Posted by Cameron on 04.20.07 7:05 AM
![cabaret [c] AEC 2007 ** all rights reserved](/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/cabaretc2007aecallrightsreserved.jpg)
“What a party.”
I figured that we were in for a good time when we hosted Mixology Monday: how can you go wrong with champagne and fun-loving crew of cocktailian bloggers? But there’s no way that I could have prepared for this bash.
The place was the kind of mess that only a spectacular party leaves behind. Bottles of champagne stacked three deep on the kitchen counter. The compost bin overflowed with squeezed fruit and zested lemons and limes.
I shambled through the house, stumbling across glassware, napkins, and hazy flashes from the night before. I remembered a woman musing on the best cocktail for an Aquarian. An intricate lesson in granita manufacture. A heated debate over the qualities of rye. A dessicated pile of yellow strips reminds me of the impromptu peel-carving contest.
“Oh hell. It’s Thursday. ” Anita wandered into the kitchen. “That party lasted all week. I don’t know what I’m going to tell the office. And what are we going to post for Drink of the Week?”
“There has to be something here we can use,” I said, pawing through the regiment of half-empty liquor bottles standing guard on the counter: bourbon, brandy, gin, vanilla Cognac, homemade infusions, syrups. “What about this?” I waggled the bottle of Benedictine that we’d purchased to make the Pegu Club version of the Prince of Wales.
“Hang on.” Anita dove into the Web and came up with a recipe: gin, vermouth, Benedictine, and bitters. We mixed it up and clinked glasses. “L’Chaim,” I said, “Funny thing, isn’t it?”
A smile touched her lips. “Yes,” she said. “It’s a Cabaret.”
Cabaret
1 oz. gin
3/4 oz. dry vermouth
1/4 oz. Benedictine
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Stir with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a brandied cherry.
Drink of the Week, entertaining, recipes
5 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 04.13.07 7:08 AM
Here’s another Champagne cocktail, in honor of next week’s Mixology Monday festivities.
A word-prankster of the highest order, Cameron turned to me at the bar one night and asked: “If you mixed Chartreuse and Champagne, would you get a Chanteuse?” I laughed, and then exclaimed: “Hey, wait — that sounds like a tasty drink!”
Back home, a bit of experimentation proved that the two ingredients alone weren’t really much of a cocktail. But add a few dashes of bitters and a splash of citrus, and you’ve got yourself a sparkling combination worthy of the fussiest diva.
Chanteuse
1 oz. green Chartreuse
1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice
3 to 4 dashes orange bitters
sparkling wine
In a Champagne flute, combine the Chartreuse, lemon juice, and bitters. Top with bubbly, and garnish with a lemon twist, if desired.
Drink of the Week, Mixology Monday, other blogs, recipes, wine & bubbly
3 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 04.06.07 7:24 AM
I’ve confessed, repeatedly, to my tinkering tendencies. I never met a recipe that I couldn’t futz into an unrecognizable state. Now, it seems, my little problem is taking on a life of its own: I can’t even drink nice cocktails at perfectly respectable establishments without wondering just what might help make them a wee bit better.
This whole sorry tale started out a few months ago with a dinner at Perbacco, SF’s ultra-popular downtown ristorante. True to their Italian niche, the Perbacco bar menu features a number of cocktails that feel like a hip bartender’s fantasy of la dolce vita: a bit of Carpano Antica here, a splash of Prosecco there, a titch of amaro, and plenty of sassy citrus for everyone! The drink that caught my eye on our first visit — and held my fickle gaze on a return trip — is a pretty little thing called the Rosmarino: Grey Goose vodka, lemon juice, rosemary simple syrup, and Clear Creek apple brandy; shaken, up, rosemary garnish. As delicious as it was, the apple flavor seemed a little misplaced, and the rosemary notes a tad thin (despite the not-terribly appetizing bits of muddled herbage floating around).
Not long after this, I tasted another citrusy drink on the menu at Bemelmans Bar on our NYC trip. Christened La Cinque (that’s “the five” in Italian for you non-jetsetters), the menu listed pear vodka, moscato d’Asti, fresh lime, simple syrup, and Angostura bitters. Surely, it was a lovely combination, although the syrup combined with the sweet moscato to take the sugar hit right over the top.
I’d made a batch of rosemary syrup a couple weeks back — steeping a few sprigs of fresh rosemary in a warm batch of 1:1 simple syrup — in an effort to figure out precisely what was needed to fine-tune the Rosmarino to my liking. But time got away from me, and the jar of syrup ended up in the freezer. So when the time came to try to replicate La Cinque at home, I decided to combine these two Italian-inspired recipes into a single cocktail. It took a few tries to get the balance right; you’ll want to tinker with the syrup levels depending on the dryness of your bubbly. Using a bone-dry California sparkler, we needed the full 1/2 ounce; if you opt for a Prosecco or other off-dry option, you’ll likely need the lesser amount… unless you like your drinks on the sweet side.
The Rosemary Five
– adapted from La Cinque, Bemelmans Bar (NYC) and Rosmarino, Perbacco (SF)
1 oz. pear vodka or pear eau de vie (such as Absolut Pears or Clear Creek Williams Pear)
1/2 oz. fresh lime juice
1/4 to 1/2 oz. rosemary simple syrup
3 dashes Angostura bitters
dry sparkling wine
Shake the vodka with the lime juice and syrup in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into a 6-ounce cocktail glass, and top with sparkling wine, to fill. Garnish with a sprig of fresh rosemary.
—–
A gentle reminder from your host and hostess: You’ve now just over a week to break out the bubbly and show us your best Champagne cocktails for MxMo14. In the meantime, we’ll be posting a few other sparklies we’ve collected over the last couple of months… all in the name of “research”, dontcha know?
Drink of the Week, drinks, Mixology Monday, recipes, wine & bubbly
7 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 03.30.07 7:05 AM
Despite its presence in every decent cocktail manual — and on many of those mixer glasses with drink recipes printed on the side — many serious drinkers would be hard pressed to detail the ingredients of the venerable Ramos Gin Fizz beyond “Gin… and, uh, something fizzy?”
I would have had to include myself in that statement until I sat down at Pegu Club on a slow evening and asked Nate what he did with the cardamom tincture behind the bar. And although I’m not usually one for frosty cocktails, especially when it’s blizzarding outside, this was one hell of a tasty drink.
Ramos Gin Fizz
1-1/2 to 2 oz. dry gin
1/2 oz. lemon juice
1/2 oz. lime juice
1 oz. light cream
1 egg white (use the pasteurized sort, if you’re feeling squeamish)
a splash of soda water, plus more for finishing
2 to 3 drops of orange-flower water
1T confectioners sugar
In a cocktail shaker half-filled with ice, shake all ingredients vigorously until they reach the proper foamy texture. (If you’re all alone, I suppose you could use a blender, but serious folks would call you unflattering names behind your back.) Strain into a tall glass and top with a touch more club soda — but beware the watery Ramos.
Drink of the Week, drinks, recipes
10 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 03.23.07 6:07 AM
Another citrusy drink from last week’s visits to the Pegu Club. Although the original recipe calls for 1/4 ounce of simple syrup, Nate made it for us without — and it definitely tasted plenty sweet from the Chartreuse. On paper, it feels like a Friday After Five, but the missing anise and green-herb notes prevents the similiarity.
Cloister
1-1/2 oz. gin
1/2 oz. yellow Chartreuse
1/2 oz. grapefuit juice
1/4 oz. lemon juice
Shake all ingredients with ice, and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a twist, preferably grapefruit.
Drink of the Week, drinks, recipes
2 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 03.16.07 7:08 AM
No mere pretender to the retro cocktail trend, the Pegu Club is a true vintage recipe. It’s been making the rounds since at least the 1920s, and was purportedly invented at the eponymous club in Burma during the British colonial era. (If you’re curious, Robert Hess has a nice DrinkBoy article on the recipe’s evolution over time.)
I first tasted this drink years ago (at the Zig Zag, where else?) but I’ve never tried making it at home. For some reason, even though the ingredients are far from obscure, it just feels more like the kind of drink you want someone else to make.
Luckily for lazy drinkers like me, it’s becoming easier to find bartenders who know how to properly construct this tangy treat. Pegu’s become something of a darling in cocktail circles in the last few years, so much so that in 2005, Audrey Saunders adopted its name — and its Asian vibe — for her now-legendary cocktailian haunt. As you might imagine, getting a properly made Pegu Club cocktail at the Pegu Club is as easy as asking.
Pegu Club
2 oz. gin
1 oz. orange curaçao
1 tsp. lime juice
dash Angostura bitters
dash orange bitters
Shake all ingredients with ice, and strain into a cocktail class. Garnish with a lime.
bar culture, Drink of the Week, drinks, NYC, recipes
11 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 03.09.07 7:15 AM
Most shooters have raunchy names that can’t be printed on a blog that my mom reads, and/or ingredient lists that sound like a recipe for instant projectile vomiting. So, picking a drink for next week’s episode of Mixology Monday — hosted by Rick over at Martini Lounge — feels a bit like being forced to buy clothes at the Goodwill: It’s not going to be pretty, and the best you can hope for is something that won’t make you embarassed to show your face among your peers.
In this case, just like second-hand garb, we decided it would be better to bypass the trendy and bizarre choices, and opt for a classic silhouette. Simple elegance in a shot glass, if you will.
The B-52
1 part Kahlua
1 part Bailey’s Irish Cream
1 part Grand Marnier
Layer the liqueurs into a cordial glass in the order listed, carefully pouring over the back of a bar spoon to keep each one distinct.
Edited to add: This is one of those recipes where it’s important to use the actual brand listed, rather than substituting. Different liqueurs have different specific gravities, which makes a difference when it comes to maintaining the integrity of the layers.
———
Remember, next month’s exciting episode of MxMo will be hosted right here on MwD on April 16. Our theme is Champagne cocktails, so get those sparkling ideas ready…
Drink of the Week, drinks, Mixology Monday, other blogs, recipes
Comments Off on DOTW: The B-52
Posted by Anita on 03.02.07 3:38 PM
We’re all down with eating seasonally here in the Bay Area. But how about drinking seasonally?
California growers coax most popular citrus fruits into year-round abundance, so it’s easy to forget that these tart treats — especially many of the obscure varieties — are truly winter fruits. Specifically, sour oranges like Bergamots and Sevilles have a painfully short harvest each January or February, a fact that oddly endears them to many aficionados. This same scarcity has inspired countless generations of English cooks to put up marmalades, to extend this slice of winter sunshine as long as possible.
I’m so enamored of specialty citrus that we’ve planted a miniature grove in our tiny yard: A full size Meyer lemon, a dwarf Bergamot, and a shrub-size Makrut (kaffir) lime. The bergamots we harvested this week were zested for a micro-batch of bergamocello; I hope next year we’ll have enough to make preserves or at least make a small batch of bergamot orangettes (would that be bergamettes?). But these same few fruits yielded just enough juice for a round of one of my favorite cocktails, dubbed the “Friday After Five” in honor of the eGullet thread that spawned it.
If you can’t find Bergamots, feel free to substitute fresh grapefruit juice. It won’t taste the same, of course, but then — like favas and peaches and sun-ripened tomatoes, in their turn — the drink’s fleeting flavor is part of the charm. If you’re anything like me, the haunting scent of Bergamot may even be enough to make you wish for winter in the summertime.
Friday After Five
1 ounce gin
1/2 ounce green Chartreuse
3/4 ounce bergamot juice
1 dash Herbsaint, absinthe or Pernod
Shake over ice, and pour into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a bergamot twist, if desired.
Drink of the Week, drinks, food boards, garden, recipes
8 Comments »
Posted by a Special Guest on 02.23.07 7:03 AM
Editor’s note: I don’t know about the rest of you, but I for one have missed Drink of the Week during its recent hiatus. (Perhaps that’s just a sign of how much I desperately need a cocktail, but I digress…)
This week’s guest-bartender duties fall to our friends Lauren & Paul, another pair of cocktail aficionados from our Seattle crew. Just looking at that gorgeous photo reminds me of the wonderful parties they host in their fabulous house, and all the nights we’ve spent together at the Zig Zag, Union, and other Jet City cocktail haunts.
Last fall, we took a wine-tasting trip to the Okanagan. (Don’t ask me why it’s spelled “Okanagan” in Canada and “Okanogan” in the US — it’s just one of those mysteries of life.) As we wandered around the little towns, we noticed each ice-cream parlor offered a flavor called “Tiger Tiger”.
After many days of seeing this oddly named ice cream, we had to try it. Turns out it’s orange and black-licorice ice cream swirled together to create a tiger-stripe effect. We decided the same flavor combination might make for a good cocktail. And so it does:
Tiger Tiger
2 oz. gin
3/4 oz. orange curacao
1/4 oz. lemon juice
splash Pernod
2 dashes orange bitters
Shake all ingredients, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon peel.
Drink of the Week, drinks, recipes
2 Comments »
Posted by a Special Guest on 02.02.07 7:07 AM
Editor’s note: Our next guest behind the bar is our friend Dayne, who lives — and drinks — in Seattle with his wife, Wendy (of fondue mac & cheese fame).
When Anita asked for a guest drink submission, I was a bit stumped at first. Most of the more-interesting things we make come from recipes I’ve found online in the first place, so simply re-posting one of those seemed a little boring.
A while back, I’d read Paul’s post over at The Cocktail Chronicles about the Blood & Sand, and followed that up by reading Gary Regan’s article on the same drink. It seemed like an interesting drink, though a bit bizarre: I’d never been much of a Scotch drinker — that’s slowly changing — and Scotch in a cocktail sounded especially strange.
Early last fall, I finally got around to acquiring some Cherry Heering with the intention of making Singapore Slings, but realized I finally had the missing ingredient for a proper Blood & Sand. Digging through old boxes of liquor that had come into our marriage from who-knows-where (I blame my best man, who has brought open-bottle remnants to more than one party), I found some Scotch, put everything together in the original equal-proportion recipe, and took a sip.
Ugghh. Awful. Beyond bad.
OK, so maybe it was the Scotch. I don’t remember what brand was involved, but it made for a pretty horrendous cocktail. Could have been the vermouth too. Feeling that the drink deserve another try, I tested Ted Haigh’s 4:4:3:3 variation, with no better luck.
I mentioned my unsuccessful experiments to Murray and Kacy down at the Zig Zig, and both of them said the same thing: “Use rum instead” — an interesting possibility. Somehow, I’d never quite gotten around to trying this variation. But earlier this week, I pulled out all the makings and gave them a shake. The result was a pleasantly mild drink with a tiki-ish flavor profile, but much less sweet than most tropical concoctions.
Since that evening, I’ve tried another Blood and Sand with some Famous Grouse — again a party remnant, though coincidentally the same brand that Paul used in his original post — and Carpano Punt e Mes vermouth. Much more successful, and almost certainly closer to what the cocktail was intended to taste like.
But the rum variation is worthy in its own right. Using a new base liquor usually calls for a new name; it’s possible that someone’s already christened this drink elsewhere, but I haven’t been able to find it. So, I give you:
The Bloody Beach
3/4 oz. medium-bodied rum (I used Appleton V/X)
3/4 oz. cherry brandy (Cherry Heering or Cherry Marnier — don’t use a clear eau-de-vie)
3/4 oz. sweet vermouth (I used Carpano Punt e Mes)
3/4 oz. fresh-squeezed orange juice, strained
Shake all ingredients vigorously with ice, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Drink of the Week, drinks, other blogs, recipes
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