Continuing on the sweet side of things, I put together a new cocktail this weekend. I wanted something to celebrate spring and that utilized only ingredients we had on hand. So, without further ado, I invite you to snap into a Lem-Gin:
Tag Archives: cocktails
Top 5: Homemade Liqueurs
{ Citrus Cordial by Megan Fizell }
Infusing your favorite spirits is really easy and fun way to play around with flavors and tailor something to a particular cocktail or drink. For instance, my sister gave me some orange and vanilla infused bourbon that makes a great Old Fashioned. A variation on infusing your own spirits is creating your own liqueurs. The process is largely the same, except for the addition of some kind of sugar to sweeten the final product. This added sweetness makes liqueurs the perfect compliment for warmer weather which revels in the frivolity of sweetness that winter’s austerity coldly shunned. Below I’ve collected top 5 liqueurs I’m looking forward to making this Spring/Summer. I’ll be posting about these as I go along, so be sure you check back.
Swig & Swill: Morning Glory Fizz
{ Morning Glory Pool by Roger Tuttleman }
Scotch is a difficult ingredient to mix, at least for me. I think this conclusion is at least somewhat supported by the dearth of classic Scotch-based cocktails, the most common of which is the Rob Roy (bonus tip, I’m pretty sure that is an answer to a Trivial Pursuit question). Unfortunately, the Rob Roy isn’t fizzy, it’s basically a Scotch Manhattan. For my party I needed something fizzy. Luckily there is such a cocktail outlined in Imbibe by David Wondrich.
Morning Glory Fizz
3/4 Tbsp Sugar
1/2 oz Lemon Juice
1/4 oz Lime Juice
1/2 tsp Absinthe
1 egg white
2 oz Blended ScotchIn a shaker dissolve sugar in 1 tsp of water, add remaining ingredients and fill 3/4 full with ice. Shake and strain into a good sized bar glass and top with Seltzer. Note that this is a “morning beverage, which will give good appetite and quiet the nerves.”
From Harry Johnson’s New and Improved Bartender’s Manual, 1882, via Imbibe.
Swig & Swill: To Cuba!
When creating our cocktail menu, one of the ways I found inspiration was through perusing menus from established bars and restaurants. This can be particularly interesting, because while you may know which ingredients are used, it’s still up to you how to put them together.
I took one drink from Mark Peel and Audrey Saunders’ (recently in trouble for raw egg whites in NYC) new LA bar/restaurant The Tar Pit — The Old Cuban. For the preparation I stuck pretty close to a traditional mojito, just substituting aged rum and champagne for white rum and soda.
In a 16-oz mixing glass, gently muddle together:
1 large sprig spearmint
3/4 oz simple syrupAdd:
Half a spent lime hull,
1 oz of lime juice
2 oz aged rum (I used Angostura 1919)
3 oz sparkling winemojito recipe from Jeffrey Morgenthaler.
Westervin Recommends for February
Gather round, ladies and gentlemen for one heck of a post by two spectacular guest bloggers! Sarah Hughes and Seth York are here (Oh, you don’t know them? They’re about to be your best friends!) with Westervin Recommends. I’ll let them explain:
Drinking In-flight
We’re world-class at providing the recommendations you didn’t know you needed. Remember when someone told you what you should order at your first Indian restaurant? And it was Chicken Korma? Remember when someone told you about a website called YouTube? And then you found a video of cats that sounded like they were talking? We’re that guy, all the time.
Pundits. Proselytizers. Purveyors.
Making Your Own Popcorn
{ MA – Vice Magazine by Vins Baratta }
When I was a kid my parents took my brother and I camping. They thought it would be cool to show us Jiffy Pop popcorn, the kind that you hold over an open flame and the foil balloons up rapidly like a UFO when the kernels start popping. Mom and Dad forgot to mention to us that this was normal. Instead, as the foil blew up, my brother and I screamed and ran behind a tree. I haven’t forgiven them for laughing so hard.
The first time I made homemade popcorn I had a flashback to that camping trip. Except this time I could handle it. Though making it still feels a little dangerous at that Jiffy Pop moment of maximum poppage.
You can roll it in salt, butter, parmesan, garlic OR cocoa powder, cinnamon and chili powder OR drizzle with caramel and chocolate sauce and then freeze it. But those are just the ones I’ve tried. Super cheap too.
(http://theslowcook.blogspot.com/2008/01/secret-to-worlds-greatest-popcorn.html)
Drinking In-flight
{ cloudyREDS — a WAFA collaboration between Anthony Zinonos and Brandi Strickland }
I know what you’re thinking; why have booze on a flight when it’s overpriced and dehydrating and you’re not in the air that long anyway. To you naysayers…I say “Nay.” It’s really not any more money than your typical cocktail (of course you get a cocktail, you don’t get a Miller Lite when you’re pretending you’re in first class). United has the best tonic water, and they even give you limes. Try it sometime. Order a mid-afternoon drink, mix your tiny bottle of liquor with the tonic in a little plastic cup on your tray table. Sip, recline, imagine it’s helping your travel sickness/anxiety. It’s the only way you’ll get through Two and a Half Men anyway.
The Wire
{ TV Room (Entry Hall Wallpaper) by Hollis Brown Thornton }
Have you heard what everyone is saying about this show? It’s The Great American Novel in five grueling seasons. The show could be a sociology dissertation on like, thirty different subjects. Everyone’s a little conflicted, but everyone has a mother too — the cops, the gangbangers, the crooked politicians, the students. Watch it and prepare to be inducted into the coolest club of other people who are into it. You smile at each other differently because you know. Oh, and the theme song is Tom Waits. That’s all I can say.
Swig & Swill: Dead Bastard
{ Tiki Gardens Postcard from Greg Tykal }
With the revival of vintage tiki drinks and the opening of bars like Smuggler’s Cove in SF, Rum seems to be set for a big decade. For our party a little while ago, I used Joe Scialom’s recipe for the
Dead Bastard (via TraderTiki):
- 1/2 oz Gin
- 1/2 oz Brandy
- 1/2 oz Bourbon
- 1/2 oz Rum
- 1/2 oz Rose’s lime juice
- 2 dashes Angostura bitters
- 4 ounces of chilled ginger beer
Shake Gently with 1 cup Crushed Ice, pour into Goblet or other large vessel. Garnish with whatever the hell, it’s dead and doesn’t care. I used a whole lime. It’s a big drink.
To really hammer home the deathly theme of the drink I used Bulleit Bourbon, and Death’s Door Gin. If anyone happens to know any death themed Rum or Cognac, please let me know.
Swig & Swill: Over-Under Winter Punch
Since I was the only one making cocktails at our party the other night, service was slow. Luckily we had a really nice punch to keep people sippin’.
In this video, Jim Ryan, the “Brand Ambassador” for Hendricks Gin, walks you through how to make Over-Under Winter Punch. Now you’ll have to get past Jim’s post-ironic retro mustache, but if you can, the result will be a fantastically pleasant punch. I didn’t have a liter of Hendricks on hand, so I blended some Tanqueray and Dry Fly. Worked great.
Swig & Swill: Pink Slip
Results from last weekends cocktail trials are in and surprisingly, one of the most popular cocktails was one I created myself: the Pink Slip:
2oz Tanqueray (works well with white Rum, too)
3 basil leaves
2 tsp raspberry syrup
3/4 oz lime juice
ginger beer
a dash or two of grenadineAdd raspberry syrup, lime juice, and basil to a fizz glass. Muddle. Fill glass 3/4 full with cracked ice. Top with ginger beer. Then top the whole thing off with a little bit of grenadine for a bit of a color boost!
A note on ingredients: You’ll benefit by making some of these ingredients yourself:
Raspberry syrup is really easy. Start with a rich simple syrup. Simmer a 2:1 mixture of sugar to water in a small pan until it is clear and not cloudy. Let it cool and poor over a bunch of raspberries (frozen will work fine). Let the syrup and raspberries sit out overnight before straining out the berries. You should be left with a sweet red berry syrup.
For the grenadine, I used Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s super easy recipe.
For the ginger beer, I used Audrey Saunders recipe, which is equally easy. If you use housemade ginger, you’ll want to add a little seltzer to give it a sparkle.
A Fine Design: Cocktail Menu
As Sarah has already mentioned, we’ll be having a small party this weekend. But it’s diminutive size didn’t stop me from putting together a cocktail menu compatible with our bubbly theme.
Post-party I’ll be posting guest impressions, and letting you know where I found these recipes. That way you can make them too (the good ones at least).
Swig & Swill: Grapefruit Bitters, Day 2
Well, here we are at day 2 which consists of straining . . . a lot of straining. If I continue to make bitters it might be wise to invest in a small Brita filter, but until then, I’ll continue the achingly slow process of straining with coffee filters.
{ the fruit they call grape by Meghan Plowman }
After adding a few ingredients (details below) to the grapefruit mixture that had been steeping for about a day, I caramelized some sugar, added some water and mixed everything together. I think I got a bit ahead of myself with the straining, as the resulting bitters are a tad cloudy. However, they do have a solid grapefruit flavor with a very nice bitterness. My orange bitters weren’t quite strong enough, but these grapefruit bitters are bitter! Hooray!
Day 2, add this:
4 oz grapefruit juice
4 oz water
¼ tsp. vanilla extract
¼ tsp. almond extract
¼ tsp. coconut extractStrain. Caremelize 6oz of sugar, blend with 6 oz of water, and mix with strained mixture.
Again, recipe from Jeffrey Morgenthaler.
P.S. read Day 1 here
