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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Posted by Anita on 01.29.07 11:33 AM
As part of Meeta’s Postcards Around the World event, I just shipped off a valentine to …well, I can’t tell you who, but I can say that she’s a foodblogger who lives in a country that I love to visit, appropriately enough.
I’ve never been to this blogger’s town, but — as I now know from Googling — it shares many similarities with San Francisco, including “a superb choice of restaurants” (according to the local tourism council), an historic waterfront, and a brewery that’s been turning out well-regarded ales since the Victorian era.
The valentine I’m sending is a photo I took a few weeks ago at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market — featuring radishes in reds, hot pinks, and other valentine colors — with a postcard sticker on the back. (Not surprisingly, finding a food-related postcard is hard enough, but finding one that’s holiday-specific is impossible! And besides, it was fun making my own card.) Of course I’m using some of the Crops of the Americas stamps that I’ve been hoarding, too.
Somewhere out in the blogosphere, another food blogger is getting ready to send a valentine postcard to me, too. I can’t wait to get it!
holidays & occasions, other blogs
6 Comments »
Posted by Anita and Cameron on 01.23.07 7:42 AM
Over at The Cocktail Chronicles, Paul’s announced the next three month’s worth of Mixology Monday themes:
February 12: Whisk(e)y, hosted by Jimmy’s Cocktail Hour.
March 12: Shots, hosted by Martini Lounge.
April 16: Champagne cocktails, hosted by us.
We’re looking forward to it — cheers!
drinks, Mixology Monday, other blogs, wine & bubbly
1 Comment »
Posted by Anita on 01.22.07 6:08 PM
Yesterday, the Bald Guy celebrated his thirty(mumble) birthday — an occasion worthy of pulling out all the stops… and half of the pantry bins. But when you’re baking in a toaster oven countertop convection oven, your patisserie options are a wee bit limited. In one of those “only in the food-blogosphere” coincidences, Chockylit and Garrett are hosting a cupcake roundup this week — and yours truly just happens to have a little six-cup muffin tin that’s perfect for a half-batch of mini birthday cakes.
Not content to follow a request for “yellow cake with chocolate icing” to the letter, I started thinking about fancier alternatives. A series of chats about classic New England fare got me wondering how I could make Boston Cream Pie in a cupcake format. So I whipped up a batch of vanilla sponge cake [link removed*], some pastry cream, and a simple chocolate glaze: a cup of heavy cream, a quarter-pound of dark chocolate chips, and a tablespoon of Karo syrup.
One of the things I love about Boston Cream Pie is the way it combines a trio of simple Home Ec 101 recipes into a fun, old-timey dessert. But, as I soon discovered, the original format — cake sliced in half, pastry cream between the layers, chocolate glaze over the top and dribbled down the sides — doesn’t work very well in miniature. If you add enough cream to make a distinct filling layer, the pieces won’t stay together. You end up with a (delicious) mess, rather than a cupcake.
Undaunted, I tried a new method: Using a doughnut hole-cutter, I punched halfway down each cupcake, and dug out the center, ever so gently. Then I dipped the top of the cupcake in the chocolate glaze, far enough that the center got coated. I added a tablespoon of the pastry cream to the well, and filled the hole with the top half of the cut-out round. After a little more experimentation, I realized that it was easier to dip the center piece of cake in chocolate before placing it over the cream, rather than drizzling more glaze over the almost-finished cupcake. (If all this is too much to visualize, I’ve documented it all in a Flickr set.)
An excellent side benefit of dipping the unfilled cupcakes and their “stoppers” — rather than pouring glaze over the completed cupcake — is that the chocolate keeps the cream filling from soaking into the cake. And, it also makes a whole lot less mess.
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* Edited to add: We removed the link to the Cook’s Illustrated recipe in July 2008 in protest of their bullying tactics.
baking, dessert, holidays & occasions, other blogs
16 Comments »
Posted by Cameron on 01.18.07 5:36 PM
No embarrassing orthodontia tales here, although I certainly have them. And I suppose that this counts as more than six things for one blog, but:
Despite my savoir-faire with working kitchen jargon, I have only held one food-related job: at a bakery/bistro where I mostly sold pastries and made sandwiches. My signature move was to smear two spoonfuls of unprepared, clear-quill horseradish on a sandwich when the customer asked for said condiment…until someone complained. The owner asked me if I had ever actually tasted horseradish. I hadn’t.
I used to drink Karo corn syrup straight from the bottle. Hey, it was just a nip of courage now and again. I could have stopped anytime I wanted to.
I have an incredible capacity to eat exactly the same thing for breakfast every day for weeks at a time. Lunch, too.
I like Jager Bombs. I’m pretty sure that this and the Karo thing are somehow related.
By the age of 12, I had taken part in the following activities: butchering pigs and cows for family consumption, collecting maple sap (drinking my fair share) and boiling it down, milking cows, collecting fresh eggs (never killed a chicken, though), churning butter, making sausage, and pulling perfectly good baby vegetable plants out of the ground while claiming to have mistaken them for “weeds.”
levity, other blogs
Comments Off on That is weird how?
Posted by Anita on 01.17.07 11:55 AM
Sandi at The WhistleStop Cafe (of Fried Green Tomatoes fame) has tagged us to share “six weird things” about ourselves with our readers. Now, I don’t know about you, but I am guessing you don’t care that I drive a 1966 Volvo, or that I had braces as an adult, or that I’m the oldest of ten grandchildren on my mother’s side… so let’s keep this food related, eh?
- Cameron and I share a surprising number of food dislikes. Neither of us cares much for eggplant, squash, or sweet potatoes.
- We have been known to drive an hour — and to plan our airport flight-arrival times — to eat at our favorite Mexican restaurant.
- I’d rather have citrus or caramel desserts than chocolate, any day. I realize this makes me a traitor to my gender. (I don’t dislike chocolate, but I don’t crave it.)
- One of my favorite things to do on vacation is visiting the local supermarket. Sure, farmers markets are great, but the grocery store is where you see what everyday middle-class food looks like.
- My early food-related jobs included: breakfast waitress, bakery manager, drugstore soda fountain jerk (at the place shown in the photo above), pizza-delivery girl, and sundae-scooper. Waiting tables was undeniably the hardest work I have ever done, for the least amount of money. Jose Feliciano was one of my regulars, and he used to say corny stuff like “Sanka very much” when I would bring him refills of decaf.
- We’ve never been to New Orleans. It was on the short-short list when Katrina hit…
levity, other blogs
7 Comments »
Posted by Anita and Cameron on 01.17.07 7:57 AM
Always up for a challenge — and excuses to try new wines — we joined this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday, focusing on biodynamic wines. I thought we might have a difficult time sourcing an appropriate bottle, so I was pleasantly surprised when the wine merchant at Plumpjack Wines in Noe Valley identified a dozen or more biodynamic wines for us, and another 20 or more bottles that were being produced using biodynamic principles, or by wineries that are in the process of converting to biodynamics.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any indication that the wine we ultimately chose from his options — a white from Domaine Tempier, the producers of our favorite rosé — was created biodynamically. According to information on a number of sites, Tempier is indeed a venerable (albeit uncertified) organic winery, but they only occasionally dabble in biodynamics… and one can surmise that their low-end $12 Bandol Blanc probably isn’t the wine they’re dabbling with. (I’m glad we’ll get to try it… but I’m cranky that it was misidentified.)
So, over to BevMo, this time with Fork & Bottle’s list of biodynamic producers in hand. Trust, as they say, but verify.
Our tasting notes:
Patianna Sauvignon Blanc ’05 Mendocino (California) – $14.99 ($18 winemaker’s list)
80% Sauvignon Blanc clone #1, 20% Sauvignon Musque
Pale champagne color; yeasty on the nose; watery and thin flavors, but with an incredibly long finish (with no unpleasant aftertaste); the merest hint of effervescence. Cameron felt the wine had a toasty nose, and found hints of shellfish and sour in the corners. Anita missed the classic dry melon/pear flavors she loves in Sauv Blanc — in fact, there was little fruit at all. It was hard to believe that this was a New World wine. Compared to the similarly priced Chateau Souverain Alexander Valley Sauvignon Blanc (our “house” white), we agree that the Patianna winds up sour and unbalanced.
Chapoutier Cotes du Rhone Belleruche ’04 – $16.99 (€5.09 winemaker’s list)
80% Grenache, 20% Syrah
Straight out of the bottle and then in the glass, there’s a whiff of caramel nose, which doesn’t last, followed by a faint cherry nose and not much else, even when fully (over)warmed. Clear, medium-ruby colored. A lot of mineral tang at first, and though the wine eventually opened up, it never went far enough for us to really enjoy. Better with food than alone, not surprisingly. Fairly astringent for a 2-year-old wine. Thin, not a lot of complexity — it tastes like dried cherries and not a lot else. Trés French and not unpleasant, but seems over-simple and uninteresting compared to our usual array of $8-12 Cotes du Rhone options. Cameron would buy it again for something uncomplicated to drink in the summer…if we could get it for five Euros. Anita would use her seven bucks to try something else.
other blogs, shopping, wine & bubbly
6 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 01.15.07 9:25 PM
Mmmm, football-watching Prather Ranch chili dogs…
And we also have a WINNER. In fact, we have a couple hundred. But for those of you sitting on the edge of your seat, wondering whether you’ll be the lucky one getting a care package from us this week, you might want to cast an envious glance in the direction of the appropriately named “Award” — he or she is the winning bidder who will be taking the Armchair Tour of the Bay Area from this year’s Menu For Hope raffle.
Thanks again to everyone who bid and supported this amazing event. Be sure to visit Chez Pim for the complete list of winners.
other blogs
5 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 01.13.07 3:05 PM
This month’s Mixology Monday, hosted by the folks over at Imbibe Unfiltered, features Winter Warmers — a happy thing for those of us who happen to be living in unheated basements. Now, I realize that “warmers” refers to these drinks’ effect on the drinker’s internal comfort, rather than the temperature at which they’re served. But with the weather in Fog City threatening to dip into the 20s overnight, a double-dose of warmth seems wise.
I was looking for something that packed the twin punch of alcohol and heat, along the lines of an Irish Coffee. But unlike my better half, I am not much of a coffee drinker. I love the taste, but I can’t do caffeine… especially once the sun goes down. Mexican chocolate is one of my favorite warm drinks, so it seemed natural to fortify this brunchtime favorite with a nip of something strong.
Plenty of complementary liqueurs came to mind; we tried brandy, Cointreau, Kahlua, and even nocino. But in the end, tequila worked best. A tot of mezcal adds fire and a touch of funk, which keeps the drink from veering off into sickly-sweet territory. A dash of orange bitters rounds out the taste and keeps the tequila’s aroma in check. (In a pinch, Cointreau or another orange liqueur would do the same, but the drink needs no extra sweetness.)
The Spanish word chispa literally translates to “spark”, but it also has connotations of enthusiasm, liveliness, and — a ha! — small amounts of liquor. And in some parts of Latin America, chispada (lit. “sparked”) is a colloquial expression for “buzzed” or “tipsy”. More genteel than borracho (“drunk”), it’s something you might say about your grandma after she’d gotten uncharacteristically alegre at a family gathering. In other words, you’ve imbibed just enough alcohol to warm your toes, but not enough to slur your speech.
If you don’t want to buy Mexican chocolate tablets just for this recipe, feel free to make your own, or simply add cinnamon (preferably canela) to your usual hot cocoa mix or recipe. The texture won’t be the same, but the flavors will still sing.
La Chispa
Mexican chocolate, such as Ibarra or Abuelita
1 cup milk
1 to 1.5 oz. medium-quality tequila, to taste
2 dashes orange bitters (or a dash of Cointreau)
whipped cream, perferably unsweetened
Prepare the Mexican chocolate according to package directions — typically 8 oz. hot milk blended with 2 wedges of chocolate tablets. In a mug or an Irish coffee glass, combine the tequila, bitters and the hot chocolate, and stir gently to combine. Top with a dollop of whipped cream, and dust with cinnamon or chile powder.
Drink of the Week, drinks, Mixology Monday, other blogs, recipes
2 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 01.05.07 10:00 AM
Cookiecrumb over at I’m Mad and I Eat and Kev at Seriously Good have challenged one another to a mac-n-cheese-off, an ooey-gooey duel, a fight to the death on the field of fromage. Their chosen weapons? Bechamel, pasta… and cheese.
What is it about humble ol’ Mac & Cheese that brings out the competitive spirit in otherwise mild-mannered foodies? Last year, our old Seattle crew hosted a mac & cheese showdown, where no fewer than half a dozen recipes vied for the crown. And about a month ago, Union — one of Jet City’s top restaurants — hosted a citywide smackdown (mac-down?) that got promoted on local radio.
I’ve got a few favorite recipes in the files, including a 5-minute version that I make sometimes for breakfast, but no single concoction owns my allegiance… certainly not enough for me to want to enter it into public competition. But the eye-rollingly good version I serve to company — as a side dish, mind you — comes courtesy of our friend Wendy, the hostess with the mostest, who’s tweaked Martha Stewart’s recipe to the point of decadence.
Fondue Mac and Cheese
4T (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, plus more for dish
2 slices good white bread, grated coarsely
2 cups whole milk
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 to 1/2 cup white wine
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. each freshly grated nutmeg, freshly ground black pepper, and cayenne pepper
1/2 pound sharp white Cheddar cheese, grated
6 ounces Gruyère cheese, grated
1/2 pound penne
Heat oven to 375°F. Butter a 9×9 baking dish, and set aside. Place bread in a medium bowl. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt 1T butter. Pour butter into bowl with breadcrumbs, and toss. Set breadcrumbs aside.
Fill a large saucepan with water, and bring to a boil. Add penne, and undercook by 2 to 3 minutes, until the outside of the pasta is just cooked. Transfer macaroni to a colander and drain well, shaking the colander to remove as much water as possible from inside the penne. Set penne aside.
Heat milk in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Melt remaining butter in a high-sided skillet over medium heat. When butter bubbles, add the flour and whisk for 1 minute. While continuing to whisk, slowly pour in hot milk. Continue cooking, whisking constantly, until the mixture bubbles and becomes thick. Turn off heat, and whisk in the wine, salt, nutmeg, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and both cheeses, reserving 1 cup of cheese for topping.
Stir macaroni into the cheese sauce, then pour mixture into prepared dish. Sprinkle remaining cheese over top, followed by the buttered breadcrumbs. Bake until browned on top, about 30 minutes. Transfer casserole to a wire rack, and cool 5 minutes; serve hot.
food boards, other blogs, recipes, Seattle
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