This is gonna have to be a quick one- all I’m going to say is, go to your local well-stocked liquorium, and pick up a bottle of Falernum. I picked up a bottle of the easiest to find stuff, Velvet Falernum, on a lark due to acres of mixology blog being dedicated to its ilk. I had no idea what it’d taste like, apart from knowing it had something to do with cloves and rum.
I mixed a quarter-shot of it into a shot of Buffalo Trace bourbon, plus a quarter shot of dry Noilly Prat vermouth. Stirred briskly with ice and decanted into the nearest glass, it was the perfect drink for ringing in the end of summer. Sweet, complex and refreshing, but not so detached from the base liquors to become a trifle, it was eminently enjoyable.
It’s probably been done before, but if not, I’d like to stake my claim to this combo. I’ll call it the “Aurora Borealis”.
All I’m saying is, grab a bottle of this stuff, and get experimenting. It’s wonderful. Even better, make your own damn falernum.
You should know that I am a huge fan of bourbon. In fact, you should be a huge fan of bourbon, too. The carmelly sweet liquor is warming and delectable. It simultaneously makes you feel classy from some by-gone era and tough, like you could take on everyone in the bar if say, some crazy movie-scene type brawl broke out.
But bourbon is a great entertaining liquor because of the endless classy cocktails you can put it in. (As well as the low class cocktails).
I offer for you here two whiskey cocktails for summer, one high class, one white trash.
First off, by way of Portland, a fabulous trailer park classic:
The Whiskeytini
The whiskeytini is served in a martini glass (for effect)
Chill the glass with ice, then pour in one shot of whiskey.
Top with PBR (to desired height) and add a thin, round slice of lemon (the same way you would add a round slice of apple to a washington apple)
That’s it! Cold, refreshing and tounge-in-cheek. Best served at theme parties or on the porch on a sunny afternoon.
The second cocktail has a name, but I can’t steal it as this isn’t my recipe. I’ve modified it slightly from the original, but it is still tasty. I must give credit to Bourbon and Branch for the original. I don’t get to that bar often, but I missed the drink enough to try it out myself.
In a collin’s glass grate about a teaspoon of fresh ginger
Add two shots whiskey and muddle the ginger into the whiskey
Fill glass halfway with fresh pressed apple juice (no sugary juice here… try to go as pure as you can… juicing yourself is the best way to go)
add a handful of ice cubes and top off with 7-up or tonic (for a less sugary version)
To finish add two dashes of cinnamon, stir and serve.
Voila… two conversation piece cocktails for any summer gathering.
Ice. Frozen water. It makes drinks (and other things) cold. It eventually melts. Whee. Not terribly interesting, is it?
When the subject at hand is cocktails, apparently not. Lately, there has been an absolute TON of buzz in the cocktail enthusiast world about ice. The virtues of chipping ones’ own by hand, various types of water to try, boutique ice machines, supercooled ice… The mind boggles! Not least among the topics is the Japanese trend of cooling drinks with large spheres of the stuff.
The idea there is that a single sphere of ice will have less surface area than a handful of cubes or chips, and thus melt more slowly, delaying the dilution of your beautiful artisanal beverage. Artful bartenders in Japan have been known to sculpt these balls by hand, as the following video shows:
In my research, I found out that for those of us with less knife skill (and patience), there are molds available that simplify the process of creating these glacial orbs. The sticky part is, being a specialized Japanese thing, they’re not so easy to find in the good ol’ U S of A.
Rare? Cocktail-related? Not terribly useful? I had to have one, of course.
I looked at a few local pan-Asian markets without success, and finally read a Chowhound post about someone finding them at Daiso, a sort of Japanese dollar store. Other commenters hemmed and hawed “You have a Daiso nearby? You lucky bastard!” As it turns out, I too am a lucky bastard. There a Daiso in Daly City, just south of here. Today, led by the clarion call of very cold cocktails, I jumped in the car and returned with these:
The two on either side make spheres about 2.5 inches across, and the one in the center makes jagged “Rock Type” balls, that I guess are supposed to look more hand-carved. Anyhow, I loaded them up, waited, and used one to chill my current favorite drink to mix, a Manhattan. I know it’s not proper to serve one with ice in it and I’m supposed to chuck in a little gum syrup, but times like these call for drastic measures! (I’m out of syrup)
Manhattan Attacked by Monster Hail
1.5 oz Rye Whiskey (Rittenhouse Bonded, here)
1 oz Dry Vermouth (Noilly Prat, here)
3 dashes Orange Bitters (Regan’s #6)
Squeeze a lemon twist into your cocktail glass, add liquors and bitters, drop in a giant sphere of ice, and float the twist on top. There won’t be much room for stirring, so why not just spin the ice ball around a bit to incorporate things. When drinking, take care not to chip your tooth on ice ball.
I’ve got to say, this round ice business is a great idea. The drink I poured almost an hour ago is still Siberia-cold, and the Rock Type ice floating in it has hardly melted at all. Oh, and did I mention that these ice molds were only a buck fifty? I can hear your cars starting from here!
We’re verging onto a very important 4-day weekend here in the land of the big red bridge. The July 4th 4-day weekend, to put a finer point on it. This weekend isn’t held dear to me by any smidge of patriotism, or because I’m a pyrotechnics nut, no.. It’s sacred because it’s my girl’s birthday weekend!
Yes, she, just like Tom Cruise’s parapliegic war hero, was born on the 4th of July. ..and there was much rejoicing.
To commemorate the distinct summeriness of the weather, 4 impending days of glittering freedom and the birth of one of my very favorite bipeds, I thought I’d christen the bottle of Flor De Cana (s’cuse the accent) rum we picked up for a song at Duty Free on the way home from vacation in Costa Rica. Below is an unfussy and very thirst-quenching little number: (more…)
That liquor post made me thirsty enough to invent a new drink. I’m calling it “The Loft” in honor of, well, the loft we sleep on. We’ve been spending a (VERY RARE) lazy Saturday at home, cooking, eating, making music, taking photographs. Life is inexorably tough.
Once you’ve regained conciousness after that last one (I’m still a little floaty myself), I’d just like to take a second to let you know that making really damn good drip coffee is easy. I have a $40-dollar coffee maker from Presto that does a proper job, and even my age-old crap Braun blade grinder doesn’t hinder things too much.
In San Francisco, CA, USA, we are blessed with many, many superlative coffee roasters. Topping the marquee this week is Capricorn Coffees, which I like because they share my zodiac sign, and, well, they make good ish, as they also say in the trade.
I love a good coffeeshop as much as the next guy, and I doubt I’ll ever make as good a cup of espresso as Caffe Trieste (my favorite North Beach haunt), but for drip, jesus, take care of yourself.
For a good cheap easy home setup, I suggest a tabletop drip unit like this or this, or a capable coffee machine like the one mentioned above. There are other methods for making drip, but hell, who has time to talk about that? Someday I’ll go into the cool little device one makes vietnamese coffee with, but today isn’t that day.
If you’re using a device which you need to pour boiling water into, a decent kettle will help you keep from scalding the piss out of yourself, true (says the person who’s tried to do this with a saucepan one too many times).
The only thing is, your water has to be HOT. One-nine-eight-far-en-heit-de-grees, say the experts. A little kitchen thermometer will come in handy for making sure your water is right on. 198 degrees, baybee!
Grind your beans until they are just larger than powder- there should be some graininess but not chunks like a french press grind. Pour the coffee into your filter cone, and shake it a little settle the coffee (don’t overdo it!). Some old italian gents in shadowy alleyways tell me that making a little indentation in the center of the coffee will help optimize the water’s flow and help the flavor, especially with a machine. Makes sense to me.. (more…)
Two of my favorite cocktails are, in most bars, made with pre-made mixers. These tepid liquids tend to range from tolerable to noxious in flavor. Generally concocted from small bits of fruit juice unhappily married to artificial flavors and corn syrup, they are not meant to make a great drink. They are meant to lend the shade of the flavor of a great drink to a product that can be mixed and served in seconds.
Believe me, if I were slinging 250 drinks per hour, I wouldn’t want to be futzing with all of this fruit and different spirits and additions ad infinitum either. I’d take the easy route, too.
At home, you don’t have to- and that’s a beautiful thing. Your whiskey sour can gleam! Your margarita can sparkle and delight. Deep flavors, clean finishes, twinkling presentations, all yours. The glass could be your oyster if you’d only take it and shout, “I am the master of my own tipple domain!”
Cheap things like halfway decent turbinado sugar, sea salt, middle-shelf liquor and fresh fruit (organic or not) are worlds beyond what you’ll ever find in a storebought mix, and better, by and large, than what you’ll encounter even at fancy places that stress fresh ingredients.
This purist way, of course, is how the cocktails in question were intended to be made- the pre-made mixers were an afterthought. According to the illustrious they, these drinks are supposed to be far simpler than you’d imagine when you’re staring down the list of 30 ingredients on that bottle of storebought Sweet-And-Sour! (no carageenan gum here, I swear)
Let’s get back to basics and make something worth drinking! (more…)
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Filed under: Ingredients, Cocktail Hour
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