over the fact that it tasted like cow food.

I'm sure making this was a real culinary feat. I'm really not kidding when I say that it tasted just like hay. You know those buttered popcorn jelly beans? You bite into them, and you're thinking, no way a jelly bean could taste like popcorn. And then they do. They taste exactly like popcorn, and you respect the technology that must've gone into making that happen - but it's still kind of gross.

And after that: This post would be incomplete without a mention of Highland Park Scotch, and not just because they were my meal ticket for the event. Their 12, 15, and 18-year-old single malts flowed freely throughout the evening - the 12-year-old was quite good, but the smooth, smoky flavor of the 18-year-old was the high point of my night. And maybe my life. I've always loved scotch, ever since that one time at that one wedding - but I never dreamed it could go down this easy.*

*Highland Park also makes a 30-year single malt, available at Spec's for the modest price of four hundred thirty seven dollars a bottle. I'd like to get my hands on some of that.

Updated to add: click here to see more pictures of the event, including photos of all the featured dishes, and the totally bizarre hay sorbet.

Mojito MADNESS.

2011-03-14T15:05:00.017-05:00

Some of you may not know this, but the mojito is really the drink that started it all. One summer night, circa 2008 - four good girl friends, a little bit of peppermint, a bottle of rum, and my first-ever batch of simple syrup came together to make some very, very delicious mojitos. And probably the most fun I've ever had on a week night. I was hooked. On mojitos, and on mixing drinks.

So, recently, I decided to re-visit the mojito. And, just to shake things up a little, to make a mojito variation with every kind of clear liquor in my kitchen. But first, I needed to establish a base recipe for the mojito. Now, I can be a little bit of a stickler for the rules. Especially when it comes to cocktails. I mean, classic is best, right? So I first turned to the oldest known recipe for a mojito, from a 1929 Cuban cocktail book called, appropriately, El Libro de Cocktail, and helpfully re-printed in Food & Wine magazine's "cocktails '09". Also helpfully reprinted right here:

The Original Mojito
8 mint leaves
2 oz white rum
3/4 oz fresh lime juice
1 oz simple syrup
1/2 oz chilled club soda

I made a mojito, just as the 80-year-old recipe said. It was pretty, to be sure. I took many pictures of it. But I tasted it and I was...underwhelmed. I longed to return the the mojito that first captured my heart that summer night. So I made another mojito, according to my old recipe. I took a sip...delicious. Feels like the very first time.

"What is the secret of this fantastic mojito?" - you must surely be asking yourself. Two things: 1. turbinado simple syrup. Just like it sounds - simple syrup made with turbinado sugar, 1:1. 2. peppermint. Spearmint is pretty much the gold standard for mint in cocktails - every bar I've ever been to uses it for their mojitos, so that's what I used to make the classic mojito. But the drinks from the infamous Night of the Mojitos were made with peppermint, which imparts a stronger mint flavor. For the recipe printed below, I used half and half, and the result was lovely. Where can one find peppermint? I grow mine myself. You can tell the difference between the two varieties by the shape of the leaves, and, of course, by the way they smell.

peppermint vs. spearmint.

Nancy's very special mojito
8 mint leaves (4 spearmint, 4 peppermint)
1.5 oz rum
.75 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice
.5 oz turbinado simple syrup
1 oz soda water

Place the mint leave in the bottom of a shaker, cover with the simple syrup, and muddle. Add the lime, rum, and 5-6 ice cubes, and shake and strain into a highball glass filled with crushed ice. Top with the soda water.

I'll be damned is this is not the best mojito I've ever had.

So now that we've established a basic recipe for the mojito, it's time to get crazy. First up, the mexi-jito - a mojito made with tequila. Luke, an inventive drinker and a particular fan of tequila, gave me the idea for this one.

Mexijito
8 mint leaves (half and half)
1.5 oz silver tequila
.75 oz lime juice
.5 oz agave nectar
1 oz soda water

Verdict: Oh, it's good. The combo of tequila and mint is wonderfully smooth, and almost, just a teeny tiny bit, reminds me of chocolate. Interesting and delicious and refrescante. Definitely worth a try.

Next: A mojito with cachaça. Since cachaça and rum are so similar, substituting cachaça for rum in a mojito seems pretty logical. Plus, the caipirinha, the most famous cachaça drink out there, is essentially just a mojito without mint, right?

Brazilian Mojito
8 mint leaves (half and half)
1.5 oz cachaça
.75 oz lime juice
.5 oz turbinado simple syrup
1 oz soda water

So...I now understand why the Brazilians don't put mint in their caipirinhas. It's because cachaça and mint is...well, kinda gross. The vegetal flavors of cachaça don't play nice with the mint like rum does. I still finished the drink -but it was my least favorite of all the alterna-mojitos. Since I played it safe with this one, next I decided to try something really unusual: a mojito with poire william eau-de-vie, a brandy made from distilled pears.

The Peppermint Pear
12 mint leaves (6 peppermint, 6 spearmint)
1.5 oz poire william eau-de-vie
1 oz lime juice
.75 oz simple syrup
1 oz soda water

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this turned out like a mojito...that tastes like pear. Actually, come to think of it, it's more like the other way around. Even with the amount of other ingredients increased, pear is the overwhelming taste sensation here, with the mint and lime as mere grace notes. I'm still not sure how I feel about that. Suffice it to say, though, that if you like pear, and you like mojitos...you will love the hell out of this. If you're not such a huge fan of pear, but you still happen to have the brandy around , try half pear brandy, half light rum.

What about...a mojito with gin? This is another Luke invention. Once, at a party, long ago, I was making mojitos when I ran out of rum. What to doooo? Luke suggested making some with gin. I remembered them being pretty good. I remembered right.

The Gin-jito
8 mint leaves (4 peppermint, 4 spearmint)
1.5 oz gin
.75 oz lime juice
.5 oz simple syrup
1 oz soda water

It's delicious and refreshing, in that very clean, juniper-y way that gin is. And lastly: an unusual combination that totally blew my mind. Alicia was the one who suggested making a mojito with mezcal - she had something like it at the Anvil once.

The Smo-jito (It's a smoky mojito. Get it?)
8 mint leaves
1.5 oz joven mezcal
.75 oz lime juice
.5 oz agave nectar
1 oz soda water

Oh. My. Gosh. Definitely my favorite of all the mojito variations. Nice strong agave flavor, delicious smoke making love to lime and mint. I don't know what I did to deserve this, but whatever it was, I must've been very good.

MxMo LV: Some Like it Hot: The Round-Up.

2011-03-02T12:43:00.024-06:00

So when I cooked up (cooked up - see what I did there?) the idea for this month's Mixology Monday, Houston was in the grips of something curiously akin to winter. For a couple of weeks, the temperature dipped below forty degrees, and I laid low and drank hot buttered beer and dreamed of sangria.

Winter didn't last long, however, and now that Mixology Monday has come around it's a sunny 75 degrees, the blueberries are in bloom, and I'm thinking about planting tomatoes. Normally I love Houston's bizarre, balmy weather, but I have to say that today I'm a little jealous of those of you in the frozen north. What better pick-me-up on a cold day than one of these delicious hot drinks? I might even make one to enjoy by the pool.

For Elana over at Stir and Strain, hot alcoholic drinks conjure up memories of dad giving her hot whiskey for childhood illnesses. Love it. Her Hot Buttered Warm-Up is made with a cardamom, vanilla, and muscovado sugar butter (I started drooling when I read that) melted into black tea with bourbon, lemon juice, and amaretto. An unusual flavor combo, and one that I am dying to try.

Frederic of cocktail ~~virgin~~ slut reaches waaay back to a cocktail book from 1867 to bring us the Locomotive. As he says, "since these early railway vehicles used heat to generate steam to propel them, having a hot drink named after them was not very surprising". The recipe, though, is pretty surprising, at least to us moderns - it's wine, sweetened with honey and orange liqueur, and thickened with egg yolk. Given my affinity for bizarre combinations and old recipes, I'm happy to hear this one was a hit.

Jordan, from Chemistry of the Cocktail, makes a hot chocolate cocktail with dark chocolate and a chocolate and spice-infused rum. I'm just starting to experiment with spicy/chocolate combinations myself, and I have to say...this sounds amazing.

Rowen over at the Fogged in Lounge tries out the somewhat salaciously-titled Vanilla Whiskey Skin. It's a toddy made with rye, vanilla syrup, and lemon peel. Yum. Vanilla in a toddy...that opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. Also, I like your backdrop of classic novels.

Doug of the Pegu Blog offers up a Hot Buttered Mai Tai. The first time I opened this link, my response was something like...whaaat? The Mai Tai was one of the first drinks I ever made, and it's still one of my favorites. But hot? And with butter? Then I remembered that I had a similar response to the hot buttered beer, which turned out to be delicious. Thankfully Doug gives us detailed directions for making the most of this "cosmic convergence".

Speaking of hot tiki drinks...Layne over at the Ace Saloon brings us the Heaven's on Fire, inspired by a Don the Beachcomber recipe from 1937. And the ingredients do sound heavenly. Start with butter, honey and coconut...add rum, allspice dram, velvet falernum, and milk. Drool. (P.S. Layne says that he loves mulled wine, but his friends are sort of meh about it. You should meet my friends. They drink mulled wine like it's going out of style.)

Dave of the Barman Cometh makes some Glogg, the traditional Scandinavian mulled wine, to ward off an unexpected chill in San Francisco. (Because if anybody knows how to make a warming drink, it's the Scandinavians.) I've made lots of mulled wine but never glogg, and I'm dying to try it after seeing this recipe. Did I mention that it calls for lighting a Brandy syrup on fire? That is all kinds of awesome. And is that a christmas-tree garnish?

And while we're setting things on fire, there's DJ Hawaiian Shirt's Flaming Coffee Grog. So many things about this drink blow my mind - it's a tiki drink with coffee, for one. And then there's the part where you make a mixture of rum, orange liqueur, citrus peels, and cloves and set it on FIRE. You're supposed to spoon the flaming mixture into the coffee, "where presumably the flames will soon extinguish". So, so great.

Then we have Dennis, from A Drink on the Rocks. His contribution, the Pirate's Gold, is also tiki-esque, but with...a beer syrup? And chocolate bitters? How strange. How wonderful. Make me one, please.

Fearghas lives in Scotland and has tasted the Pimms #3, two reasons I am terribly jealous of him. He and his buddies have a whole blog about gin, and this is their very first MxMo. Welcome to the party! His contribution is, appropriately, a Hot Gin Toddy.

More hot gin! (It's not too often you get to say that.) Marc of A Drinkers Peace, faced with a winter snowfall and unfortunate case of the sniffles, turns to an 1888 recipe for a hot gin sling. Genever, sugar, fresh ground nutmeg, and lemon are warming and soothing.

Elizabeth over at Mix n' Sip is another first-timer. Welcome Elizabeth! She offers up her Devonshire Clotted Cream Tea Cocktail, an alcoholic twist on the traditional English afternoon drink, along with some fascinating history of the tradition of teatime.

Tony Harion and the Mixing Bar team came to this little party all the way from Brazil. Being that it's 95 degrees in Brazil right now, the team bends the rules a little and makes a hot drink, served cold. Their submission is the Maria Carioca, which is...a spicy tomato drink made with passion fruit. That's right - passion fruit. I am in awe. Also I need to be drinking one of these like, right now.

Ed of Wordsmithing Pantagruel makes a Caramel Apple Toddy with applejack, Bénédictine, and caramel syrup. Deeelish. He also offers up some links about flash heating ale with a red-hot poker, the legit, old-fashioned way to make hot drinks. I've always wanted to try this, although I'm a little worried that my fireplace isn't all that clean.

The Alpha Cook offers up the Bull's Milk, a hot drink with an off-putting name but a very appealing photo. Dark rum, cognac, vanilla milk, and maple syrup? I feel warm just thinking about it.

And finally, there's my humble submission...a spiced pear mulled wine. I aimed to make two different kinds of mulled wine, but then decided that the second one would be better off as a sangria. Fortunately, sangria season is about ten months out of the year around here.

Thanks to everyone who participated! Please please let me know if I left out your entry - my inbox is currently a smorgasbord of wild and wonderful hot drinks, and I wouldn't want anyone to have gotten lost in the shuffle.

Thanks also to Paul Clarke, our benevolent founder. See you all next time!

MxMo LV: Pear Spice Mulled Wine

2011-02-28T23:40:00.006-06:00

Whenever I have parties and I do hot drinks, I always make at least one batch of mulled wine, and it's always a big hit. Since this month's Mixology Monday theme (selected by yours truly) is Some Like it Hot, I thought I'd take a stab at an original mulled wine.

At first I thought of doing an apple mulled wine, since apple and spices go so well together, but some poking about on the internets revealed that lots of other people had already beat me to it. So why not...a pear mulled wine?

Pear Spice Mulled Wine
1 bottle red wine
1/4 cup brandy
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 pear, cored and sliced
1/2 cup pear nectar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 whole anise star
12 whole cloves
3 cinnamon sticks
1/2 orange, cut into slices

Combine all the ingredients in an appropriately-sized pot. Cook over medium-low, stirring occasionally, for 25 minutes.

Verdict: Winner. Delicious, spicy, fruity. I found myself completely unable to stop drinking it. And after you've drunk all the wine, the pears make for a delicious and dangerously addictive snack.

And, just because I can't leave well enough alone, I decided to try something really innovative: a mulled wine with...balsamic vinegar? Yeah, you heard that right. Some cursory google searches indicated that balsamic vinegar, pears and cinnamon might be good together, so I gave it a whirl.

Balsamic Pear Mulled Wine
1 bottle red wine
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup eau-de-vie poire william
1 pear, cored and sliced
1/2 orange, cut into slices
4 cinnamon sticks

Verdict: This is really, really interesting, and not in an entirely bad way. The balsamic and pear flavors complement one another and bring out the nuances in each. I can't help thinking, though, that this would probably better as a sangria. As in, it smelled awfully good before I cooked it for half an hour. Come summer, you can bet I'll be trying this one again.

Winter White Sangria

2011-02-28T19:33:00.008-06:00

A few weeks ago, Houston was in the sway of something resembling Winter - the temperature dropped below forty for almost two weeks, the sun did not come out, and a couple of days it even FROZE and everyone in our lovely city lost their collective shit. Of course I'm also a total wimp when it comes to cold weather, because hello, I live in Houston, so I stayed at home and drank hot tea and took long hot baths and dreamed of summer and sangria.

During which time I thought, hey, I don't think I've ever made a sangria with cucumber. It seemed like an interesting challenge - the savoriness of cucumber in a sangria. I though about the Mr. Stair, the pretty green pear sour that I had to puree a cucumber to make. With that as my inspiration, it wasn't long until...

The Winter White Sangria
A white sangria recipe with pear, cucumber, blood orange, and St. Germain elderflower liqueur.

1 bottle dry white wine (pinot grigio or sauvignon blanc)
1/2 cup eau-de-vie poire william (pear brandy)
1/2 cup St. Germain elderflower liqueur
1 pear, cored and sliced
8 cucumber slices
1/2 blood orange, cut into half-rounds

Combine all ingredients in a pitcher and chill overnight (or for at least 8 hours). (Most sangrias get better as you continue to infuse them, but you actually don't want to steep this one much longer than 8 hours or the cucumber will become too pronounced.) Serve in a glass over ice.

Verdict: I did done good. Beautiful and crisp and fresh, with a lingering sweetness. Just the thing to tide you over until spring.

5 Classic Cocktails to Order "Off the Menu" at the Anvil.

2011-02-25T17:13:00.009-06:00

Since this is a blog about drinking in Houston, after all, and I've already reviewed bars in New York and Los Angeles, I figured it's high time I tackled the Bayou City's burgeoning cocktail scene. And where better to start than at that flagship of Houston cocktail dens, the Anvil? So, if you're from out of town, or you're one of the 5 Houstonians who haven't yet discovered the Anvil, here's what to expect.

The Ambiance: Dark but not too dark, noisy but not too loud, and not too many decorations besides the jaw-droppingly huge selection of booze lining the wall behind the bar. Just how a bar should be. I think my favorite thing, though, about the atmosphere at the Anvil is the smells. I try not to admit this too often, but...I love the way bars smell. And the Anvil has the best smell of any bar I've ever been to - like spices and bourbon and campari and maybe a hint of tobacco. (And maybe cheese? Kassie said it smelled like cheese.) Whatever it is, it's interesting and manly and delicious and I love it.

holy crap, look at all those bitters.

The Crowd: When people first told me about the Anvil, I envisioned it as a sort of exalted cocktail mecca, the kind of tucked-away place where serious booze enthusiasts would calmly but earnestly debate the relative merits of say, shaking vs. stirring, while sipping a sazerac. It was, indeed, a cocktail mecca, but I was little off base with "calm". Shortly after it opened, the Anvil was such a scene that even earlier in the week, it was a fight to get to the bar. It was also a little bit of a pick-up bar - the sort of place where a random dude and his friends would approach you and your friends, offer to buy you a drink, and ask you if you were going to Pub Fiction after this. No, I am not going to Pub Fiction. I am going home, because it is 11 PM. On a Tuesday.

Things have calmed down a little since then, but you still never know quite what you're going to get. There's still the occasional bunch of toolios who only want to drink absinthe and miller lite, but you're just as likely to run into 40-something businesspeople. (Not that I'm hating on miller lite. It's just that there's a time and a place for miller lite, and this is not the place. Now, absinthe and miller lite together...that could be interesting.)

Weekends are still pretty packed, so if you want to ensure yourself a spot at the bar so you can watch the magic, go early. Like, 7 on a Monday or Tuesday night.

The Drinks: Ohh, the drinks. When I first started plotting to do a post about the Anvil, long, long ago, they had a section of their menu with a list of "100 Classic Cocktails to Try Before You Die". Well, the 100 cocktails are no longer a part of the menu, although you can still see the list, posted in a rather inauspicious location on the far wall of the bar. (It's the wall opposite the door as you come in. Or you can view the list here.) They've been replaced with a rotating seasonal menu of original drinks developed by the Anvil staff, which are all very delicious. The good news is, you can still order all the old cocktails, as long as you know what to ask for. So if you're yearning for a classic, or you just want to feel like an insider for ordering off the menu - here's a list of my Top 5 Classic Cocktails to Order "Off the Menu" at the Anvil.

1. The Bramble
This is the first drink I ever ordered at the Anvil. I finished it in about 45 seconds, and then bad things happened. But I don't blame the drink, I blame me. Okay, I blame the drink a little. This combo of gin, lemon, and creme de muir (blackberry liqueur) is so delicious and smooth that it's easy to forget you're drinking something very powerful.

2. The Seelbach
Kassie gets credit for discovering this delicious and very unusual cocktail. The first time she ordered one it actually came with a warning from the bartender - there's a lot of bitters in this one. Are you sure that's what you want? Of course, Kassie is never one to back down from a challenge. The Seelbach tastes like no champagne cocktail I've ever had - it's a deep, rich, complicated taste that reminds me of a nice complex Napa cabernet. Thanks to the Ted Haigh book, I now know that this is because the recipe for a Seelbach involves: champagne, bourbon, cointreau, and seven dashes each of both peychaud's and angostura bitters. For those playing along at home: that is a whole, whole lot of bitters. Yet somehow it works.

3. The Mint Julep
On the seventh day, God rested, and on the 8th day he invented the mint julep. People sometimes ask me what my favorite cocktail is, and this is always my answer. The combination of bourbon, sugar, and mint is stupidly simple and stupidly good. And the mint juleps at the Anvil are a real feat of artistry - piled high with crushed ice like a bourbon sno-cone. I mean - I just said "bourbon sno-cone". What more could you want?

4. The Blood and Sand
This cocktail, named for a 1922 Rudolph Valentino film, is a relative rarity: a mixed drink made with scotch. The combination of scotch, sweet vermouth, oj and cherry brandy might seem a little unusual, but you will only think that until you take your first sip. It's perfectly balanced, not too fruity, not too scotch-y. (Although it's difficult to imagine how something could taste too much like scotch.)

the Blood & Sand.

5. The Zombie
Probably the most famous cocktail invented by Don the Beachcomber during the post World-War II tiki explosion. (I especially enjoy the phrase "tiki explosion".) There are a lot of bad zombie variations out there, but the Anvil has got it right. (And if the original version is a little too sweet for you, I've heard you can get one made with Fernet Branca. Iiiinteresting.) At least half the fun of ordering any drink at the Anvil is watching all the artistry that goes into making it, and this one is especially enjoyable, since this delicious, rummy bit of cocktail history contains about 52 different ingredients. Of course, since so much work goes into making this drink, if you order one on a busy night your bartender will probably hate you. Save this one for a weeknight. And don't forget to leave a nice big tip.

Coming Soon - Mixology Monday!

2011-02-21T14:01:00.005-06:00

I remember my delight and awe when I first discovered there was such a thing as Mixology Monday. Browsing through the archives was as intimidating and exhilarating as standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. So many drinks. So little time.

This month, Mixology Monday is coming to the Backyard Bartender. That's right - a week from now, on February 28th, my humble little blog will be graced by the creations of elite mixologists the world over. The theme for MxMo LV will be "Some Like it Hot" - make anything you want to, as long as it's served hot. I'm sure this is tremendously seasonally appropriate in parts of the country that are not Houston, where it is currently 79 degrees. Don't pretend you're not jealous.

Here's how this thing works - if you'd like to participate, send me an email with a link to your post, or just post your link in the comments by midnight on February 28th. (Whose midnight, I always wonder? I will be generous. If you live in Hawaii - Hawaiian midnight.) Don't forget to include in your post a link to this blog, and a link to the Mixology Monday site. Don't have a booze blog? You can just email me a recipe (preferably with photos - photos are good) and I will happily guest-post it here.

Happy mixing! Can't wait to see your creations.

Mezcal Made Good

2011-02-20T17:10:00.009-06:00

Sometime last fall, I bought my first bottle of Mezcal. In the world of mixology, so I heard, Mezcal was the Next Big Thing. Elite bartenders all over the east and west coasts were going nuts for this stuff, even though it was supposed to be treacherously difficult to mix. (True story: I once asked one of the bartenders at the Yucatan Taco Stand, in Fort Worth, to make me a cocktail with mezcal, and he said the best way to do that would be to throw the mezcal in the trash and drink something else.) But still, I hoped to succeed where many before me had failed.

I experienced some serious intimidation pretty much as soon as I opened the bottle. I got a little whiff of tequila and a big ol' whiff of campfire. Which is quite appropriate, since mezcal is distilled from the fire-roasted heart of the agave plant. So what's the difference between tequila and mezcal? They're both made from the juice of the agave plant, but tequila (according to Mexican law) must be made from blue agave, and the hearts are steamed instead of being roasted.

Mezcal comes in a few different varieties, like tequila - the "joven" variety is unaged and has a very strong agave flavor. Other varieties include reposado, which is aged up to a year in oak barrels, anejo, which is aged between one and three years, and super anejo, which is aged more than three years. Aged mezcals, like aged tequilas, are more mellow and have a bit of an oaky flavor.

It's a misconception that mezcal is "the one with the worm" - according to wikipedia, this began as a marketing gimmick in the 1940s. (The "worm" is actually the larvae of a moth that lives on the agave. Um...ew.) These days if you see a worm in the bottle it means it's probably not very good mezcal. The wikipedia article also says this: "Despite the similar name, mezcal does not contain mescaline or other psychedelic substances". Bummer.

Taste test time! I am tasting Sombra Joven mezcal. As you see in the picture.

Smell: Like tequila. And a campfire. And, very weirdly...a whole lot like my pediatrician's office. Really. I'm at a loss. You how smells conjure up memories? When I smell mezcal, I've five, and I'm hanging out in the waiting room, and once again I'm disappointed that all those other little bastards broke all the furniture for the little people house. Because that's what being sick is all about, when you're little: playing with someone else's toys.

I can't explain it.

Taste: A little bit like tequila. But mostly like a campfire.

Before I made a good drink with mezcal, I made a whole lot of really, really bad ones. For example: tequila makes for a wonderful peach margarita, but add mezcal and you get the entirely underwhelming experience of drinking a vaguely fruit-flavored campfire. Maybe, I thought, the peach flavor was too weak. Mezcal needed a strong partner, so I turned to our friend the mango. I could taste the mango, but it mingled with the smokiness in my mouth to form a discordant symphony of nastiness.

I don't give up easily. But it's hard not to give up when your best effort is a cocktail that tastes like a tropical fruit with the disturbing aftertaste of your pediatrician's office. I thought about throwing in the towel. I could pour the rest of the mezcal down the drain, and I wouldn't have to tell anyone. I would be the only person to know what a dismal failure I was. Two things stopped me: 1. I am really stubborn, and 2. good mezcal is really expensive.

I searched the internet, hoping for inspiration, but everything I found either contained some bitter aperitif like Campari or Cynar (not really my thing), or was stupidly complicated, or was...a margarita. With mezcal in it. Which I already knew was gross, because of course I tried that. Then one day I ran across the menu of Mayahuel, a cocktail den in New York devoted entirely to tequila and mezcal. They had a cocktail made with mezcal, tequila, and pomegranate molasses. Pomegranate molasses...brilliant. It's strong, like the mango, but not too sweet. And rich enough to hold its own with all that smoke. It was a huge breakthrough. Angel choirs sang. It was as if the heavens had parted for a split second to let the light of cocktail wisdom shine down.

To my mezcal cocktail I added ginger - another strong, not-too-sweet flavor. (Plus ginger + mezcal came recommended by the great Dale Degroff. Although he also recommended the mango and we saw how that turned out.) Ginger beer, naturally, because mezcal needs something powerful. And of course, ginger beer made me think of the Moscow Mule, a totally famous classic cocktail. Okay, a moderately famous classic cocktail.

The Moscow Mule
(recipe from Ted Haigh's excellent "Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails")
juice and peels of 1/2 lime
2 oz vodka
ginger beer

Squeeze the lime into an old-fashioned glass. (This drink is supposed to be drunk in a copper mug, but I didn't have one so I had to make do.) Fill with ice, add the vodka, and top with ginger beer. Spicy and refreshing.

So at this point I was going to talk about how the Moscow Mule was my starting point, and then maybe throw in a recipe for a Mississippi Mule (even though a Mississippi Mule has gin and cassis and lemon and no ginger beer and doesn't really have anything to do with these drinks at all), and then present my mezcal cocktail, called the "Mexico Mule", and call the post something cute like "a tale of three mules". Only, as I was writing it I realized that the word "mule" has come to have certain uh, other meanings, and calling a drink the Mexico Mule might be a little tasteless. So instead I have dubbed my creation the "whoa mama", because that's what you will think when you drink it.

The Whoa Mama
1/2 oz pomegranate molasses*
1.5 oz joven mezcal
3/4 oz fresh-sqeezed lime juice
2 oz ginger beer

*You can find this at ethnic groceries or the trusty downtown Spec's. Or you can make your own, like I did. The stuff you make at home has the advantage of being A. deliciouser and B., prettier - the homemade stuff is maroon (whoop) whereas storebought pomegranate molasses is brown, which makes for a not so pretty cocktail.
**If you don't have mezcal, this is also pretty delicious with tequila. Although you'll be missing out on all that special smoke flavor.

Add all ingredients but the ginger beer to a cocktail shaker full of ice; shake and strain into a cocktail glass, then add the ginger beer. Alternatively, you can serve this drink in a highball glass over ice: add pomegranate molasses, mezcal, and lime juice to an ice-filled glass; stir for 30 seconds. Add the ginger beer and stir once more. The over-ice version will stay colder longer (obviously), but as the ice melts the smoky flavor will be less distinct.

Verdict: Sweet jumping jehosephat, this is good. All the flavors blend together perfectly. It's like a coke, but full of BOOZE and AWESOME. (Sorry, propensity for all caps is leaking over from Bachelor Blog. Plus I am SUPER EXCITED about this drink.) Smoke and ginger and pomegranate and lime...HOLY CRAP, THIS IS SO GOOD. I'm so sorry, mezcal. Forgive me for thinking that you tasted gross and like a doctor's office. This is the cocktail that you were waiting to be mixed into all along.

Recipe for Homemade Pomegranate Molasses.

2011-02-20T16:30:00.001-06:00

Pomegranate molasses features in a lot of Middle Eastern dishes, and also in one very tasty cocktail created by yours truly. You can find it at ethnic groceries, or the trusty downtown Spec's, here in Houston, or you can make your own.

Pomegranate Molasses
4 cups pomegranate juice
1 tablespoon lemon juice

If you want the molasses to be a bit sweeter you can add sugar- between 1/4 and 1/2 cup. I like it nice and tart, so the no-sugar version is what I use in my drinks.

Combine the ingredients in a saucepan. Simmer over medium-low heat for about 70 minutes, until the molasses begins to thicken just slightly. Don't worry that the molasses isn't super syrupy at this point - allow it to cool for about half an hour and it will achieve the proper consistency. (I say "slightly" because if you wait to take it off the heat until it's reached molasses consistency, it will harden into a delicious pomegranate brick.) For me, by the time the mixture began to thicken it had been reduced to a little less than 1 cup. (A saucepan with measurements marked out on the side is super useful for this.) If you're adding sugar, reduce to about 1.5 cups.

Once the molasses is completely cooled, store it in the refrigerator. It will keep for up to six months.

What the Heck is Ginger Beer?

2011-02-20T16:18:00.005-06:00

Ginger beer is like ginger ale, but not as sweet and waaay spicier. Drunk on its own, I find all that ginger to be a bit much, but ginger beer does figure in some pretty great cocktails.

Contrary to what the name might imply, ginger beer doesn't contain any alcohol. It was once possible to buy alcoholic ginger beer, and you can still get it in England, I hear, but here in the states it hasn't been available since the mid-20th century.

Some different kinds of ginger beer. Hint: the Fentiman's is the best.

Can I substitute ginger ale for ginger beer in a cocktail recipe?
No, not really. The ginger taste will be a lot weaker.

Where can I find ginger beer?
In Houston, I get mine at Central Market. Spec's also has a bunch of different varieties (at least at the downtown location.) Outside of Houston, I'd try a liquor store or Whole Foods. They have this product, which is called "ginger brew" but hey, close enough.

Buttered Beere...A Little Taste of History.

2011-02-07T01:38:00.006-06:00

One day, while browsing liqurious, I came across something that immediately grabbed my attention...a 400-year-old recipe for hot buttered beer.

Now, if you take a look at this recipe, there are a few things you will notice right away:

1. Hot beer? Weird.
2. Beer with butter? Weirder.
3. Beer with egg? UNPOSSIBLE.

But all the same, I knew I had to try it. Because:

1. I am a sucker for weird flavor combinations.
2. As a devoted fan of Harry Potter, I was pretty psyched that there was really such a thing as butterbeer. (Sure, there are plenty of other recipes floating around the internet for butterbeer, but this one is the real thing. IT IS 400 YEARS OLD.)
3. 423 years old, to be exact. When this recipe was first published (in "The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin”), Elizabeth I ruled England, America had just recently gotten around to being discovered, and the island of Manhattan looked like this. It would be like a little flavor window into the past. A little piece of history happening in a pot in my circa 1978 kitchen.

Seeing as Houston was in the grips of an unusual cold snap (below freezing temperatures! for several days!), I saw my opportunity. Last Friday a little party gathered at my house to sample this bizarre, centuries-old concoction. I used Old Speckled Hen, a brand of "real ale" that's available here in the states.

So of course there's the big question...what did it taste like? My compatriots displayed varying degrees of enthusiasm for the hot buttered beer, ranging from "eh" to "omg". I think a few people were turned off by the fact that it was so filling - I mean, 12 tbsp of butter is...a lot of butter. Personally, I thought it tasted like hot, buttered heaven. Like liquid french toast - and also a little like beer.

Bonus: it's been two days, and my kitchen still smells like butter and spices. Mmm. Those Tudor cooks were really on to something.

This is an Abomination.

2011-02-07T00:31:00.007-06:00

I'm always looking for unusual flavor combinations that somehow work (bourbon-infused bacon, anyone?), so when I saw these at Spec's I knew I had to buy them. Even though I was horrified. And even though the idea of ramen chocolate was only slightly less repellent to me than eating a tiny, whole octopus (which I totally did once, in the name of flavor exploration) - I tried it. For you.

Ramen: Man, when I bought a Ramen chocolate bar, I was expecting something really, really weird. It wasn't all that strange, honestly. Not too much ramen, so it just adds a little texture. Kind of like a Krackle.

Tortilla, Lime and Salt: This one was a little more interesting. I mean, there are honest-to-god tortilla chips in this chocolate bar. So when I bit into it, I was surprised to discover that it was kind of fantastic. Chocolate and lime? Delicious. Chocolate and salt? Also good. I loved the texture of the tortilla chips. The only thing I wasn't so sure about was the taste of the tortilla chips working with the chocolate. I'd be having this divine chocolate experience, but then every once in a while I'd start to feel like I was at a Mexican restaurant waiting for my enchiladas.

Want to experience these wonktacular flavor mash-ups for yourself? You can find them at the downtown Spec's, here in Houston, or purchase some on the internets.

Further Adventures in Vodkaland

2011-02-01T12:29:00.008-06:00

As promised...even more vodka infusions! Check out part 1 if you haven't already.

This time, I made one of the Martha infusions and tried a bunch of my own. All the infusions in this post are made with 1.5 cups of (Texas!) vodka and infused in a cool, dark place in an air-tight jar for two days, shaking occasionally. After the infusing period, strain out everything but the vodka and store in the freezer for up to 2 months.

Beet + Horseradish
1/2 small beet, sliced
3 thin slices peeled fresh horseradish

This one came from Martha Stewart Living. Sounds savory and intriguing, right? Not so much. I thought this was totally gross. It also, somehow, reminded me of peanut butter. Sorry, but I don't want my booze to taste like borscht. Or a pbj.

Hibiscus + Vanilla
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
3 dried hibiscus flowers

This infusion turned bright pink, almost mauve, so I was worried that the hibiscus flavor would be too powerful. I was wrong. The vanilla is quite strong. Only vaguely floral. Verdict: try again, with lots more hibiscus.

Chocolate, Cinnamon + Chipotle
4 tablespoons cocoa nibs*
1 dried chipotle pepper
1 cinnamon stick

*Cocoa nibs are chocolate in its rawest form, straight from the cocoa bean. They look a little like tiny chocolate chips, and taste very intense and a little bit bitter. It's a deep, dark, mysterious flavor that, it turns out, works great in vodka.

The cocoa is yummy, and rather intense, but that's how I like it. I taste the chipotle, but the cinnamon is MIA. I'm gonna cheat this one by straining out all the other ingredients and then adding an extra cinnamon stick to the vodka and infusing for another couple of days. Then I might need a second opinion. Volunteers?

Vanilla, Cardamom + Cinnamon
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
2 cardamom pods
5 medium-sized chips of Vietnamese cinnamon

So. full. of. win.

Seriously delicious. Still vanilla/woody, but this time in a good way. No longer tastes like a candle. I still want to do one more tweak - I'm going to try this one more time with a little bit less cinnamon.

Next up: hibiscus vodka reloaded, the verdict on the chocolate/cinnamon mix, and a final go at vanilla/cardamom. Until then!

Adventures in Vodkaland

2011-01-25T00:16:00.011-06:00

Martha Stewart gets a surprising number of shout-outs on this blog, probably because she is my imaginary ideal of perfect partythrowing. So, imagine my delight when my sister Susan gave me a page torn from Martha Stewart Living with instructions for making all kinds of infused vodka. It was a little bit like this.

So of course I had to make some, and of course, not to be outdone by Martha, I had to come up with some of my own. Here's what I tried. All these infusions were made with Dripping Springs Vodka, because Texas is the greatest place on earth. Drink local, my friends. (Helpful note: a fifth (that's 750 ml) of vodka contains about 3 cups. So if you're feeling adventurous and you want to try some of these, a bottle will make 2 infusions. Or you can just buy a big ol' handle, like I did.) For all the infusions: combine the ingredients in an airtight jar, store in a cool, dark place, and shake occasionally while infusing. When you're done, strain everything else out and store the vodka in the freezer for up to 2 months.

Fennel + Lemon
1.5 cups vodka
2 sprigs fennel fronds
2 thin lemon slices

Infuse for 3 days.

I let this one infuse for a day longer than the instructions called for to let the flavor intensify. Still: underwhelming. Tried it on the rocks, with tonic water and a squeeze of lemon, as per Martha's recommendation. Meh. Maybe I didn't add enough fennel? Don't think I'll be making this one again. In the words of a certain former boss of mine: I'm not convinced.

Vanilla Bean + Cardamom
1.5 cups vodka
1/2 vanilla bean, sliced lengthwise
3 cardamom pods

Infuse for 2 days.

This is one of my own creations. One of the first things I thought after tasting it was: man, this would make a really awesome candle. Which is...not really something you want to be thinking when you're drinking. I think the transition between the sweetness of the vanilla and the woody spiciness of the cardamom is too harsh - I'm going to get some other spices up in there (like cinnamon!) and give this another try.

Celery + Bay Leaf
1.5 cups vodka
1/2 celery stalk
2 celery leaves
1 dried bay leaf

Infuse for 2 days.

Aaand...we have a winner. I know, it sounds weird - who would want to drink booze that tastes like celery? The answer is: you would. The celery is savory, but not overwhelming, and the bay leaf adds a nice little bit of spiciness to the finish. I'm eager to try this with dry sherry, like the magazine says, but I don't have any around right now. It's also practically begging to be made into a Bloody Mary, but Bloody Marys intimidate me a little. That's another post. So, since I have neither sherry nor tomatoes, but I do have (dry) vermouth, I made myself a nice little martini. I did a 4:1 ratio vodka to vermouth, but you can try whatever you like. I'm sipping it right now and it is deelicious. (Edited to add: I finshed the martini, and it's after midnight and I shouldn't make another, but I'm sniffing the glass and it smells sooo good and I'm pretty sad. It's that kind of drink.)

Next post: even more vodka infusions! I know you're on the edge of your seat.

Updated to add: be sure to check out part 2 and part 3 of my vodka-infusing experiments.

The Most Romantic Cocktail EVER.

2011-01-19T16:35:00.006-06:00

The Bachelor is a reality show where 30 women go on a series of "romantic" dates and exotic vacations while competing for the love of one man. It is one of the worst shows on TV today.

I totally love it.

The Bachelor is ripe for parody, and there is nothing I love more than parody. Except maybe a nice stiff drink. Or warm laundry straight from the dryer. Or Alan Rickman. Mmm, Alan Rickman.

What with all the free time I have lately, I decided to start a Bachelor Blog. In it, I recap the episodes and deliver my snarky take on...well, pretty much everything. My recap of the latest episode includes rules for a Bachelor drinking game, and what better for a Bachelor drinking game than...a Bachelor cocktail?

The Bachelor Cocktail
1 oz passionfruit nectar (or juice)
3 drops rose water (and I really mean drops. a little goes a long way.)
3 drops vanilla extract
brut champagne

Add passionfruit, rose water, and vanilla to a champagne flute. Top with champange (about 6 oz).

Take a sip. Ahh. And now you're ready for all the drama.

The His & Hers Gin & Tonics

2011-01-17T18:10:00.007-06:00

I've discovered that I love making drinks on the fly. People tell me what they like, and I try to make a drink that will suit their tastes. Here are a couple of cocktails, cooked up by yours truly at a few different holiday parties, that were especially well received. You can think of these two GnT (that's Gin & Tonic, for the uninitiated) variations as "his" and "hers" Gin & Tonics. I bet you'll be able to guess which is which. But don't let yourself be limited - I like them both.

The Hemingway Gin & Tonic
It's the GnT meets the Hemingway Reviver: refreshing, savory, challenging.

2 oz gin
juice and peels of 1/4 lime
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
tonic water (or soda water)*

Add 2 dashes of bitters and the juice and peels of 1/4 of a lime to an old-fashioned glass. Fill the glass with ice, add the gin, and top with tonic water. Stir once and serve.

and then there's...
The Very Special Gin n' Tonic
A little twist on the St. Germain Gin & Tonic. The lime balances out the St. Germain nicely for a drink that is sweet but complex.

2 oz gin
1.25 oz St. Germain
juice of 1/4 lime
tonic (or soda) water*

Fill an old-fashioned glass with ice. Add the gin, lime, St. Germain, and fill with tonic water. Stir once and serve.

*In the interest of full disclosure, I feel obliged to point out that these drinks were originally made with soda water, not tonic water, since I think tonic water is nasty and bitter and don't usually keep it around. So technically, to start out with, they were gin & soda variations, not gin & tonic variations. For the purposes of this experiment, I purchased some tonic water, and it was every bit as terrible as I remembered, but somehow it made the drinks taste better. Confused? I sure was. Anyway, feel free to substitute as you please.

Cheers.

Edited to add: There has been much discussion on my facebook page about what is the best brand of tonic water. I don't really feel qualified to weigh in on this, since I got the store brand, but take note that if you make these drinks properly, in an old-fashioned glass full of ice and with 2 oz of gin, you won't need much tonic water. More like a splash. I know a lot of people make their GnTs half and half, but this is more like a gin and gin and tonic. Yum.

Baby, It's Cold Outside.

2011-01-11T16:55:00.010-06:00

And cold weather calls for a hot drink. I give you...

The Bourbon Hot Toddy
(adapted from a book called The Art of the Bar, one of my faves.)

1 cinnamon stick
1 whole anise star
5 whole cloves
1 tsp texas wildflower honey (look, local ingredients!)
1/2 cup boiling water
1.5 oz bourbon
slice of lemon

Add the cinnamon, anise, cloves, and honey to a heat-proof snifter. (Or a coffee mug, which will not be as pretty as a snifter, but will work equally well.) (I find "snifter" to be a very, very funny word. Also: how can you tell if your snifter is heat-proof? You could do what I did, which is: pour boiling water into it and see what happens.) Top with the boiling water and stir to melt the honey. Add the bourbon; squeeze the lemon slice and drop into the glass.

Hot, spiced bourbon. Delicious. Warming. Genius.

And, for those not booze-inclined:

The Hot Tea Toddy
This is the very first virgin drink to grace the pages of the Backyard Bartender, and some credit goes to Jen, who inspired me to make this. Black tea is one of those things - like champagne, and ginger - that mysteriously pairs wells with everything. Here, the honey adds a little sweetness, and the spices give the tea some extra warmth on a cold winter night.

1 cinnamon stick
1 whole anise star
5 whole cloves
1 tsp honey
1 cup boiling water
1 bag Earl Grey tea (any black tea should work, but I tried this with earl grey because...that's what I had.)
slice of lemon

Add the spices and tea bag to a mug and cover with boiling water. Infuse for 3-4 minutes and then remove the tea bag. Add the honey and a squeeze of lemon, if desired.

In Which I Create a Drink that Brings Me Mixology Fame* and Fortune**

2011-01-07T16:02:00.017-06:00

There isn't really a story behind this cocktail. Okay, there's a story. There's always a story. Here's the story, presented in helpful bullet points:

1. I used to be an architect.
2. The people who paid me to be an architect stopped paying me, so I stopped being an architect.
3. Being unemployed means having lots of time to a. mix delicious drinks, and b. cruise the internet aimlessly.
4. While doing b., I stumbled across a blog called The Tipsy Texan. On said blog was a notice about a cocktail contest. All I had to do was create a cocktail with a spirit distilled in Texas. I could do this.
5. While perusing the list of acceptable spirits, I noticed something called Balcones Rumble. Um...wtf is Balcones Rumble? I was curious. I asked the internet.

The internet had many, many answers. According to the Balcones Distillery's website, Balcones Rumble is distilled from a dessert sauce made with turbinado sugar, honey, and figs. But what does it taste like? Some people said: this is stuff is so sweet! It's like a liqueur! I drink it straight (even though it is 94 proof)! Others said: tastes like rum! Still others said: tastes like tequila!

None of this really answered my question. Balcones Rumble, apparently, is a spirit that defies classification. It is the Pirate Coast of distilled spirits. (Only Rachel got that joke. And maybe Scott and Hannah.) I was fascinated. I knew somehow that the destiny of this chimera of a spirit was linked to mine.

I went to my trusty downtown Spec's, where I discovered the renegade Balcones Rumble hanging out on the bourbon aisle. (Which only added to the confusion.)

6. I tried the Balcones Rumble. It smelled myteriously sweet and intoxicating, like all the things you love about booze all rolled into one liquid. It tasted...like burning.

No, there was a little burn on the beginning, reminiscent of Whiskey (hey, this stuff is almost 50 percent alcohol, after all), and a wonderful sweet finish. If any bars at all carried this stuff, I would never shoot anything else, ever again. But could I make a cocktail with it?

7. There was this unopened bottle of Allspice Dram on my countertop, begging for a purpose. Hrmm. Allspice Dram is good with bourbon, and Balcones Rumble tastes like whiskey, which is like bourbon...it was kind of a stretch. But I am nothing if not adventurous.

8. Tried Balcones + allspice + pear. Because pear goes good with spices. I know this because I have a recipe for a pear and spice-infused rum that I will soon post that will blow your mind. But despite all this...I was unconvinced.

9. I also had a bottle of Berentzen's Apfelkorn on my counter. Dale Degroff promised me it would make an awesome apple old-fashioned, but Dale Degroff lied, so I had this damn bottle of Berentzen's just hanging around, taunting me with its uselessness. Apples play well with spices, too, so into the drink it went. And it was good.

10. After I tried about 42 different variations to get the proportions just right. Soon my liver will be as strong as Ernest Hemmingway's.

The Rumble on the Bayou*** (because, you know, Houston, bayous...)
2 oz Balcones Rumble
1 oz Berentzen's Apfelkorn (or other apple schnapps)
.5 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
.5 oz Allspice Dram
.75 oz turbinado simple syrup****

Combine all ingredients in a shaker full of ice. Shake and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a slice of apple studded with a few whole cloves.

***I wanted to call this drink "The Midnight Rumble, because I feel like people always remember drinks with racy names. But something called "midnight" should be black, and this wasn't even close.
****The contest version of this drink was actually made with 1/2 oz honey syrup (made from Texas wildflower honey, in keeping with that whole local ingredients thing we have going on here), but at the event in Austin, one of the Tipsy Texans, Joe, suggested that simple syrup might help mellow out the burn of the Rumble a little better. I tried it again at home with turbinado simple syrup, because I figured it would compliment the Rumble well. And oh, it did. Thanks, Joe.

12. I submitted my cocktail recipe to the contest.

13. I waited.

14. I got an email. I won!!!!! Okay, I didn't win, exactly. I was selected as one of five finalists. But still...I was pretty stoked. (I never win anything. Not even like, coloring contests in kindergarten. So this was pretty, pretty exciting.)

15. Because I was selected as a finalist, I got to go to Austin for the Big Event - Edible Austin's Drink Local Night. I had to make six cocktails, in seven minutes, for a panel of five judges, in front of a huge crowd of people. While talking (extemporaneously, because I didn't know there would be talking involved) about how great my drink was. Needless to say, this made me a little nervous, but I think I pulled it off okay.

At this point I was going to include a cute photo of me bartending (or making a valiant effort at bartending), but I kept checking the photographer's blog and he kept not putting up the photos. I was starting to get really annoyed when I realized that this was because he and his wife just had a baby. Then I felt like a huge asshole.

So...sorry. No photo. Instead, here is a photo of Sarah sampling my cocktail. She liked it a lot.

Edited to add: Jenna helpfully linked me to some photos from the event on Edible Austin's Facebook page. So, here I am! Check me out:

photo by Dustin Meyer.

16. I didn't win. But I did meet a lot of great people, and a lot of fellow mixology fiends, including a guy who was part of Team USA in the World Cup of Cocktails. (There's a World Cup of Cocktails??) These people are really, really hardcore, y'all. One of my competitors couldn't find the perfect butter for his hot buttered rum drink, so he got some cream from a local dairy and made his own. That's okay because next year I'm just gonna buy my own cow. Watch out.

I also had a shot called the Pickelback, which is - a shot of bacon-infused bourbon (bacon-infused bourbon!! who knew that stuff would crop up again?), followed by a shot of pickle juice (yeah, for reals), followed by a chaser of beer. What did it taste like? It was an interesting, savory experience, almost like eating food. Liquid food, that gets you drunk really quickly. Also, I think my taste buds just about had a seizure. Too...much...sensory...input...

17. So it was a pretty fun night. Fun, and educational. Apparently I'm just dipping my toes into the cocktail pool. (Mmm, cocktail pool.) There's a lot out there.

I hope you enjoyed reading this story almost as much as I enjoyed living it. If not...come by, and let me make it up to you with a drink.

**And by "fortune" I mean a gift bag with some chocolates and two airplane-sized bottles of liquor.
*Okay, not fame either. Working on that.

MxMo LIII: The Spice Island Iced Tea

2010-12-13T23:54:00.017-06:00

Is it mixology Monday again? How the hell did that happen? Seems like just yesterday I was boozing it up with the ghost of Ernest Hemingway. This month's theme, with your host Chris Amirault over at eGullet, is "Like That? You'll Love This!" The goal, as described here, is to introduce cocktail novices to fancy drinkin by using a "gateway" cocktail that's a schmancy twist on a drink they already know and love. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to take a second look at one of the cocktails most reviled by serious mixologists: the Long Island Iced Tea.

Why is it that the cocktailing elite disdain the Long Island Iced Tea? Here, as I see it, are two reasons:

1. Most Long Island Iced Teas that you order at bars are unbearably sweet.
2. A Long Island Iced Tea (as you will see if you look at the recipes below) contains a great deal of booze. Yet somehow, it tastes delicious. Generally, the sort of people who order Long Island Iced Teas are those who don't like the taste of alcohol, but want to get drunk very quickly. This is abhorrent to the mixology elite, because A. they see booze as its own end, rather than a means to an end, which is: drunkenness, and B. they love the taste of alcohol (see "A") and don't understand why anyone would want to drink booze that doesn't taste like booze.

So what, exactly, does a Long Island Iced Tea taste like? I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a friend of mine in high school. She asked me: "Why do you love Bagel Bites so much? (Because I used to really, really love Bagel Bites.) They don't taste like pizza, and they don't taste like bagels." I thought about it for a minute, and I realized - she was right. Bagel Bites don't taste like pizza, or bagels - they taste like Bagel Bites. And Bagel Bites taste awesome. In much the same way, a Long Island Iced Tea does not taste like tea. It doesn't even taste like alcohol at all. A Long Island Iced Tea tastes like...a Long Island Iced Tea. I guess you will just have to try it for yourself. (Just don't operate any heavy machinery for a while.)

In my mind, the LIT deserves a little bit of respect. ("LIT" is Will's acronym for this particular drink, since saying "Long Island Iced Tea" over and over again is a bit clunky. Technically, it should be LIIT, but that's even clunkier. Also, Will's acronym accurately describes what you will be if you consume just one of these.) You may not like the kind of people who drink it, but you have to concede that what it does, it does remarkably well. In fact - I would go so far as to say that the LIT is magic. Making a glass full of hard liquor taste like something you'd get at Sonic is nothing less than a feat. And there's nothing like a pitcher of LITs to bring the party.

The Long Island Iced Tea
1 oz vodka

1 oz gin

1 oz rum

1 oz tequila

1 oz cointreau (Or triple sec. but really...cointreau makes everything better. It's so expensive, it damn well ought to.)

1.25 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice (did you hear the part where I said fresh squeezed?)

1 oz simple syrup
.5 oz coca-cola

Build over ice in a pint glass. Stir before serving. I go a little easy on the vodka and gin - more like 7/8 oz.

One night while hanging out at Revolution (a neat little coffee shop/bar in Bryan) with Alan and Jen, I overheard the bartender describing her particular variation on a Long Island Iced Tea. She called it New York Mother (word I decline to print here, based on the slim possibility my mother will ever read this blog). It's just like a Long Island Iced Tea, only substitute whiskey and amaretto for the tequila and rum. I couldn't wait to get home and try this. I did, and the result? Huge success. My friends loved it. I've honestly never made a plain old Long Island Iced Tea ever again. You get the same what-is-it taste like with a traditional LIT, with a little bit of that warm, sweet brown-liquor flavor from the whiskey and amaretto. (And I sure do love me some whiskey.)

The Staten Island Ferry

(Credit for this much more mother-friendly name goes to Kendra.)

1 oz vodka

1 oz gin

1 oz whiskey

.5 oz amaretto

1 oz cointreau

1.25 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
.5 oz simple syrup
.5 oz coca-cola

The appeal of the Staten Island Ferry, of course, is that, like its predecessor, it packs a great deal of booze into a surprisingly palatable drink. This makes a great pitcher drink at a certain kind of party...just increase all the measurements to cups (1 oz = 1 cup and so forth), and add a handful of ice to the pitcher and stir to mellow out all the alcohol. Floating slices of lemon add a particularly nice touch, and will make your pitcher look particularly innocuous and Martha Stewart-y. (I mean - would Martha Stewart ever get you drunk? (Actually, I don't know how to answer this question, since Martha Stewart is a very multi-faceted person. But if Martha Stewart is drunk...well, I want to be there for that show.))

But you know me. A good drink, like a good work of art, is never truly done. Lately I have completely fallen in love with St Elizabeth's Allspice Dram. It is like the St. Germain of winter - I want to put that shit in everything. And since we already knew that Allspice Dram complements warm, bourbon-y flavors...why not try it in a Long Island? Or rather, in a Staten Island.

I am a cocktail freaking innovator. A cocktail Christopher Columbus. And Magellan. All rolled into one.

The Spice Island Iced Tea
1 oz vodka
1 oz gin
1 oz whiskey
.5 oz amaretto
1 oz cointreau
1.25 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
.5 oz simple syrup
.5 oz coca-cola
1/4 oz St. Elizabeth's Allspice Dram

For those of you playing along at home, those are the same ingredients from the Staten Island - just add the Allspice Dram.

You guys - this is good. It's got the magic LIT taste, plus whiskey warmth, plus a little bit of spicy allspice dram goodness. I don't know if the Long Island Iced Tea will ever be truly acceptable to the cocktailing elite, but here's a drink that is a step in the right direction.

Pimento Whaa?

2010-12-11T20:07:00.012-06:00

From the bizarre catalog of forgotten liqueurs now being lovingly embraced by elite mixologists the world over comes...Pimento Dram. That's right. Pimento.

When most people think of pimentos, they think of those little red things stuffed into olives. I think of pimento cheese, which as a child was pretty much my favorite thing ever. If I could've eaten it for every meal, I would have. Neither of these sounds particularly like something you would want in your booze. (Although I made a surprisingly tasty drink with balsamic vinegar...so I'm not completely ruling it out.)

The pimento of Pimento Dram is the dried, unripe fruit of the pimento tree, native to the Carribean and Central America. The natives called it "pimiento" in Spanish, later Anglicized to "pimento", but the English christened it "allspice", because to them it combined the flavors of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. The natives made a liquor from it by soaking the berries in rum, and the English took to this, because they've always been good at stealing other people's ideas. By the 1930s, that glorious post-prohibition cocktail explosion, Pimento Dram could be found all over Europe and the United States, and became a big hit in classic cocktails and Tiki drinks.

The 1980s was a dark era for mixology, when people stopped caring about the craft of cocktails and became far more interested in drinking copious amounts of vodka and getting sloshed. (I blame advertizing. And hey - it was the eighties. A lot of supremely cheesetastic music came out of this era, but nobody claimed it was a bastion of good taste.) Pimento Dram generally fell by the wayside and was no longer available, except in Jamaica.

With the recent resurgence of interest in classic cocktails happening in the States lately, somebody decided it was high time Pimento Dram made its comeback. But there was one problem...the name. In much the same way "rapeseed oil" became "canola oil", Pimento Dram became Allspice Dram. Just as no one could cook their vegetables in something starting in "rape" and feel even remotely comfortable, nobody could say the words "Pimento Dram" and conjure up anything even remotely worth drinking.

So Pimento Dram was re-christened Allspice Dram, and it is now available at your local liquor store, or at least at the downtown Spec's, that wonderful mecca of liquor and obscure foodstuffs. ("Foodstuffs" - now there's a word that doesn't get used nearly often enough.) I acquired a bottle, which turned out to be a good investment because I find its gingerbread-y smell to be completely intoxicating and want to put it in pretty much every drink I make. It is the wintertime equivalent of St. Germain.

Smell: Yum yum yum. A bit peppery, but mostly...smells like gingerbread. Yum.
Taste: I don't think anybody, even the producers, is advocating taking Allspice Dram straight, but I did, because I take my job as your guide to the wilds of booze very seriously and I want to bring you the best and most complete information possible. So the taste: starts out sweet, gets VERY peppery, finishes like it smells: all gingerbready and awesome. I feel compelled to point out, having already made several drinks with allspice dram at the time of the writing of this blog, that the peppery taste never comes out when you mix this stuff in cocktails - only the gingerbreadiness. Wonder why that is?

Finally, for your drinking pleasure, I present the Lion's Tail, a classic cocktail made with Allspice (aka Pimento) Dram. With many thanks to Ted Haigh and his excellent book, Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails.

The Lion's Tail
2 oz bourbon
3/4 oz Allspice Dram
1/2 oz fresh lime juice
1/2 tablespoon simple syrup
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass. Fill with ice. Shake and strain into a cocktail glass.

Verdict: I like this. I really, really like this. I think my love of bourbon has been well established in this blog - and considering that Allspice Dram tastes like gingerbread, the Lion's Tail is basically a sweet, boozy marriage of two of the things I love the most. Mmm.

P.S. For another great idea of what to do with Allspice Dram, check out this post from the Tipsy Texan. Recipe by Tito's vodka, video by David Alan, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last Tuesday at a cocktailing contest in Austin - the details of which you will find in my very next post. Stay tuned.

The Sweet & Spicy Southwest Margarita

2010-12-11T14:51:00.001-06:00

My goal: to create a cocktail inspired by my love of the Southwest.

This sunset really happened.

My inspiration: the pretty light pink Prickly Pear margarita I had at the Arizona Room, on the edge of the Grand Canyon. A little sweet for my taste...but I could work with this. Here was my idea: a margarita with prickly pear and jalapeno (a la the award-winning cocktail Jason had at the Copa d'Oro). What could be more southwest than that?

Turns out prickly pears aren't so easy to find, at least in Houston. I started out making my Prickly Pear margarita with a monin prickly pear syrup, but the syrup was black, which made for a not so appealing drink. So I finally hunted down some prickly pear fruits ("nopales" in Spanish) at (where else?) Whole Foods.

So, as I get in line, so excited to have found the very last two cactus pears at Whole Foods, the cashier gives me a look of abject terror. Terror, and pity. "Have you been carrying those with your hands?", he asks me, as I place the prickly pears on the belt, clearly with my hands. "Because they'll cut ya." I look at my (uncut) hands while the cashier bags my prickly pears ever so gingerly, as if they had ebola. This is a very confusing conversation.

But it was all explained to me later by the Internet, Explainer of Many Things. Turns out that when you pick a prickly pear from an actual cactus, it's covered with little tiny spines that will lodge into your hands and make them feel like they're on fire. The cactus pears they sell at most grocery stores have been de-spined, but apparently my cashier was unaware of this. I think this is wonderful, because it means that my Southwest Margarita is made from something that is both beautiful and dangerous, just like the Grand Canyon itself.

I love the Grand Canyon so much.

So how does one juice a prickly pear? I'm glad you asked. It goes like this:
1. Cut off the ends of the prickly pear.
2. Make a long cut, about half an inch deep, lengthwise down the pear.
3. Starting at the cut, unwrap the thick outer skin of the pear, revealing the seedy flesh below.

Sarah Burkhart: do not look at this picture.

Yeah, I was a little creeped out writing the words "seedy flesh", but that's what a prickly pear looks like - very similar to a pomegranate. And the taste? It starts out a little bit vegetal and finishes very sweet, almost like bubble gum. The riper the pear, the more pronounced the sweetness will be. (You can tell the fruit is ripe because the skin will be a dark magenta.) I struggled for a long time to place the vegetal smell of the prickly pear until I realized what it reminded me of: snapping green beans at my grandma's house. I know, you're kinda grossed out. Green beans and bubble gum? Sounds weird, but...it works. And it works especially well with tequila.

But first: how do you turn all that seedy flesh (sorry!) into something you can put into a drink? Chop the flesh up into little bits (about 1/4" square), throw them into a blender, and run the blender until the flesh is liquefied. Then, strain out the seeds using the strainer-and-a-spatula method found in this post. This is especially satisfying because the end product, the prickly pear juice, is bright, crazy, magenta, Barbie pink. It might be my new favorite thing.

El Nopalito (Prickly Pear Margarita)
2 oz tequila
.5 oz triple sec
.5 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice
.5 oz agave nectar
.75 oz prickly pear juice (juice of about 1/2 nopal)

Just enough prickly pear flavor to keep things interesting. Prickly pears come from a cactus, tequila comes from a cactus...they're practically cousins, so it's no surprise that they play well together. But my southwest margarita needed something to make it even more beautiful and interesting and dangerous, so I added...jalapeno.

The Sweet and Spicy Southwest Margarita
2 oz tequila
.5 oz triple sec
.5 oz lime juice
.5 oz agave nectar
.75 oz prickly pear juice
3 slices of jalapeno (plus more for garnish)

Muddle three slices of jalapeno (minus the seeds) in a pint glass. Add all the other ingredients, fill the glass with ice, and shake for at least 3o seconds. Strain into a glass full of crushed ice. Garnish with extra bits of jalapeno and add a little crushed ice and a slice of lime on top.

My favorite thing about this margarita is how damn pretty it is. I was pretty much obsessed with taking pictures of it. It doesn't taste bad, either - just like the nopalito, but with a little extra kick.

Also: lesson learned: never, ever, ever, garnish the rim of a glass with a jalapeno. It will set your mouth on fire. This may or may not have happened to me. I may or may not have stood around the kitchen, dabbing my flaming lips with a paper towel soaked in milk, while Betty (my taste tester for the occasion - thanks Betty!) laughed at me.

Beautiful...and dangerous. Drink up, kids.

Kendra, here's what to do with that pesky rum.

2010-11-29T13:55:00.012-06:00

I am always happy to help a friend. And when I hear that a friend has copious amounts of alcohol and is unsure what to do with it...well, that's like a cocktail emergency. And I am like a cocktail superhero. With great power, as they say, comes great responsiblity.

Okay, this is a bit facetious. But for reals - Kendra, sojurning in the exotic land they call Germany, found herself with a surfeit of Bacardi Gold Rum. Did I have any suggestions? Well, it has been a while since my latest rum drink, but your bartender always relishes a challenge. Kendra told me she and the hubby had been making Rum n' Cokes with the confounding rum, but they tasted like medicine. Well, propitiously, I had just acquired a copy of Imbibe magazine, the one with the article about the 25 most influential cocktails of the last century. Right there, on the first page, was the Cuba Libre. I thought a Cuba Libre was the same thing as a Rum n' Coke. Not so fast!, said Imbibe magazine. The different between a Rum n' Coke is and a Cuba Libre is that a Cuba Libre has lime juice in it - and that is a big difference indeed (went the magazine). Also propitiously, I happened to have a bottle of Bacardi Gold, bequeathed to me by a certain generous friend upon her move to St. Louis. So I pulled out the Bacardi and made myself a real Cuba Libre.

Cuba Libre
(with thanks to Imbibe magazine and Jonathan Philips.)
4-5 oz Coca-Cola
2 oz Bacardi Gold Rum
juice and peels of half a lime

Squeeze the lime and then drop it into the glass. (Not sure if this is official Cuba Libre protocol, but it looked pretty in the Moscow Mule so we're going with it.) Fill the glass with ice, and add the rum and coke. Garnish with a couple of lime wedges.

Verdict: The lime definitely adds a little something. I may never be satisfied with a plain old rum n' coke ever again. (Alicia tried it (right before we went for a run, which is a great time for a cocktail), and she liked it too. I'm not sure I can trust myself anymore, since I liked the Hemingway reviver.)

But I wasn't going to stop with just a dressed-up Rum n' Coke. To prove myself a master of my craft, I needed to come up with something a little more exotic. My second attempt involved pineapple juice, rum, and ginger ale. It was terrible. It is not recorded here. It tasted, as Kendra said of the original rum n' cokes, like medicine. My third cocktail was much better.

The thought process for cocktail #3 was as follows:
1. Isn't that a bag of frozen blueberries in the freezer?
2. Wasn't there some drink with blueberries and rum on the menu at the Anvil not too long ago?
3. Lori makes those drinks, the Scarlet Jos, with mixed berries and SoCo and sweet n' sour and club soda. So we know that frozen berries + booze + sweet n' sour + fizzy = Good.
4. Brown sugar + gold rum has been a winner in the past. Let's try that.
5. Ginger is one of those things (like champagne, or lemon) that inexplicably mixes well with everything. So let's get some of that up in there (because I am unemployed and I have all the time in the world and club soda is for wussies and we're gonna go CRAZY).

With all this going on, it wasn't too long until:

The Blueberry Gin Rum-y
Thawed (or fresh) blueberries*
2 oz Bacardi Gold rum (or any old rum)
.75 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 tbsp brown sugar
Ginger ale (or Ginger beer, if you're feeling adventurous.)
crushed ice

*If you have fresh blueberries, they will work just as well as the frozen ones. The advantage of frozen blueberries is this: 1. You can get them any time of year, and 2. They are cheap. And they keep practically forever. (Maybe you are lucky enough to have some delicious Texas blueberries that you had the prescence of mind to freeze. If so, bully for you. I will have some, too, as soon as my blueberry bushes outgrow their blueberry-adolescence.) But what do you do with the frozen blueberries? Frozen blueberries are cold and hard and un-muddlable. Here is what you do: fill a glass with hot water from the tap. Place the frozen blueberries in the glass. Give the blueberries a couple minutes and then strain out the water. Ta-da! Cocktail-ready.

Cover the bottom of an old fashioned glass with the thawed blueberries. (If you're using a taller glass with a smaller bottom, make a double layer.) Add the sugar and lemon juice and muddle (or smoosh with the back of a spoon). You want to muddle just enough to melt the sugar and break the skins of the blueberries - the idea is to get the flavor of the blueberries to infuse into the drink, but not to mash them into a pulp. After muddling, fill the glass with crushed ice, add the rum, and stir. Top with the ginger ale (or beer) and add more crushed ice, if desired.

Verdict: I did done good. It's sweet, with a little bit of spice from the ginger and a little bit of kick from the rum. Using ginger beer instead of ginger ale will make this a different drink entirely - not as sweet, with more pronounced spiciness from the ginger. It's a more complex and somewhat less accessible cocktail, so of course it's my favorite, since I like things that are complicated. But who are we kidding? They're both delicious. Do try this at home.

MxMo LII: Forgotten Cocktails...OF DEATH.

2010-11-22T23:30:00.006-06:00

Good morning, campers! Time to rise and shine, because...it's Mixology Monday! This time, you get two cocktails for the price of one. This month's theme is "forgotten cocktails", with your host Rock and Rye, and both of my forgotten cocktails have these things in common:

1. Ernest Hemingway
2. The "hair of the dog"
3. DEATH.

That's right. Cocktails that will help you get over a hangover...or maybe just kill you.

Ernest Hemingway as a young hottie.

Ernest Hemingway was a talented and troubled American writer who apparently had a bit of a penchant for drinking. He was known to embark on "alcoholic sprees" with James Joyce, and he gave himself a scar on his forehead by pulling a skylight onto his head in the bathroom of his paris apartment, mistakenly thinking he was pulling on the toilet chain. (Wikipedia won't tell me for sure, but if you have ever been inebriated, you might recognize this as the sort of dumbass thing a drunk person would do.) Two of Ernest Hemingway's favorite hangover cures survive, both, interestingly enough, with the word "death" in the name.

First: Death in the Afternoon. Hemmingway's original directions for the drink are as follows (with thanks to esquire.com): "Pour 1 jigger of absinthe into a champagne glass. Add iced champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly." Obviously, there are some problems here. 1. How much is a jigger? Jiggers come in many different measurements. 2. I am not about to drink three to five of these things. Ernest Hemingway must've had the liver of a champion.

I discovered another recipe for "Death in the Afternoon" in one of my go-to cocktail books, the Art of the Bar. This particular recipe called for a mere 1/4 oz of pastis (pernod preferred) and a full glass of champange. Esquire.com, where I found Earnest Hemingway's directions, called for a full 1.5 oz of absinthe (or the newly legalized absenthe) per flute of champange. What to do? Well, I used absenthe, because I had some on hand, left over from making my Harry Potter extra sinister, and I split the difference and put in 3/4 oz of absenthe for each glass of champagne. I feel this creates a good balance between the champagne and absinthe flavors, but if you'd prefer to add more absinthe, feel free. Earnest is on your side. I did not test out the efficacy of this drink as a hangover cure (although you might need one the morning after one too many Ron Weasleys), but I did drink it right after breakfast, which counts for something. Right?

Death in the Afternoon
3/4 oz absenthe
Fill glass with brut champagne.

So...how's it taste? Some flavors are pretty shy. Absinthe (which, for the unintiated, tastes almost exactly like black licorice) is not. There is definitely something in your champagne. To my surprise, absinthe and champagne actually play pretty well together.* You get the taste of champagne, with a nice licorice-y finish that is interesting without being overwhelming. If you don't like the taste of absinthe, you will probably not like this drink. If you do...well, it may be your new favorite thing.

*I'm continually surprised by how well champagne pairs with bizzarre and sundry flavors. Like, champagne and guiness? Surprisingly not bad.

The second, and far more intimidating, hangover cure I sampled is something called Death in the Gulf Stream. The Art of the Bar book first made me aware of the existence of this Hemingway reviver; I have Seamus Harris, from Tales of the cocktail, to thank for the directions for Hemingway's original formulation:

“Take a tall thin water tumbler and fill it with finely cracked ice. Lace this broken debris with 4 good purple dashes of Angostura, add the juice and crushed peel of 1 green lime, and fill glass almost full with Holland gin. . . . No sugar, no fancying. It’s strong, it’s bitter – but so is English ale strong and bitter, in many cases. We don’t add sugar to ale, and we don’t need sugar in a Death in the Gulf Stream – or at least not more than 1 tsp. Its tartness and its bitterness are its chief charm. It is reviving and refreshing; cools the blood and inspires renewed interest in food, companions and life.“

Seamus interprets "Holland gin" to mean Genever, which is sweeter than the London dry varities; for whatever reason, Art of the Bar called for something called "Extra Dry Holand Gin", which I was unable to find at the trusty downtown Spec's, so instead I used just plain old London dry gin. I am supported in my decision by this article about the boozings of Ernest Hemingway from flavorwire.com, so that's something.

Death in the Gulf Stream (aka The Hemingway Reviver)
Crushed ice
Juice and peels of an entire lime
4 dashes of Angostura bitters
Healthy dose of Holland Gin (or extra dry Holland Gin, or London Dry...I used Broker's, if you're wondering. The bottle came with a little plastic top hat on it.)

I cut the lime into quarters, squeezed them into the glass, threw the peels in, and added the bitters and crushed ice. Then I added the gin (almost all the way to the top) and gave it a little stir.

I was very, very afraid to taste this. Notice the part where there's no sugar? And that is a lot of bitters. And a lot of booze. But: verdict:

You guys...I think I'm a total lush. I was fully prepared to taste this and report back to you that it was absolutely terrible. So certain was I of its terribleness that I almost typed the words in before even trying it. But...but...it's kind of good. The lime is bracing, the gin is refreshing, and all that bitters gives it depth...I feel a renewed interest in food, companions, and life. No, I wasn't hungover to begin with. But this drink? It's like a swift, and not entirely unwelcome, alcoholic kick in the pants.

Ernest...you old rogue.

HARRY POTTER COCKTAILS.

2010-11-22T22:33:00.040-06:00

One of your bartender's favorite books is Gone with the Wind. (I know, this post is about Harry Potter, not Scarlett O'Hara...but bear with me here.) The first cocktail book I ever owned is something called the Cocktail Bible, which is actually pretty terrible, as cocktail books go. (Creme de menthe in a long island iced tea...whaaat?) But on page 98, I found something that piqued my interest - signature cocktails for all the major characters in Gone with the Wind. (The Scarlett O'Hara - cranberry juice, SoCo, and a bit of lime - is pretty delicious.*) I loved it. It was the ultimate exercise in higher-level thinking...turn a fictional character into a cocktail. I could do this, right? I could totally do this.

*Disclaimer: I have not tried any of the others. Although maybe tonight is the night for a Rhett Butler??

Your bartender also loves Harry Potter - and the first installment of the last movie of the Harry Potter series came out this Friday, so what better excuse to cook up some delicious, creative, and original cocktails? I know that none of the Harry Potter kids are actually old enough to drink...but once they turned 18 (or 21 here in the US), here's what they would be quaffing.

The Hermione Granger

Here's what I was thinking when I started thinking about what would go into the Hermione cocktail...Hermione is a strong woman. She's smart, and she's very good at what she does (magic, being a giant deus ex machina), but that doesn't make her any less feminine. The casting agents could hardly have known that Emma Watson would grow from a bushy-haired know-it-all into the beautiful young woman she is today, but it's only appropriate: seventh-year Hermione Granger is both beautiful and intimidatingly smart. (In the words of Janis Ian: "Suck on that.") The Hermione cocktail is based on a lot of flavors (sloe gin, pomegranate, grapefruit) that are strong and manage to achieve that perfect sweet-tart balance. Together with champagne (fizzy, delicious, feminine without being weak) they combine to form a lovely cocktail.

Hermione Granger
1.5 oz sloe gin (Get the Plymoth. Usually I'm not a big pusher of top-shelf liquors, but trust me: you need the Plymoth. use the cheap sloe gin and this cocktail will taste like medicine.)
1 oz gin
.75 oz Pama pomegranate liqueur
.5 oz red grapefruit juice (Rio star!)
1.5 oz brut champagne

Combine the ingredients in a pint glass full of ice. Stir lovingly for 30 seconds (or more), and then strain into a cocktail glass.

The Ron Weasley

Ahh, Ron Weasley. A little bit Samwise Gamgee, a little bit everyman. The Ron Weasley started out with the pairing of whiskey (so manly!) and Campari (a bitter, very red Italian liquer). Because Ron is manly, a little bit rough - and a little bit bitter. (I would be, too, if my best friend were the second coming.) The pairing of whiskey and Campari presented me with more than a little bit of trouble, and a lot of drunken, frustrated weekday nights sampling versions of a Ron Weasley that turned out to be absolutley disgusting. I wanted to make my Ron Weasley with Jack Daniels, which is very headstrong young man, but it didn't start to gel until I switched to rye whiskey, which a bit more old-school. But hey - in addition to trying to stay true to the characters, I am also trying to make drinks that taste good. The Ron Weasley owes a little bit to the Old Pal, appropriately, and also a bit to the Blood and Sand - in its essence, it is manly, strong, a bit sweet, and a little bitter.

Ron Weasley
1.5 oz rye whiskey
.75 oz cherry brandy (I used cherry heering.)
.5 oz campari
.5 oz sweet vermouth
1.0 oz fresh-squeezed orange juice

Directions: same as the Hermione. Make sure you give the ice plenty of time to melt. This one is potent.

The Harry Potter

I will admit that I was completely without direction on the Harry Potter. Harry Potter's friends start off as carricatures and slowly morph into real people, which makes their transition into alcoholic drinks easier, but Harry Potter himself is a bit harder to pin down. It was Rachel who gave me the idea to start Harry off with chocolate - a very familiar, very everyman, very boy-next-door taste. Combine that with butterscotch and you have a sweet, warming cocktail. Add a teeny bit of absinthe and you have something sweet and familiar - with just a hint of something sinister. SPOILERS.

Harry Potter
1 oz vodka
1 oz dark creme de cacoa
1 oz butterscotch schnapps
1/2 oz heavy cream
1/2 tsp absenthe

Directions: See Hermione.

And the Verdict: I had a Harry Potter Cocktail Party, because how could I not? All the Harry Potter cocktails were a big hit. (I was a bit worried I just liked them because I'm a huge lush.) Hermione: sweet, a bit tart to balance it all out, a good starter for the other drinks. Ron: Very strong. Dudes liked this cocktail, while my girl friends tended to (not surprisingly, I suppose) prefer the Hermione. Some guys even went so far as to say that I gave Ron too much credit, and the drink was manlier than Ron himself. Ouch. The Harry Potter got good reviews: some people compared it to a white russian, or a buttery nipple; I think the taste is a bit more complicated than that. Sweet, but not too sweet. The little bit of absenthe makes you think. Like any good cocktail. Like any good book.

Now, dear reader, I think I will settle down with the Deathly Hallows a and stiff drink. (And these are all stiff drinks. Don't say I didn't warn you. :) Perhaps you should do the same.

And now...even more Harry Potter cocktails. Check out part 2 for Luna, Draco, Neville and Snape.

Backyard Bartender Coast-to-Coast: The Copa d'Oro

2010-11-16T13:29:00.010-06:00

Remember the pretty green drink I made? With the pear brandy? The one where I juiced a cucumber? Well, the creator of this particular drink, Vincenzo Marianella, has a bar in Los Angeles (well, Santa Monica) called the Copa d'Oro, and pretty much as soon as I saw the menu I knew I had to go there. In fact, in my post about the Mr. Stair, I'm pretty sure I said that I might have to plan a trip to LA just to visit this bar.

Well, I did.

Figure 1: Santa Monica Beach. If you get on 1-10 in Houston and drive west for 24 hours, this is where you will end up.

Okay, so the Copa d'Oro was not my only reason for going to California. (I am not that hardcore about cocktails. Yet.) My reasons were fivefold:

1. I am currently unemployed (unfortunately, being a cocktail connoisseur does not count as employment), and as such have a surfeit of free time.
2. My good friend Jason and his lovely fiancee Rebecca (who writes this great wedding blog) live in Los Angeles and had graciously offered to let me stay with them. (This is important, when you're unemployed.)
3. I've always been intrigued by the fact that 1-10, which runs right through the middle of downtown Houston, goes all the way to California. This freeway I've known my whole life, that goes right past the Budweiser brewery and my parents' house, goes all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Just one road. So every time I drove to church, or to mom and dad's, there was this tantalizing thought of California, far, far, away.
4. The deserts of the Southwest (which 1-10 spends a lot of time in before it gets to California) were calling my name.
5. Did I mention there's this really great cocktail bar in Santa Monica?

So...did it live up to my expectations?

Figure 2: The Copa D'Oro.

Ambiance: Loved the beach. Loved downtown Santa Monica. (Except that it was a total bear to park, but that's everywhere in LA.) This place...eh. I hate to say this, since the drinks were so good, but the decor was a little bit like what I would expect to see if the Cheesecake Factory were a bar. Very traditional. Lots of overstuffed leather.
Scene: Lots of young professionals. Already pretty hoppin at 7:30 on a Thursday night, and it got even busier as the night wore on.
Drinks: Wow.

For starters, until 8:30 the Copa D'Oro has a happy hour menu of classic cocktails for only $5, which is a pretty sweet deal for a snooty cocktail bar. I ordered a Clover Club, which was a lovely balance of fruity-ness and gin, but Jason won because he ordered a Gold Rush, which is: bourbon, lemon, and honey. That's all. And holy crap, was it good. It seems like, when it comes to Bourbon cocktails, the simpler the better, and this was one of those winning combinations.

Post happy hour we switched over to the main cocktail menu, which was a wonder to behold. Seriously, the waitress probably came about three different times to take our order, only to find me still staring raptly at the menu, unable to make a decision. I really, really wanted one of everything. Even now, as I peruse the menu on the Copa D'Oro's website, I feel a lingering sadness that I was unable to try them all.

After much deliberation, I finally settled on the ominous-sounding Judgement Day, a combo of pisco, elderflower liqueur, absinthe, pimento dram, and egg white. (Yeah, I went for the weird stuff.) Jason ordered a King De Bahia, which the waitress assured him was incredibly popular and had won several awards. (I told him he should add "drinker of award-winning cocktails" to his business cards.) Our drinks came, and...Jason won again. And how. The Judgement Day was good, but not mind-blowing. I mean, if you're going to call a drink the Judgement Day, it sure as heck better deliver. The King De Bahia, though - dang. The combo of cachaça, elderflower liqueur, passion fruit, and jalapeño - unusual, to be sure. And also freakishly, freakishly delicious.

Fig. 3: The King De Bahia. So full of win.

One of the most unique things about the Copa D'Oro is they have something called a Market Menu, where you can pick from a list of spirits and then add herbs, fruits, vegetables and different kinds of juice to your drink. So entranced was I by the main cocktail menu that I never got to try this. I was also a little worried. If you picked out a combo that was truly awful - say, Applejack, rosemary, grapefruit and jalapeño - would the bartender tell you that you were way off the mark and make another suggestion? Or would they just serve up your awful cocktail and charge you ten bucks for it? Or...and this possibility is truly mind-boggling - are they just such bartending badasses that it is impossible to go wrong? Someone needs to go to this bar and report back to me, because I am now incredibly curious.

So...the Copa D'Oro gets an enthusiastic (if slightly tipsy) thumbs-up from me. It's really too bad that 24 hours is a little too far to drive to grab a drink at the end of the workday. But hey, within only a few months, I've managed to drink wild and wonderful cocktails at bars on both coasts. All told, not a bad year.

The French Bulldog

2010-11-14T22:02:00.011-06:00

There is pretty much no limit to the places I will look for inspiration for my next drink. Case in point...this one got started in the shower. I have this grapefruit and lemongrass shampoo, and one morning I thought - "this smells lovely. I wonder if I could make it into a drink?". Only, you know, not with actual shampoo. So I knew grapefruit and lemongrass were a hit, and I knew that lemongrass and St. Germain (seriously, I can't get enough of this stuff) played well together, and I knew that grapefuit and gin were good together because that's a salty dog. (The Salty Dog is a classic cocktail, and also a pretty great dive bar in Port Aransas. (Seriously. If you're ever in Port Aransas, don't miss their karaoke night. Life-changing, maybe.))

Armed with this knowledge, I mixed them all up together, fiddled with the proportions a little - and it was good.

The French Bulldog
1.25 oz gin
1 oz Texas Rio Star red grapefruit juice (these are back in season - so love your booze and make it fresh.)

1 oz St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
1.25 oz Dry Lemongrass Soda

Combine the ingredients in a mixing glass (a pint glass works well) full of ice. Stir for 30 seconds and strain into a cocktail glass.

Verdict: This drinks wins for both ease of creation and sheer deliciouness. It's a beautiful balance of all the flavors. And it doesn't hurt that it so damn pretty.

Edited to add: It looks like the jerks at the Dry Soda Company have discontinued the lemongrass flavor, so if you must have lemongrass soda, you'll have to make your own. Or, what is much easier: substitute lemon perrier for the soda. I promise it's just as delicious.

Fast-Food Face-Off: In-N-Out vs. Whataburger

2010-11-10T11:58:00.009-06:00

image: sanfrancisco.grubstreet.com

vs.
image: slashfood.com

This post is not about cocktails. Whatever.

Some of you may know (okay, anybody who knows me at all probably knows) that I am obsessed with Whataburger. Well, I recently went on a two-week road trip mini-odyssey in the Southwest and California, where they...do not have Whataburger. Gamely, I decided to give In-N-Out, the Whataburger of the west, a try. I've always heard people raving about In-N-Out and I always thought, "it can't possibly be as good as Whataburger." In fact, I was sort of afraid to eat there, lest it actually be better and my beloved Whataburger tumble from the throne of Best Fast Food Ever. But every good faith deserves to be tested. And it wasn't like I was going to go two weeks without fast food, right? So I present to you, my loyal readers, my very thorough analysis.

Burgers: This one's a toss-up. The in-N-out hamburgers just taste quality. (After all, their slogan is "quality you can taste".) The onions are fresh, the meat is juicy...it tastes like something you would make on the grill, and you can get one in about five minutes.

Meat-a-licious.
(I forgot to take pictures of my In-N-Out burger, so image: rachellb.com.)

On the other hand, a Whataburger hamburger has a certain...eatability. And no, I actually mean something by this - it is not just a random word I made up to avoid admitting that In-N-Out has better burgers. A Whataburger hamburger has a certain appealing floppiness. If this doesn't sound particularly positive to you, go get a Whataburger hamburger and you'll see what I mean. I promise, it's a good thing. It feels good in your hand, it feels good in your mouth. (And you thought mouthfeel was just for wines.) And it is exactly as tall as your mouth, so you don't have to smoosh it down before consuming it - this is something a lot of hamburger creaters ignore. The ratio of meat to fixins is delicately balanced, so that you taste not too much of one or the other. And if you order one with onions, it comes with pieces of onion that resemble actual onions, not tiny little mashed-up bits that are probably made in a laboratory somewhere. (I'm looking at you, McDonald's crackburger.)

Whataburger: Feels real nice. Tastes real nice.

Selection: Totally Whataburger. At In-N-Out you can order...burgers and fries. That's it.

Fries: Whataburger. In-N-Out actually has a little tray liner about how great their fries are. They're like, made from a special kind of potatoes or something. I was underwhelmed. Whataburger fries do have the issue that they sometimes vary in crispiness from location to location, but even the soggiest Whataburger fries are superior to the In-N-Out ones, in my opinion. They looked so nice, but then when I ate them...eh. Maybe it's because...

Ketchup: Whataburger. Sometimes I wonder whether I just think Whataburger fries are awesome because I always eat them with Whataburger ketchup, which is hands-down the best ketchup ever. And then I realize that there are some mysteries that cannot be fathomed by the human mind.

Cult following: In-n-Out. I know, it's weird that I'm saying this, since even if nobody else really gave a damn, my own fanatacism about Whataburger would probably count as a cult following. But the thing is, people are just crazy about In-N-Out. I used to have an In-N-Out shirt (that I got from the In-N-Out in Las Vegas years ago, pre Whataburger obsession), and every time I wore it, guaranteed, at least one person I saw that day would freak out and be like, "omg I LOVE In-N-Out!!!!". And I would have to admit that I'd only eaten there once and it didn't totally like, blow my mind, which made me feel kind of lame, so I stopped wearing it. But yeah, In-n-Out lovers are nuts. And it has that whole secret menu items thing going on, and everybody knows people just love secrets. It makes you feel like you're a part of something. Of course, biting into a hot piece of Whataburger toast makes me feel like I'm a part of something, too. Part of something very, very delicious.

Atmosphere: In-N-Out. They're got that whole retro-fifties thing going on. Whereas Whataburger...well, when it comes to ambiance, it's just a fast-food restaurant. There are those old-school A-frame whataburgers that are super cool, but those are kind of a dying breed. And all that orange can get a little overwhelming.

Service: Whataburger. While the In-N-Out staff (in my experience) is freakishly perky, at Whataburger, if you eat in, they will actually bring you order to your table. (As opposed to shouting your order number at you across the restaurant.) And they've got those little orange trays with ketchup and everything. I don't know of another fast-food restaurant that does that.

So it's a tough call. The nice thing is, I'm not sure anyone would ever have to make this decision, since it seems like In-N-Out territory (west coast-ish) picks up about where Whataburger territory (Texas and its environs) ends. Is there, in fact, any city with both a Whataburger and an In-N-Out? Does such a fast-food mecca exist?** For me, I think the choice is clear. I rally to the banner of the orange and white. (But only when it comes to fast food. In football this is blasphemy.) Although maybe it's just the ketchup.

Best. Ketchup. Ever.

**Updated to add: thanks to the in-depth research tool that is Google Maps, I now know that such a place does exist, and it is called Phoenix, Arizona. Or Tuscon. Yet another reason to love Arizona. (The first, obviously, being that big old hole in the ground. I love me some Grand Canyon.)

¡El Sangre de Fresa!

2010-10-23T11:18:00.002-05:00

As a mixologist, I am always trying to push the limits. It's a lot harder to impress me, booze-wise, than it used to be. Lots of drinks that would've seemed wild and wonderful to me a couple of years ago are now familiar territory. Like, basil in a margarita? Child's play. But then, while browsing through one of my favorite cocktail books, I found a recipe for a drink using balsamic vinegar. Yeah, like what you dip bread in at Italian restaurants. Whoa.

I knew I had to try this.

Firstly, I love anything with balsamic vinegar, and secondly, I was having a cocktail party and wanted to impress my guests with my use of innovative, wacked-out ingredients. I could just see my friends telling their friends - "oh my gosh, I went to this party and this girl made a cocktail with balsamic vinegar and my mind was blown". This was going to be legendary. The one big hurdle was - in order to make this history-making balsamic cocktail, I first had to create a balsamic syrup, using the directions below:

Balsamic Syrup
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 cups balsamic vinegar

In a tall, straight-sided, medium pot, combine the sugar and water and heat over medium-high heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Brush down the sides of the pot with a wet pastry brush to remove any lingering sugar. Continue to cook the sugar and water, gently swirling the pot occasionally to distribute the heat, until the water evaporates and the sugar caramelizes and turns to an amber color.
Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, bring the balsamic vinegar to a simmer. When the caramel reaches the desired color, remove the pot from the heat and slowly add the balsamic vinegar. Take extra care when adding the vinegar, because it will bubble and pop violently when added to the caramelized sugar. Stir the mixture with a wooden spoon to dissolve any solidified caramel. Return the pot to the stove and cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes, until the mixture has thickened slightly.
Create an ice bath by filling a large bowl with ice water. Pour the syrup into a smaller bowl and then set it in the ice bath to cool, making sure the level of the melting ice is well below the level of the smaller bowl. Transfer the syrup to a small bottle with a lid and refrigerate. It will keep for up to six months or longer.

As a person who does not cook, I had the proper response to these directions, and that was: fear. Through people who actually cook I had heard of the difficulties and trials of making caramel, and I was very afraid. Only my desire for cocktail greatness could push me to attempt something so foolhardy. I wish I could say that my fears were totally unfounded, and that I created a perfect balsamic syrup on the first attempt. Only...not so much.

First try: burned the caramel.* I made the syrup anyway (because the balsamic vinegar was already simmering, and what was I gonna do?), but it was so thick it had to be scraped off the inside of the jigger when I tried to make a drink with it. Oh, and it smelled like burning.
*The only way to prevent this, I learned, is to not move from in front of the stove the entire time the caramel is cooking. In fact - don't even look away from the pot. Caramel burns fast.

Second try: used a pot that was too big.** All the water cooked off before the sugar caramelized and I ended up with...damp, slightly browned sugar. Fail.
**That part about the medium-sized pot? That's important.

Third try: Added too little balsamic vinegar (either I measured it wrong or let it simmer for too long - either way, I'm a moron) and ended up with some kind of giant, unholy balsamic caramel candy-thing. It was liquid until I put it in the ice bath, and I was so sure I had finally succeeded. Poor, disillusioned Nancy. I came back half an hour later to discover that in the ice bath, my "syrup" had congealed into a metallic brown brick at the bottom of the bowl.*** It was exactly like one of those brach's caramel candies I used to eat as a kid - except it smelled like italian food. And looked like an oil spill. (I say "smelled". I ate an octopus once - it wasn't fried or anything, and you could still see its tiny octopus head and tiny suckers on its tiny octopus arms - but I wouldn't eat this.) Giant, gooey, caramel-y fail.
***Important: pay attention to the part that says "thickened slightly". Don't worry if the syrup is still runny in the pot - it will get syrupy in the ice bath. If the syrup is syrupy in the pot - you will end up with a brick, like I did.

Yummy.

Fourth try: Finally got it right. Holy crap, this was hard.

So at long last, I was ready for:

¡El Sangre de Fresa! (that's "Strawberry Blood", for those of you who do not speakee the Spanish)
recipe from Jeff Hollinger and Rob Schwartz, of the Absinthe Brasserie & Bar in San Francisco.
2 strawberries, hulled and quartered
4 to 5 basil leaves (thank you, backyard herb garden)
1/2 oz hard-fought balsamic syrup
1 1/2 oz cachaça*
1/4 oz Cointreau**
1/4 oz fresh lime juice***
Soda water

*What is cachaça? Glad you asked.
**Or you can be cheap and use triple sec, like I did.
***Fresh!!

In a mixing glass, combine the strawberries, basil and balsamic syrup

and muddle into a pulp.

Top with ice and add the cachaça, Cointreau, and lime juice. Shake until cold, strain into an ice-filled pilsner or collins glass,

and top with soda water.

The first time I made this drink was for my cocktail party, so I made a whole pitcher, which was very brave of me. Many of my friends tasted it, which was very brave of them.

Kassie: This tastes like a salad.

Me: Drinks like a meal.

Aimee: ...interesting.

Garret: You know? I really like this.

So at the end of the night I sent Garret home with a schweppes bottle full of sangre de fresa. It's the first time I've ever made a doggie bag at a cocktail party. He seemed delighted with it.

But before you write this off as That Drink That Only Garret Liked - know that I made another. I had to, because I wanted to take purdy pictures for my blog and I hadn't gotten any in my pre-party frenzy. This time I shelled out for the Cointreau (my first bottle, and sheesh, was it expensive). Either this drink is bounds better with the Cointreau, or it just grew on me, because as I sipped Sangre de Fresa #2, I found myself thinking - you know, I might really like this. All the flavors are quite bold - the orange, lime, and strawberry catch you right away, with smoky/savory/vinegar on the finish. It's unexpected, bizarre, and - dare I say - surprisingly delicious.

Wtf is Cachaça?

2010-10-22T19:26:00.013-05:00

Short answer: cachaça is like rum, but from Brazil.

Long answer: you knew I would give you the long answer, didn't you?

First things first: how in the world does one say "cachaça"? For a long time (I am now embarrassed to think about this) I pronounced this word as "kuh-CHAH-kuh", and nobody corrected me because apparently no one else I know knows how to pronounce it, either. Finally, for this blog post, I consulted that greatest of all authorities, the internet. I've always said that Portuguese is like Spanish, but smooshier, and the word "cachaça" is no exception. Turns out the little thing that looks like a 5 under the last c (it's called a "cedille") alerts you that the c is a soft sound, so the word is actually pronounced "ka-SHAH-suh". Which will make you sound very sexy. Or, just like you have a lisp. Try this out early in the morning, when your sleepy voice is operating at a nice alto. (Or bass, or whatever. Does this happen to anyone else? I swear my voice is like an octave lower for about an hour after I wake up.) Ka-SHAH-suh. Ka-SHAH-suh. Kashahsuh. Kashahsuhhhh.

Kashahsuhhh is the third most consumed spirit in the world, because there are a lot of people in Brazil, and they like to drink. (The first and second are vodka - because there are a lot of people in Russia, and they really like to drink - and soju/shochu, an Asian spirit distilled from rice. (Which I have never, ever heard of, which probably means it will be the Next Big Thing on the cocktail scene.)) Cachaça differs from rum in that it's distilled from fresh sugarcane, whereas most rum is distilled from molasses. Molasses is a by-product of sugar production - it's what's left after the refineries boil the cane juice as much as possible to extract all the sugar crystals, because sugar producers are greedy bastards.

A great deal of cachaça is consumed in the form of caipirinhas. The caipirinha (kai-pur-EEN-ya - another sexy, unpronounceable word) is the national drink of Brazil. It's made of: lime, sugar, and cachaça. That's all. So, you might think - if cachaça is brazilian for rum, and a caipirinha is just cachaça, lime, and sugar - isn't that just a mojito, without the mint? I once thought this, too. And I was wrong.

See, because of the whole being distilled from fresh sugarcane juice thing, cachaça (according to the leblon cachaça website) has a "fruitier, fresher nose" and "distinctive vegetal notes remniscent of tequila". Well, I don't know what a nose is supposed to taste like, but I think this calls for...a taste test!

First the smell:
Rum: sweet, boozy, clean.
Cachaça: it smells like tequila. That's what I keep thinking of.

Then the taste:
Rum: Probably my $12 bottle of Baccardi was not really intended for sipping. But here are my impressions: Sweet, warm, almost like baked goods. Nice alcohol burn. This is hard liquor, after all.
Cachaça: Starts out sweet, like the rum, and then explodes into a whole bouquet of...something. (I'm seriously thinking about becoming a sommelier, if only to enlarge my vocabulary to describe taste sensations.) A bit smoky, a bit vegetal - it doesn't taste quite like tequila, but it's got that little extra something that makes tequila not quite as well-behaved as the other liquors. It's rich, robust, and unabashed. Like rum, but...manlier.

Lastly, because your cachaça education would not be complete without it, I give you...the caipirinha.

To start: take a lime and slice the ends off. Cut it in half, and remove the pith from the middle. (This part is bitter, so removing it will make for a sweeter drink.)
Cut the halved lime into four slices, and put them in a glass, along with two teaspoons of superfine sugar.
I once thought superfine sugar and powdered sugar were the same thing, but...I was wrong. Superfine sugar will dissolve completely, giving you a nice translucent caipirinha, whereas powdered sugar will dissolve but make the drink cloudy. I used powdered sugar. Don't tell anyone.

Muddle the limes and sugar together until the limes are juiced. Fill the glass with crushed ice -
And add 2 oz of cachaça. Give it a couple of good stirs, and you're ready to start savoring.

Verdict: The lime is a good compliment to the unusual taste of the cachaça. Not quite like a margarita, not quite like a mojito...you may just have to try it for yourself.

Key Lime Margarita

2010-10-20T14:51:00.013-05:00

Having a garden will teach you patience. You take care of the plants, and you watch them grow, and if you are lucky after a veeery long time they will produce something you can eat. Well, after many months of anticipation the three tiny, perfect key limes on my key lime tree finally ripened, and of course I started dreaming of cocktails.

Delicious with booze.

The first thing I thought of was a key lime martini - Steve had one once and couldn't stop talking about how great it was, and besides, it just sounded fun. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that a key lime martini contains no actual key lime juice. (Here's a compendium of three different key lime martini recipes...no key limes in sight.) 101 Margaritas to the rescue. Right there on the front cover is a lovely picture of a key lime margarita made with real key lime juice. Problem is, the original recipe called for something called McGillicuddy's vanilla schnapps, which your intrepid bartender was unable to find. So instead I substituted Navan, a vanilla liqueur made by the same folks who make Grand Marnier. It tastes divine, is very strong, and very expensive. But it's still vanilla flavored, right? And I had been looking for an excuse to buy a bottle of this stuff anyway.

So here goes:
Key Lime Margarita
1 1/2 oz tequila*
1 1/2 oz Navan vanilla liqueur
1/2 oz key lime juice (from the garden!)
1/2 oz simple syrup
splash of Midori melon liqueur (optional)**

*I prefer the gold in this recipe. Use good tequila - trust me, you will taste the difference.
**What's the Midori for? See, the difficulty here is that people expect margaritas to be green. And while the unfindable McGillicuddy's is presumably clear, Navan is brown. Adding a splash of Midori will give your margarita the appropriate color. Just don't add too much, or it will start to affect the taste.

Before you start: to give this drink a little added pizazz, rim the glass with vanilla sugar. (This isn't necessary, but it's super easy and I heartily reccomend it.) To make vanilla sugar, combine 1 teaspoon vanilla extract with 4 tablespoons of white sugar. This will make enough sugar for at least two glasses (and it will smell incredible). Then follow the instructions for coating the rim of a glass with sugar found here.

Combine the ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake and strain into a glass. Or, stir the ingredients in a glass full of ice for thirty seconds, and let the glass sit on the counter for about a minute before straining into a glass. You want to give the ice a lot of time to melt with this one, because it is veeery boozy. Navan is 40% alcohol by volume, the same as most hard liquors, so this drink has the equivalent of two whole shots in it, about twice what you would expect. (Don't say I didn't warn you.) The water melting into the drink takes the edge of the liquor - it's what makes tequila taste like tequila and not like that burn you get when taking shots.

Not that there's anything wrong with taking shots.

Most cocktails are intended to be drunk chilled, without ice, but I give you permission to take this one on the rocks (since the ice will melt and further mellow out the drink). It's also a great candidate for a frozen drink. To make a frozen margarita, combine all the ingredients in a blender, and add a handful of ice cubes. Run the blender (you will probably need to use the highest setting), and keep adding a couple ice cubes at a time until you reach the desired consistency.

Sometimes being unemployed is really great.

Verdict: This is a most interesting drink. I keep making them to drink by the pool (in October? Only in Houston), and every time I have one I like it more and more. In fact, I am craving one right now. The margarita-ness gets you right away, whereas the vanilla slowly sneaks up on you before settling gently into your palette. I have to say I'm pretty proud of myself for making something that is 75% hard liquor taste so delicious. Drink it slowly - this will help you appreciate the vanilla more. It will also keep you from ending up on the floor.

Bottoms up.

How to rim a glass with sugar (or salt, as the case may be).

2010-10-20T11:39:00.006-05:00

Coating the rim of a glass with sugar (or salt) will give your drinks that little extra something. (And it will make your pictures look cool, if you regularly photograph cocktails and are concerned about that kind of thing.) If the recipe calls for sugar, any old kind of sugar will do. If it calls for salt, use kosher salt - table salt doesn't have quite the right texture.

Step 1: Get out a plate and arrange the sugar in a circle corresponding roughly to the size of the rim of your glass.

Step 2: Moisten the rim of the glass with a lime (or lemon) wedge - whatever's appropriate to the drink. If your cocktail doesn't contain any lime or lemon, try using a sponge dipped in a liqueur (obviously, one that's already in the recipe - don't go too crazy here) or simple syrup. And don't be stingy with the juice.

Step 3: Dip the moistened glass in the circle of sugar. If you want more sugar, hold the glass perpendicular to the plate and gently roll the outside of the rim in the sugar. Then shake (or wipe) off the excess sugar and you're ready to go.

Yum.

The Original

2010-09-25T16:19:00.006-05:00

My neighbor Jessica came over one night. I offered to make make her a drink. She said she wanted something "not too sweet". Here's what I came up with:

The Original

1 oz St. Germain

2.5 oz Dry Lemongrass soda (possible substitute: perrier?)

Top with champagne.

Just sweet enough.

Jessica liked it a lot. Soon the glass looked like this:

And then like this:

Jessica also thought my photos could use a bit of variety, so she took these. Thanks, neighbor.

The Dream Team

2010-09-09T23:31:00.003-05:00

This week I did something very atypical, which is - I made a fantasy football team. This would seem, at first glance, to be absolutely foolhardy, since I know next to nothing about football. And seeing as the season has not actually begun yet, there are still plenty of chances for my team to be an epic failure. But, on Tuesday, with a lot of help from the football gal, I participated in my first draft, and now I've got what is (I think) a pretty decent team. I have Chris Johnson, and Steven Jackson, and Tom Brady (hot!)** and some guy named Jermichael. (As a person who strives to create cocktails which are innovative mashups of familiar ingredients - I appreciate this name.)

So, what I've learned thus far is: having a good team is really important. The other day I came across a cocktail that teamed up:

1. St. Germain

2. a margarita

3. cucumber

4. Fever Tree Bitter Lemon Soda*

*What?? This is a mixer that was recommended by loyal reader Rosann way back in the Pimm's Cup days. I had been wanting to try it.

That, my friends, is a good team. So, in (hopeful) anticipation of all the glorious beatings that will soon be delivered by my fantasy football team***, I mixed up one of these puppies.

The Escapology
(from the Burger Bar in San Francisco, via sfist)
1.5 oz silver, un-aged tequila
.5 oz St. Germain
3/4 oz simple syrup
1 oz lime juice (fresh squeezed!)
4 thin slices of cucumber (farmers' market!)
Fever Tree Bitter Lemon Soda

In a shaker, muddle the cucumber slices with a splash of the simple syrup. Fill the glass with ice and add the remaining ingredients, except for the soda. Shake, strain into a glass over ice, and top with soda. You don't want to add too much soda or the drink with get too bitter. I poured mine into an old-fashioned glass with a handful of ice in the bottom and then filled with the soda, and that was just perfect.

Verdict: Sweet, summery, and delicious. Surprisingly, tastes not very much like a margarita. Tastes not very much like booze, either (although I sometimes worry that my definition of "tastes like booze" is not quite that of a normal person, since many drinks that I would describe as simply "tasty" are described by other people as "really, really strong"). Not that that's a bad thing. There's this delicate interplay of lime, cucumber and tequila flavors going on, and the soda makes it light and refreshing. With a lineup like this, it's hard to go wrong.

**Update: Tom Brady is still hot, but my gosh, what the hell is up with his hair? Get a haircut, Tom. You're embarrassing the team.
***Another Update: As of monday night, the first of these beatings was officially delivered. Cheers.

MxMo the First: The Summer Old-Fashioned

2010-08-30T21:32:00.013-05:00

Before there was the Backyard Bartender, there was Mixology Monday. Every month, mixologists from all over the globe (I am not lying - this month there's one from Germany) create drinks to fit a particular theme. I stumbled across the site one day while looking for a recipe and was immediately delighted and awed and overwhelmed. It was like I was a cocktail adventurer standing on the edge of the cocktail Grand Canyon - it was so beautiful, and there was so much out there, and I could not possibly explore it all. But I wanted to try.

This is the first mixology monday since the inception of the backyard bartender (so I guess sometimes it's not every month), and the theme (and the host blog) is Brown, Bitter and Stirred. Make a drink that is brown, possibly because it is made with some kind of brown liquor, and...tastes bitter and is stirred. (I might have cheated a little on the "bitter" part. I am still learning to like bitter things. I do not yet have the palate to appreciate, say, campari, which other people seem to think is wonderful. But my cocktail contains bitters, so...that's a start?)

Of course when I think "brown", I think bourbon, my very favorite of the brown liquors. Problem is, when I think bourbon, I do not think summer. More like, sitting around a campfire trying desperately to stay warm. That's what bourbon is to me. Unfortunately, although in some places the weather may have started to resemble that lovely season they call "fall", here in Houston it is still hotter than hell. The other day I got into my car and the thermometer read 112 degrees. I think the last time I saw a thermometer reading 112 degrees was at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. (Or, y'know, just last summer. It gets hot here.) (Also: second Grand Canyon reference in one post. I love the Grand Canyon.)

You know what else I love? Bourbon.

So how could I summer-ify bourbon? Here was my thought process: I have, in the works (meaning: the idea is in my head), another drink involving apples and lavender, because the internet told me this was a good flavor pairing and I am dying to try it out. I thought about adding bourbon to the mix, since I knew that bourbon and apples were good together - Dale Degroff says so. (Also: bourbon + apple cider is a winner.) So the only question was - bourbon and lavender? Well, a google search yielded enough intriguing results to make me think I was on the right track. (The bourbon french toast with lavender butter? Must. try. now.)

I wasn't really sure about trying to pass off a drink with apple in it as "bitter", so instead I turned to our old friend, the old-fashioned. (The exact recipe for an old-fashioned is one of those things that cocktail geeks always argue about, but everyone seems to agree that the basics are: bourbon, sugar, orange, (in some capacity) and bitters.) What I was going for was an old-fashioned that was was light and a bit floral, but still tasted like an old-fashioned. After a few tries (okay, maybe a lot of tries) I got it right. Here it is:

Lavender Old-Fashioned
1.5 oz bourbon (or 2 for a stronger bourbon flavor)
.5 oz fresh-squeezed orange juice
.5 oz St. Germain elderflower liqueur*
1 oz Dry lavender soda**
dash of angostura bitters

*I know I'm a little behind the game, but I just discovered St. Germain and I have been putting it in pretty much everything. This blog calls it "the bacon of the cocktail world" (because it goes with everything), which I think is both funny and true.
**Tried this originally with muddled lavender greens from the garden and was unconvinced. (My lavender, the "Goodwin Creek" variety, stands up well to our crazy heat but inexplicably never blooms, so all I have to work with are the greens.) So the only local ingredient here is the garnish. I promise to try harder next time.

Mix all ingredients but the soda in an old-fashioned glass full of ice. Stir lovingly for 30 seconds. Add the soda. Garnish with an orange slice and a sprig of lavender.

Yum.

Pink Sage

2010-08-29T21:21:00.005-05:00

I have become the sort of person who googles things like "sage flavor pairings". Because I recently bought a sage plant, and if I can't make it into a drink it is basically useless to me. Some suggestions were: sage and plums. Interesting. Sage and rye whiskey. More interesting. But what about...sage and plums and rye whiskey? The plot thickens.

So here's what you need to know about rye whiskey: Rye whiskey (sometimes referred to simply as "rye") is kind of a big deal. It shows up in a lot of old cocktail recipes, and has recently been re-discovered by the cocktailing elite. (Apparently rye whiskey has a long and storied history - according to this guy, it was distilled by George Washington at Mount Vernon.) It tastes like whiskey but different, i.e., in rye, the spicy flavors present in the whiskey are sharper and more distinct. It practically begs to be paired with bitters, which is probably why the most famous cocktail made with Rye Whiskey, the sazerac, includes a healthy dose of Peychaud's. (Sazerac also happens to be the brand name of a kind of rye.)

Whiskey and Rye whiskey go head-to-head.

I bought my first bottle of rye whiskey a couple weeks ago and set to work on a sage-y cocktail. Here's what I came up with:

The Pink Sage
3/4 of a juicy, ripe red plum
4-5 sage leaves (thank you, backyard herb garden)
.5 oz sugar syrup
.25 oz lemon juice (make it fresh!)
2.0 oz rye whiskey (2.5 if you want the taste of the rye to come through more strongly.)

Add the plum and sage to the shaker. You will want to muddle this one rather vigorously - it may help to add the sage and half the plum, muddle, and then add the rest of the plum and then muddle again. Fill the shaker with ice and then add the remaining ingredients. Shake and strain into a cocktail glass.

Verdict: Wow. This is very, very good. The plums, sage and rye are such a natural pairing that it's hard to tell where one flavor ends and another begins. It's sweet and smooth and herbal and complicated. Adding a couple dashes of Peychaud's bitters will add an interesting, licorice-y dimension to it. (Sounds weird, but - try it.) Just don't drink it too fast. Rye whiskey is almost 50 percent alcohol. I'm gonna go sit down.

Mr. Stair

2010-08-26T19:42:00.004-05:00

I wanted to try the Mr. Stair pretty much as soon as I got my copy of Food and Wine Cocktails 2009. It's right there on the front cover, all pretty and opaque and pale green. Problem was, the recipe calls for...cucumber juice. As you can imagine, I was a little bit intimidated by this. How does one liquefy a cucumber? In the wise words of my friend Sarah, "juicing a cucumber sounds a little bit like milking a cat. Possible but uncommon and possibly unpleasant".

So I shelved my dream of a pretty green cocktail until sometime after this post, when I picked up the book again and realized, wait. I juiced a blackberry...why the heck can't I juice a cucumber? (Plus, I had just made the post about St. Germain and was pretty pumped about making cocktails with it.) Turns out the cucumber was a bit more work, but I persevered. Here's what you have to do - cut the cucumber into little bits. (And I mean little, like 1/4" cubes.) You don't need to juice the whole cucumber if you just plan on making a few drinks...about 1/3 will do. Throw them into the blender with a little bit of water (I added 1/2 oz), and start on a low setting, working your way up to higher settings until the cucumber is liquefied. Then strain the cucumber through a sieve, as described here.

Then gather together:
2 oz. Williams Pear eau-de-vie*
3/4 oz St. Germain elderflower liqueur
1/2 oz lemon juice (fresh squeezed please)
1/2 oz hard-fought cucumber juice (from a cucumber grown by some nice local farmers)
1/4 oz simple syrup
The original recipe calls for a dash of orange bitters, but I like it better without. If you have some, feel free to try it both ways and judge for yourself.

*Pear eau-de-vie is a brandy that's made from distilled pears. (As opposed to traditional brandy, which is made from grapes.) This stuff is expensive, but surprisingly versatile. It shows up here, came in handy in the St.Germain sangria, and is an essential ingredient in the pear/bourbon old-fashioned that is one of my favorite drinks. (And very likely a future post.)

Add all the ingredients to a cocktail shaker full of ice. Shake until the shaker is nice and frosty. Strain into a pretty glass.

Credit for this recipe goes to Vincenzo Marianella (at the Copa D'Oro in Los Angeles. (Actually, Santa Monica, which, as Rachel knows, is where Frank Gehry is from)). To whom I say: you, sir, are a cocktailing genius. Also, I may have to plan a trip to LA just to visit this bar.

Verdict: Very pear-y. (It's a teeny bit of a disappointment after all that work I went to, but I don't taste the cucumber at all.) Beautifully light and sweet - looks and tastes not quite like any other cocktail I've ever had.

Pink Lemons!

2010-08-25T00:30:00.008-05:00

One of my recent garden purchases (and there have been many) is a Pink Eureka Lemon tree. I never would've thought I could be super excited about a tree...but I am really excited about this thing. Eureka lemons are just the plain old variety you get at the grocery store, but the pink ones are a mutation (awesome!) that was discovered in a California citrus grove in 1931. Some people say these lemons taste subtly different from the plain, non-mutated ones - they're supposed to be fruitier (fruitier? what's fruitier than a fruit?) and more floral. Well, maybe I have an uneducated palatte, but I just tasted lemon.

The difference, and the reason I am so excited about this tree, is that pink lemons look like what normal lemons would look like if they were total badasses. Outside, the rind is yellow with green stripes, like a little tiny watermelon, and inside the flesh is a subtle peachy-pink. (Unfortunately, pink lemon juice is not pink. It just looks like normal lemon juice. Bummer, I know.)

but still. I mean...stripes!

When I first acquired my pink lemon tree, it already had two fruits on it. I felt like an accomplished gardener just for picking it up at the farmers' market. Over the next few weeks, I thought long and hard about what to do with my pink lemons - clearly I could not use them in just any old drink. It had to be something that would showcase their mutant greatness. Enter...the Lemon-Basil Margarita. (recipe from this book.)

1/2 lemon, seeded and thinly sliced into half-wheels*
2 basil leaves
1/4 oz agave nectar**
2 oz gold tequila
1 oz grand marnier (or triple sec, if you don't feel like shelling out for the grand marnier.)
crushed ice

*You don't have to use pink lemons. your drink will taste just as good (but not look quite as good) with plain old lemons.
**Debate (some of it very scientific) rages over the use of agave nectar v. simple syrup in margaritas. I prefer the agave nectar, so I substituted 1/4 oz agave nectar for the 1/2 oz simple syrup originally called for, since agave nectar is sweeter.

Okay, so I might've gotten a little carried away with the lemon. But who can blame me?

Muddle the lemon slices, basil, and simple syrup in a mixing glass. Add the tequila, grand marnier, and 1 cup crushed ice. Stir until completely mixed, and then let sit for at least a minute. (It's important when stirring cocktails to allow time for the ice to melt a little, since the that little bit of melted water in the drink mellows the burn of the booze.)

Verdict: Sweet, delicious margarita taste. Basil adds a nice twist. (But we already knew that tequila and basil play well together.) Oh - and mighty, mighty strong. You might want to wait for the ice to melt a little before you finish this one.

halfway to nirvana.

The Happy Birthday Page St. Germain Elderflower Sangria

2010-08-10T23:48:00.012-05:00

In the world of mixology, St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur is Kind of a Big Deal. In the 2009 edition of the book of cocktail recipes that Food & Wine magazine publishes every year, there are 10 different cocktails featuring St. Germain. (For comparison, there were only 9 with vodka.) So St. Germain is new now and super trendy, and, like many people who were nerds in high school, I have a certain suspicion of anything incredibly popular. So it was with a bit of reluctlance that I bought my first bottle.

My mind began to change when I first held the bottle in my hand. I know, it's a bottle of liquor, not a baby, but seriously - this bottle is gorgeous. Just it being on the counter was enough to give my kitchen a certain air of sophistication. And the taste - is beyond incredible. Fruity and floral, sweet without being too heavy. Other bloggers have attempted to break it down into its component parts, but I just thought - "I bet this is what ambrosia tastes like". (I just looked up ambrosia on Wikipedia, to make certain it was what I thought it was, and the article described it as "a kind of divine exhalation of the earth". St. Germain elderflower liqueur is a divine exhalation of the earth.)

It has a pretty cool story, too - the flowers used to make the liqueur are handpicked, in the foothills of the Alps, during only a few days every spring, by only 40 or 50 different guys, and then transported to the distillery by bicycle. By bicycle. Each bottle has a little label with the vintage year and its own individual number, which should make you feel a little better about paying as much for it as you did.

In other news, Page had a birthday (on July 3rd, which tells you how behind I am with these posts), and Jessie had a party for her, part of which was a talent show. Well, my talents are...singing Total Eclipse of the Heart at the top of my lungs, and making cat noises. So I made sangria. Of course it had to be something original, since Page is an original, and I had that lovely bottle of St. Germain sitting on the counter, beckoning to me. And it was right there on the box, all helpful-like, how great St. Germain is with white wine. And St-Germain is light and fruity and sweet, just like the wines Page likes (I've drunk a lot of wine with Page), so really it was a no-brainer.

People keep asking me how I knew which fruits to add to the sangria, and the answer is: I am a culinary genius. No, the answer is, I looked at a few other blog posts about St. Germain, and people were saying things like "hints of peach!" "hints of pear!" "hints of citrus!", so I started there. The one thing I didn't see was "hints of elderflower!" because apparently nobody else knows what an elderflower is supposed to taste like, either.

St. Germain White Sangria
1 bottle dry white wine*
1 cup Gt. Germain
3/4 cup pear nectar
1/4 cup poire william eau-de-vie (pear-flavored brandy), if you have it**
2 peaches, pitted and sliced***

1 pear, cored and sliced****
1 cup red grapefruit, cut into wedges
1 cup green grapes, cut in half

2 tablespoons simple syrup

*Sauvignon blanc and pinot grigio are good choices for a white sangria. I used Messina Hof's pinot grigio. Yay Texas!

**If not, go ahead and add a full cup of pear nectar.

***I used white peaches, for a more subtle peach flavor, but yellow will work, too.

****Pears aren't very good at infusing, hence the eau-de-vie and the pear nectar. The sliced pear is really more for looks (and post-sangria snacking).

Mix it all up (make sure your pitcher is big enough before you start adding the ingredients!), cover the pitcher, and allow to steep in the fridge overnight (or for at least eight hours).

Verdict: Peach and pear and all sorts of flavors meld together seamlessly into something indescribably sweet and light. Pretty much the perfect summer drink.

Pirate Berry Infusion

2010-08-09T22:58:00.010-05:00

The original recipe for the Pirate Berry Infusion comes from this book, which has lots of recipes for infusions using seasonal fruit. Apparently this is a book is for people who really, really like drinking, because the original recipe calls for two 750 mL bottles of rum, which comes out to...a lot of rum. I'm pretty sure that with nearly 2 liters of berry-flavored rum I could make a daiquiri for everyone I've ever met in my entire life.

Or just one daiquiri for an actual pirate.

So I cut the recipe in half, and made a few other tweaks, too - I substituted cinnamon sticks for cinnamon syrup (mostly because...I was too lazy to make a cinnamon syrup), and I used a little bit less fruit than the recipe called for and cheated by muddling it instead. The original recipe didn't call for any muddling, which I thought was odd because, well, blueberries are not infusing into anything in any big hurry unless you help them out a little bit.

It turns out that infusions are a lot harder to make up (or tweak) on the fly than your average cocktail. (Most cocktails don't require you to invest a week and an entire bottle of liquor.) I managed to screw this one up twice - the first one was too sweet (I forgot about it and let it infuse too long - whoops), and the second one had hardly any flavor at all. (I think the berries weren't fresh enough.) Finally, on the third try, I manged to get it Just Right.

Pirate Berry Infusion

1 750 ml bottle dark rum (I used Gosling's)

1 pint raspberries

1 pint blackberries*

1 pint Texas blueberries

1 cinnamon stick, broken in half

1 tsp fresh-squeezed lemon juice**

*These were still available locally as of the making of infusion number one...but sadly, not anymore.

**Acts as a sort of preservative, without adding any discernable flavor.

Place the cinnamon stick in the bottom of a glass jar, and layer the berries on top. Muddle the berries lightly as you add each layer - emphasis on lightly. The goal is to break the berries up a little so they release their flavor into the rum, not smash them into a paste. You'll want to muddle the blueberries the most and the raspberries the least, because they are already kind of smooshy and will succumb easily. When you're done muddling, add the rum and the lemon juice. Seal the jar and let it sit in a cool, dark location for a week, or a few days longer if you want a stronger berry flavor. You can always taste the rum to check its progress. (I'm sure you don't need to be encouraged to do this.)

Once the appropriate waiting period is finished, strain the rum into a bottle (it will be a nice cranberry color - purdy), and you're ready for:

The Pirate Daiquiri

2.5 oz pirate infusion

.5 oz fresh squeezed lime juice

.5 oz sugar syrup

Stir all ingredients together in a glass full of ice. After stirring, let the glass sit for a couple minutes - you want to make sure the ice melts into the drink a little to mellow out the booze. (Or you can use a shaker and eliminate the waiting.) Strain into a martini glass, garnish with a cinnamon stick if you're feeling fancy, and enjoy.

Verdict: Sweet and berry-licious, with just the right amount of sour from the lime and a hint of cinnamon to boot. Yum.

The Bloodhound

2010-08-07T15:30:00.010-05:00

So, now that you know all about vermouth...time to start mixing.

The Bloodhound #1. Bloodhound #2 in background.

Dale Degroff, in his book The Craft of the Cocktail, lists a recipe for a cocktail called the Bloodhound that includes raspberries, both sweet and dry vermouth, and a prodigious amount of gin. This cocktail appeared in a lot of cocktail collections in the '20s and '30s, when people apparently couldn't get enough of vermouth (and gin). With Dale's blessing (he says it's okay to use "seasonal fruit"), I re-created this cocktail with blackberries. Yikes. It tasted like...a big old wallop of gin and vermouth. If I wanted a mouthful of gin I would be drinking a martini, already, so I set about tinkering and adjusting proportions.

I was all set to print only a version using local fruits, but at the last minute I decided to try this with the raspberries, as per the original recipe. (Raspberries and gin are good friends - a quick google search will yield lots of recipes for martinis made with gin and chambord.) At first I thought I liked the raspberry one better (embarassing, since this blog is supposed to be all about the local produce, and raspberries come from California), but the second time I tried the Bloodhound #2, I discovered, all of a sudden, an unexpected and fascinating complexity. Berries - vermouth - gin. Yes. So I struck upon an analogy - the Bloodhound #1 is a Mr. Bingley sort of cocktail. Friendly, immediately charming. Curly blonde hair, if you watched the 5-hr BBC special. The Bloodhound #2 is a Mr. Darcy sort of cocktail. Handsome, much less accessible, but with unexpected depth and charm. Jane Austen fans and mixologists alike rejoice.

I like my cocktails like I like my men...dark, unapproachable, and complicated.

The Bloodhound #1
Sweet burst of raspberry on the opening note - vermouth, gin and lemon play second fiddle in a symphony of deliciousness.

8 raspberries
1.5 oz gin
.5 oz sweet vermouth
.5 oz dry vermouth
.25 oz lemon juice
splash of sugar syrup (or a bit more, to taste)

The Bloodhound #2
Vermouth comes through a little more strongly in this one. The sweetness of the berries and a bit of bite from the gin and vermouth blend together into a drink that is dark, mysterious, and rewarding. If the vermouth-y taste is too much for you, you can try cutting it with a little more lemon juice and sugar syrup. Don't add too much, though (by this I mean less than 1/4 oz of each) - or that's all you'll be able to taste.

8 blackberries
1.5 oz gin
.5 oz sweet vermouth.
.5 oz dry vermouth
.25 oz lemon juice
.25 oz sugar syrup

Muddle the fruit together with the sugar syrup in the mixing glass of your shaker. Keep on muddling until you get a nice mush. Fill the glass with ice, add the gin, vermouth and lemon juice, and shake like a madman. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with some berries, if you're feeling festive, and enjoy.

Cocktail University: Vermouth 101

2010-08-07T15:02:00.007-05:00

I hardly ever cook (unless you count frozen pizza), so I'm always having the experience at restaurants where you're looking at the menu and you see a dish that contains something like "pecorino gastrique" and you're like, what the heck is that? And you want to order the dish, because everything else sounds so good, but the gastrique is not to be trusted, because it could be something delicious, but it could also be something totally crazy that will ruin your meal. So you play it safe and get the margerita pizza, ashamed of your ignorance.

It is my goal that no one should ever have to feel this pain when looking at a drink menu. Allow me to be your guide to the cocktailing world. Maybe at this point you are thinking, whoooa Nancy, obviously I know what vermouth is. I have been making drinks for years! (Or maybe you're a martini fiend.) If this is the case, skip to the next post and do not allow me to insult your intelligence any longer. I, for one, used to look at cocktail menus and wonder, "wtf is vermouth anyway?" So I did some research, and this is what I found.

Vermouth is a fortified wine, like Madeira or sherry. At 18% alcohol by volume, it is one of the most potent things you can buy at the grocery store (at least in Texas), although it's not usually taken straight. "Fortified" means the wine has had a distilled spirit - in this case brandy - added to it, which accounts for the higher alcohol content. (I edited this article to add this after commenter veritas so helpfully pointed it out to me.)

Additionally, vermouth is flavored with herbs and spices (like cardamom, cinnamon, majorjam, and chamomile), so a little bit of vermouth packs a lot of taste. The first vermouth was invented in 1786 in Italy - apparently all the herbal flavors helped to mask the cheapness of cheap wine. (Europeans are very inventive when it comes to drinking.) In Europe it's traditionally drunk before a meal - like the alcoholic version of an appetizer - but we Americans prefer ours in cocktails.

At this point I was going to describe the different vermouths based on how they smell, since I just said not to drink them straight. But then I was like, wait, I am supposed to be an intrepid cocktail blogger. And you don't smell cocktails. You drink them. So here goes:

French, or dry vermouth, is what most people think of when they think of vermouth. Dry vermouth is colorless - it's the one you make a martini with. My first sip of french vermouth tasted a whole lot like medicine. The second sip actually tasted like white wine, although with a whole lot more going on. Aftertaste of...well, unfortunately, my palate is not sophisticated enough to pick out all the different herbs and spices. I tried and tried to think what the taste of french vermouth reminded me of and then I realized...it reminded me of a martini. So I'm just gonna say - lots of flavor, almost savory. Different, but not unpleasant.

Sweet, or Italian vermouth, is brown. It's what you'd use to make a manhattan. It smells spicy, sweet, and robust, and tastes...heavenly. (I didn't think I was going to say that, but then that's what I thought.) It's like when I was little, I used to open the cabinet in the kitchen where my mom kept all the spices and stick my nose in and smell all the aromas blending together. Sweet vermouth smells just like that and tastes just like it too, but sweeter. I think I may have a new favorite thing.

One more thing about vermouth - it's essentially wine, so you can't just keep it on the counter indefinitely like you would with liquor. Exactly how long one can keep vermouth is hotly debated in the spirit community - you see different answers to this question everywhere - but the general consensus seems to be that a bottle of vermouth will keep for anywhere from 3-6 months in the fridge. Which is really just another excuse to make more cocktails - you wouldn't want to waste it, right?

The easiest (and most delicious) pitcher drinks you will ever make.

2010-07-20T22:38:00.008-05:00

I secretly long to be Martha Stewart. I dream of having perfect, mosquito-free garden parties where everyone drinks perfect summery drinks from mason jars and everything is recorded for posterity in dreamy, short depth of field-y photos.

This was right before the tree caught fire.

But I am not Martha Stewart, I am a normal person. I do not have hundreds of hours or thousands of dollars or a team of photographers. To make my parties awesome, I must rely on my own wit and daring, plus a few tricks I've picked up over the years. One of which is: pitcher drinks. You can mix them up the night before, pop them in the fridge, and when it's party time, impress your guests with your cocktail making skillz without having to spend the entire time in the kitchen. These are my absolute favorite - I make them for almost every party I have, and they are always a huge hit. Plus they're almost stupidly easy to make. And did I mention delicious?

Strawberry Basil Margaritas
(Okay, so of course this was inspired by the drink they serve at the Volcano, but the pitcher recipe is my own.)
12 strawberries, hulled and sliced
8 basil leaves (harvested from the back porch!)
one can frozen limeade concentrate
tequila! (I prefer the gold for this recipe.)

First, mix up the limeade. The package will say to add 4 1/3 cans of water; I usually add 3 cans of water and 1 1/3 cans of tequila. (If your friends are squeamish about drinking, or you like your margaritas less strong - well, add a bit less.) Lightly muddle the basil, or smoosh it gently with the back of a spoon - this will help the basil essence to diffuse into the drink. Add the strawberries and basil to the pitcher and stick the whole thing (covered) into the fridge overnight, or for at least four hours.

When you retrieve the pitcher everything will have turned a nice pale pink. Serve over ice, and wait for the compliments to pour in.