George has been pulling most of the weight on here the last two months, since I skipped town to go to Europe and haven’t been around. However, it’s a new year and I’m in a new mood to explore my kitchen. Recently, George has turned me on to bitters in cocktails, something I never used before. After our trip to Cask last weekend and an awe-inspiring rack of bitters:

I started thinking… something so aromatic must be good for more than just cocktails. Lo and behold! A quick google search revealed many a recipe. I poked my head around and decided to give it a go from scratch and see what happened.
It seems the two most common uses for bitters are meats and soups. I chose the latter, and in honor of Chinese new year, decided to do a quick wonton soup.
This is the bitters George recommended (I always take George’s recommendations):

I had a bunch of stuff on hand and it all seemed to work:
1 bag of Trader Joe’s chicken gyoza
2 containers of chicken stock (I wanted to use my pho boullion but seem to have misplaced them)
some basil
meyer lemons from my tree
garlic
ginger
soy sauce
a jalapeno and of course… Bitters!

I put all of the chicken stock into my peking pan and brought it to a boil while I minced a clove of garlic and medium sized piece of ginger. I tossed in a few dashes of soy sauce, and three dashes of bitters along with the garlic and ginger.
I threw in the basil, as well and the gyoza (if you wanted to make wontons by hand, be my guest, but this version takes under 15 minutes to make).
After simmering until the gyoza were cooked, I poured into bowls and garnished with lemon and jalapenos (a la pho). It’s some weird mix of asian dishes I like, but it was damn tasty.

For dessert, I used more bitters to recreate a cocktail I came across in London over Christmas. This is a good winter cocktail (and keeping with our cocktail theme lately very appropriate). It’s a variation on the original cocktail: the old fashioned.

Get out your bitters and get ready for
The Maple Old Fashioned

I used the same bottle of orange bitters and more goodies I had on hand:
the rest of the lemon from my tree, a bottle of Bulleit and jar of maple syrup from TJs. A traditional old fashioned used simple sugar or a sugar cube, but just substitute that with a tablespoon of maple syrup dissolved into a tablespoon of water.

In a classic “old fashioned” glass build the drink. Start with ice, and pour two measures of bourbon over the ice. Add the maple syrup mix and stir, finish with two dashes of bitters and a peel of lemon or orange rind.
BTW if you want perfect rind peels pick up one of these zesters:

They get a perfect peel every time.

So now that I’ve expanded my bitter horizons I’m going to have sweet maple dreams.

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One Response to “Bittersweet”

1. George C. Says:
   January 29th, 2009 at 6:26 pm

   Damn this all looks so good!

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