Posted by Cameron on 11.30.06 11:56 PM
“When I’m–er–concentrating, 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.”
–James Bond, Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
Was ever a character from popular literature more poorly served by Hollywood than James Bond? We all know the silver screen buffoonery: arch, cartoonish cardboard cutouts with sapphire blue eyes. Hit the tape marks and luxuriate in the JiggleVision. Dress like a peacock, shake the gadgets. Secret agent? Bah. This is a man so monomaniacal in his habits that even his enemies know his drink preference.
But on the page, Ian Fleming’s international spy is a different man. He prefers a low profile. He is thoughtful and specific, driven by both personal inclination and professional urgency. He is a hopeless romantic and desperately human. Over the course of the original thirteen novels and a few short stories, Bond falls deeply in love, again and again, in the face of brutal heartbreak. He takes great pains to remain anonymous and alive in a dangerous trade, and he is intimately, passionately connected with the day-to-day business of living.
“You must forgive me,” he said. “I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It comes partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking a lot of trouble over details. It’s very pernickety and old-maidish really, but then when I’m working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble.”
“Shaken, not stirred,” marketing-friendly bull***t be damned. Bond drinks whatever is appropriate, local, and good. In Turkey, it’s Kavaklidere, “a rich coarse burgundy like any other Balkan wine”. In the Caribbean: gin, tonic and lime (you can take the Boy out of the Empire…). Champagne? Just watch the man go. And when the vodka comes out, our man James drops pepper on top, for practical and aesthetic reasons:
‘It’s a trick the Russians taught me that time you attached me to the Embassy in Moscow,’ apologized Bond. ‘There’s often quite a lot of fusel oil on the surface of this stuff –at least there used to be when it was badly distilled. Poisonous. In Russia, where you get a lot of bath-tub liquor, it’s an understood thing to sprinkle a little pepper in your glass. It takes the fusel oil to the bottom. I got to like the taste and now it’s a habit. But I shouldn’t have insulted the club Wolfschmidt,’ he added with a grin.
But there’s only one drink that Bond invented, and it’s not the one you might think. The medium-dry vodka martini may have launched a thousand ships, but the Vesper, introduced in Casino Royale, is the original–really, the only–Bond drink. Not surprisingly, it’s a much more interesting cocktail:
“A dry Martini,” he said. “One. In a deep champagne goblet.”
“Oui, Monseiur.”
“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?”
In The Book of Bond, Kingsley Amis argues that the mixture is a mistake, as that quantity of Kina Lillet would have made the cocktail undrinkably bitter. We will never know for sure, as the formula of Lillet was changed in 1986. Happily, the new Lillet works like a charm.
Made with one “measure” equaling one ounce, the Vesper is indeed a large, strong, cold cocktail. The vodka takes the edge off the gin and contributes a bit of sweetness which is reinforced by the Lillet and the lemon.
“This drink’s my own invention. I’m going to patent it when I can think of a good name.”
As might be expected, James can only find a bad one. This drink’s name comes from Vesper Lynd, a female spy who Bond initially ignores but then falls in love with. Vesper turns out to be a double-agent working for both the Russians and the British while in France. It’s a combination that echoes the ingredients of the cocktail that eventually bears her name: vodka, gin, and vermouth.
The Vesper
3 ounces gin
1 ounce vodka
1/2 ounce Lillet
Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass (or champagne coupe, if you have one). Garnish with a large, thin slice of lemon peel. Bet large. Tip the chef de partie. Flirt with Moneypenny. Get out before they use the laser.
Drink of the Week, drinks, literary, recipes
10 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 11.24.06 8:25 AM
When plotting out this week’s pre-Thanksgiving meals, I decided that it had been too long since we’d enjoyed any home-cooked Mexican treats. And because I’ve already renewed the Doña Tomás cookbook three times at the library (no más renewals for me), I wanted to try one more recipe out of it.
I picked out a chicken taco recipe — mostly on the strength of its interesting-sounding salsa — and happened upon a recipe for Michelada, a beer-based concoction, which I added to the menu.
Once I get the week’s dinners sussed out, I shuffle them around, matching each meal’s complexity to the days of the week that make the most sense. Since we were facing a short week with Thanksiving travel planned, I didn’t have a lot of wiggle room. But, consulting my trust Rancho Gordo calendar, I noticed that Tuesday, 11/20, was the anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. Perfecto!
When I went downstairs to copy the recipes out of the cookbook, imagine my amusement to find this snippet in the Michelada header notes:
Without General Don Augusto Michel, there would have been no Mexican Revolution, and no such drink as the Michelada. Actually the revolution probably would’ve still taken place, but we definitely would have been deprived of this unique libation… which is not really a beer, not really a cocktail.
And, at least anecdotally, they appear to be correct… at least about the drink’s legendary namesake. Here’s another snippet from a Mexican food distributor‘s site:
This traditional Mexican drink has been around since the days of the Mexican Revolution. A revolutionary general from San Luis Potosi named Don Augusto Michel used to visit a restaurant and he liked to drink his beer in a very unusual way. In a glass with ice, he poured lime, salt, soy sauce, pepper and picante. This speciality soon turned into a popular drink, making the restaurant famous for it. Because of that, the owner decided to baptize this speciality in honor of his creator.
Alas, I can’t seem to find any reliable references tying Don Augusto Michel to the Mexican Revolution, but I never let the truth stand in the way of a good drinking tale. So, here’s to Don Augusto’s possibly fictitious legacy, and to happy coincidence. ¡Viva la revolucÃon!
Michelada estilo Doña Tomás
coarse salt
juice of 1 lime
1-2 drops habanero hot sauce (or to taste)
1 dash Worcestershire sauce
1 pinch kosher salt
1 bottle Negro Modelo (or other dark Mexican beer)
1 lime slice, for garnish
Salt the rim of a tall glass, and fill with ice. Stir in the lime juice, hot sauce, worcestershire sauce, and salt. Pour in the beer and garnish with a lime.
beer, cookbooks, Drink of the Week, drinks, Mexican, recipes
3 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 11.17.06 6:39 AM
Fancy seasonal cocktails with convoluted ingredient lists can be lovely if you’re entertaining at home, but when you’re limited to the contents of a friend’s or relative’s liquor cabinet, it’s better to be prepared for elegant compromise.
This cocktail classic’s easily made with supermarket ingredients — or even the contents of your hotel minibar, should it come to that. And what’s more perfect for Thanksgiving than cranberries?
The Cape Codder
1-1/2 oz. vodka
3 oz. cranberry juice, or to taste
lime, for garnish
Combine vodka and juice in an ice-filled highball or old-fashioned glass. Garnish with a lime wedge and/or a few reydrated cranberries, for a seasonal touch.
Drink of the Week, drinks, holidays & occasions, recipes
5 Comments »
Posted by Cameron on 11.10.06 6:48 AM
You can pick your friends—the saying goes—and you can pick your…um… poison, but you can’t pick your family. Happily, I have been blessed many times over through both blood and marriage. And so, while this Drink of the Week post is inspired by Mixology Monday #9 (bitters), it is dedicated to my brother-in-law Matt, who introduced me to a delightfully civilized drink: The Manhattan.
I had always been suspicious of The Manhattan, put off by crappy bourbon, unpredictable proportions, and those nasty, nuclear pink, jarred maraschino cherries that people actually eat instead of sticking on top of car antennas, where they belong.
But one night during a holiday visit many years ago, Matt commandeered the cocktail shaker and went to work with sweet vermouth, Angostura bitters, and Wild Turkey. I think. I’m a little blurry on the precise brand of bourbon, probably because we knocked off most of a bottle of whatever it was over the course of a gregarious evening.
In any case, my prejudice melted, and if I never sought The Manhattan out, neither did I avoid its presence. Those awful cherries, though. Ugh. Not a chance.
The next stage in my journey came this fall, when Murray of the Zig Zag Cafe promised us that if we brought a bottle of Carpano Antica vermouth on our next trip to Seattle, we’d be rewarded. When Murray speaks on things of a spiritous nature, my friends, I listen. Bottle in hand, we wafted in out of the northern night to be greeted by a Manhattan made with Carpano Antica, Rittenhouse bonded rye, and Bitter Truth bitters. Magic.
Since then, I (heart) Manhattan. It’s a drink that rewards customization with different ingredient styles and (carefully!) proportions. You’ll find recipes that recommend anywhere from one-half to two ounces of vermouth for two ounces of bourbon or rye. These days, I feel like anything less than a 2:1 ratio tastes like a shot, not a cocktail, but as I have written before, I am pigheaded, uncultured, and have displayed questionable drink-ordering skills.
The recipe below produces a very smooth drink, and is doubly appropriate for this particular MxMo, as it contains two bitter ingredients: orange bitters and Carpano Antica. The Bulleit bourbon lends body without calling attention to itself, and the fruitiness of the orange bitters (of which the Hermes is a difficult-to-find but excellent example) balances the extra bite of the Carpano Antica, which you could replace with regular sweet vermouth for increased mellitude. If you need fruit, soak dried Bing cherries overnight in whatever suits your fancy. I used brandy and…POW! Drunken Cherries.
Cheers, Matt! (And happy 5th Anniversary to you and P…)
Old Manhattan
2 oz. Bulleit bourbon
1-1/4 oz. Carpano Antica vermouth
2 dashes Hermes orange bitters
Stir with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a Drunken Cherry.
Drink of the Week, drinks, family, Mixology Monday, other blogs, recipes
13 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 11.03.06 8:01 AM
This one’s a nod to this weekend’s destination: the City of Angels…
The Los Angeles Cocktail
1 oz. fresh lemon juice
1 tsp. sugar
1 egg
1-1/2 oz. rye (or bourbon)
1/4 oz. sweet vermouth
Shake with ice, and strain into a cocktail glass.
Drink of the Week, recipes, SoCal, travel
1 Comment »
Posted by Cameron on 10.31.06 12:29 PM
San Francisco is my adopted home, and I have sworn that the day that Barry Bonds leaves the Giants is the day that I’ll buy a cap and cheer for Los Gigantes. But my sports roots are still on the East Coast, with the New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox.
As a transplanted fan, I’m always on the hunt for places to watch my teams. I haven’t truly embraced the Connecticut Yankee yet, mostly because it’s so far away from both my office and my house. With the Pats coming up against the Vikings on Monday Night Football, I thought I’d give the Hi Dive a try.
The first thing to get straight is that while the Hi Dive used to actually be a dive, it is a dive no longer. That section of the Embarcadero used to be a bit sketchy, but as soon as the Giants baseball park was built the late 1990s, SOMA started turning into condo-land. Now the Hi Dive is clean and comfortable.
It seems like a fine place to catch a drink after work, but I can’t recommend the food as anything but a sponge for alcohol. The fried calamari was strangely soft, and the burger could have been from a cafeteria steam table, even though they advertised Niman Ranch beef. Top it off with a completely uninspired draft beer selection–come on, five taps and two of them are Coors Light and Stella Artois?
I can’t recommend it as a sports viewing venue, either. There’s a large flat-panel television at one end of the room. But only two tables and one end of the bar have a truly unobstructed view.
The staff, however, was very friendly. And the Pats administered a beat-down of the Purple People Eaters. Bring on the Colts.
Hi Dive
Pier 28-1/2
(Embarcadero at Bryant)
San Francisco, CA 94105
415.977.0170
bar culture, downtown SF, drinks
2 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 10.27.06 7:40 AM
With Hallowe’en right around the corner, I figured you’d be up for hearing about a hauntingly good cocktail like this one. You shouldn’t have to do a lot of shopping for specialty ingredients, nor remember any tricky measurement ratios.
We like it as a way to use up some of the less-attractive brandied cherries we concocted for a recent project: Although the dark-colored ones look lovely, the paler specimens are frankly quite creepy-looking and resemble little bloody brains… eww. (But how appropriate!)
If you don’t want to throw off the flavors, rehydrate a few pale dried cherries in Pernod, or simply give the brandy-soaked cherry a good rinse.
Corpse Reviver #2
3/4 ounce gin
3/4 ounce lemon juice
3/4 ounce Cointreau
3/4 ounce Lillet blanc
a dash of Pernod, or other pastis
Shake all ingredients with ice, and strain into a well-chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a homemade booze-soaked cherry … preferrably one of the creepy, pale-colored ones.
Drink of the Week, drinks, holidays & occasions, recipes
3 Comments »
Posted by Cameron on 10.24.06 7:25 PM
I don’t think that I can keep up with the Queen of Hearts’ six impossible things before breakfast, but this past Saturday I had two new experiences.
Our friend Craig’s dog Koko passed away recently. The official statement read that Koko succumbed to age and infirmity, but insiders whisper that a pack of squirrels in sunglasses was seen hurriedly leaving the grounds on the sad day. Of course, squirrels do pretty much everything hurriedly, but that’s whispering insiders for you.
At any rate, we were honored to be among a small group of friends asked to gather to celebrate Koko’s life. Given Craig’s fondness for wine, I figured that there would be a bottle or two open, but I was completely unprepared for the that table that he had laid. A long-time fan and collector of Karl Lawrence wines, Craig set out an uninterrupted string of Cabernet Sauvignon that started in 1991 and ran all the way up through 2003.
It was the vertical to end all verticals–I have never seen anything like it before in my life. The wine was identifiably all of the same provenance, but it changed from year to year. Some of the changes were due to differences in mix or grape, but as we moved to ever-younger wines, the tannic spine disappeared behind a layer of fruit. It was like watching a movie of someone aging, run in reverse. It was a marvelously poetic way to celebrate the course of a life.
At last, someone raised their glass and called for a toast to Koko. We rattled the trees with our homage, and I’ll add my own here: To man’s best friend, and to family.
drinks, entertaining, family, wine & bubbly
6 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 10.20.06 10:57 PM
Krispy Kreme‘s got a pumpkin spice cake doughnut on offer for the holidays, plus — so cute it’s almost scary — pumpkin-shaped raised glazed with ‘ittle Jack-o-Lantern faces (pictured at right) through the end of the month. Awww!
Hot on the heels of their “$6,000 combo meal” TV spot, the fast-food hucksters at KCE/Hardee’s (that’s Carl’s Jr. to us West Coasters) released a list of suggested wine pairings for their speciality sandwiches. Perhaps monsieur would care for a bottle of Peachy Canyon Incredible Red with his Jalapeño Thickburger?
Or perhaps a bottle of bubbly? Perrier’s launching a new campaign aimed at the younger set, going for that edgy thing in an attempt to ditch its Miami Vice-era aura.
I’m still reeling from their purchase of Sharffen Berger, so please forgive me if I don’t seem happy about Hershey’s buying up Oregon’s Dagoba Organic Chocolate.
News of the wierd: Until last week, the world’s largest curry house was located in West Yorkshire, of all places. Hard to imagine that it’s gone out of business, innit?
Another shocker: The Amish don’t want your flippin’ food stamps!
breakfast, drinks, levity, news, other stuff, shopping, wine & bubbly
Comments Off on Friday news nibbles
Posted by Anita on 10.20.06 6:09 AM
Wanting a little refreshment before dinner, I gave Cameron a list of four or five ginger-beer-based cocktails, and asked him to pick one that sounded appealing. I’m glad I left the decision up to him, because I almost certainly would have chosen one of the drinks that marries a brown liquor with this spicy soda. Which would have been a shame, because the Moscow Mule is a lovely cocktail, a spicy-tart variation on a gin and tonic, but without the bitter aftertaste.
Usually, the drinks dreamed up by PR flacks are gawdawful messes. But the story of the Moscow Mule shows that — just like a million monkeys banging away on a million Smith-Coronas might eventually produce Shakespeare — sometimes these misbegotten concoctions turn out just fine.
A quick Google on “Moscow Mule” turns up a few variations on the story of the drink’s genesis, but most sources agree that representatives of Smirnoff vodka and Cock n’ Bull ginger beer put their heads together and came up with a way to market their slow-moving beverages. Someone designed a cute copper mug to serve it in, and they quickly made their way into mixological history.
As you might expect, much depends on the quality of your ginger beer, so steer clear of the Canada Dry and seek out something with a bit of bite, and not too much sweetness. Locally, our new friends down at City Beer sell Cock n’ Bull’s modern incarnation, and BevMo stocks a surprisingly wide selection of ginger brews.
Moscow Mule
2 ounces vodka
3 ounces good, spicy ginger beer
1 ounce fresh lime juice
Combine ingredients in an ice-filled old-fashioned glass (or, more traditionally, a copper mug). Garnish with a lime wedge.
Drink of the Week, drinks, recipes
4 Comments »
