The Sassy Flamingo

Well, it's been awhile. Let's just say that you can call me Herr Doktor Dragon, Pater Norae. It's been a busy few months.

Anyway, we haven't had a proper battle, but I submit the following as a challenge. I claim that it is the tastiest "girl drink" ever -- perhaps the tastiest girl drink conceivable. In short, I claim that it is tasty.

Without further adieu... The SASSY FLAMINGO:

• 1 oz Gin (I used a 30 year old bottle of Gordon's -- it's a long story)
• 3/4 oz Campari
• 1/2 oz Elderflower Syrup (available at Ikea)
• 1/4 oz Lemon Juice
• 1/4 oz Blood Orange Bitters
• A few drops orange flower water

I find it best to stir all ingredients expect orange flower water with ice, strain, then add the orange flower water last. Be careful, it's easy to overdo it. I'm not sure all of the ingredients are being used to maximum effect -- in particular, I think you could probably replace the Elderflower Syrup with plain simple syrup and not have a big change. Or you could replace it with St. Germaine's and see what happened?

What would a girl drink be without elaborate presentation? I propose the following. First, get some fancy pink sugar -- I was able to get some hot pink raspberry infused sugar from the local spice shop, and grind it down to a pale pink fruity superfine sugar, suitable for rimming. Of course, if we're going to rim our glasses, we need a somewhat sugary base to apply to the rim. I used Lingonberry concentrate, also from Ikea, carefully applied around the outside. The contrast between the dark pink drink and the light pink sugar is nice.

Here's the result:

The resulting drink opens with a flowery nose, the sweet and faintly fruity sugar on the rim, and then hits with a vaguely grapefruity middle. Then, the Campari and the orange bitters take over. I promised sass, right?

The essence of the essence! the king of effervescence!

relief sculpture by Gustave Navlet in the Veuve Clicquot cellar (19th c)

The good ole boys in the US (I may start referring them as GOBs, just because) played with creepy cocktails this weekend. I went to Reims, where they used to crown all the kings back in the day, to learn something about champagne. Since my trip was subsidized, I didn't do much ordering of beverages, but here is an almost complete list of what we sampled (most are non-vintage/not cuvée unless noted):

Bollinger (x3)

Billecart-Simon

Veuve Clicquot (2002 reserve and La Grande Dame 1998)

Pommery, (cuvée Louis and nonvintage)

Moët & Chandon

Vranken Diamant

I know I'm missing some here, but at a point on Saturday, I lost track of what was handed to or ordered for me. I think my favorite of the weekend was the Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame, which had this incredible tart flavor that just rolled out slowly, like a lady in her finery taking a luxurious afternoon constitutional on your tongue. The Pommery cuvée Louis also made an impression on me. Of course, we didn't have a bad glass all weekend, so it's hard to play favorites.

The other surprise of the weekend was the bottle of French whiskey my friend's husband bought. It's from a distillery that was founded in 1998 in the woods of the champagne region called Guillon. It's definitely a French twist on the drink, with a lot of vanilla flavors that recall the other famous spirit from the region, cognac. I don't know if it's worth hunting down with large quantities of effort but if you saw it lying around and had the cash, it's a fun drink.

Now I'm home, nursing the kind of hangover and cold that can only come from a weekend of champagne, foie gras and oysters. I'm sort of wishing I hadn't needed to come back. And had more disposable income.

bisous,

plenty

The Devil came up to Michigan (and needed a sweater)

Two young men walk down a deserted road late at night. Slung across the chest of one is a small satchel holding a well-used shaker, a menagerie of bitters, and a bottle of rye. The other has an old ammo belt, repurposed to hold vial after vial of infused vodkas. Ahead of them, the road intersects another, similarly deserted road. At the crossroads, they see the man they expected to find, an older gentleman in a red suit with a posture radiating smugness.

"Sir, I believe we make the best punch there ever was or ever will be."

"Would you bet your souls on that?"

"You're damned right we would."

Our new acquaintance forfeited by not showing, but the theme was already set: The Devil's Punchbowl.

My punch did not start as a punch. I'd read good things recently about a very herbal drink called the chrysanthemum cocktail and I figured that I could shoehorn the white chrysanthemum/death link into a spooky drink for the holiday. The punch emphasis was a bit of a surprise, but I ran with it after reading a lot of older punch recipes.

Back in the day, punch recipes called for a lot of steeping and layering of flavors. Many of them would really be more like a sangria these days, though not too many contemporary folk are eager to put wines from Burgundy into a bunch of fruit. I hope not, at least. I took this inspiration and basically made a batch of chrysanthemum cocktails to taste and set it overnight with some lemon peel and then mixed it with a rather good dry French blancs de blancs from Grenoble whose name escapes me. The whole thing is nice, sort of a mellow herbal take on a kir. If I could inject a bit of grassy flavors, I think that would be nice as well.

White Chrysanthemum Punch

• 2 cups Dry vermouth (Noilly Prat)
• 1 cup Benedictine
• 1/4-1/2 oz Absinthe (Leopold Bros.)
• 3 strips of lemon peel
• 1 scant bottle dry white sparkling wine, chilled (of course)

Put the first four ingredients in a bottle, give the bottle a shake to mix, and refrigerate overnight. It should just about fill a 375 mL bottle, perhaps overtopping it by a smidgen. Right before serving, pour them together and keep chilled with a large solid chunk of ice.

For my second drink, I decided to do a takeoff of a Blood and Sand. Whenever I have a cocktail recipe with scotch that I want to pull in a different direction, I try añejo tequila. It has a robustness and smokiness that tends to take to the same solid structure created by scotch, but imbues the drink with a fruitiness that otherwise wouldn't be there. I'd like to try to pare this down a little bit, since I don't know if every ingredient is absolutely necessary. I do, however, know that this is a tasty drink as is.

The Beaches are Closed

• 1 oz. Añejo tequila (Don Eduardo)
• 1 oz. Sweet vermouth (Martini and Rossi, alas)
• 1 oz. Orange juice
• 1/2 oz. Campari
• 1/4 oz. Creme de cassis
• 1/4 oz. Orange flower water
• 2 dashes Regan's Orange Bitters

I recommend shaking this one. The flavors can use a bit of rounding from the extra water and the color is great when cloudy. It's a bit of a kitchen sink sort of drink, and I would be curious to try it without the cassis or the flower water. That drink might still hold its own, but perhaps with a bit less going on.

Just in time for Halloween

About a month late, I finally present my tiki drink cum Halloween-themed cocktail: The Elder Zombie. It may sound like a Magic card (Hey there, that's a challenge idea!), but it's actually a tasty beverage inspired by the classic Zombie, famous for having as much as three shots worth of booze in a proper pour.

The Elder Zombie

• 1/4 oz. lime juice
• 1/4 oz. grapefruit juice
• 1/4 oz. grenadine
• 1/4 oz. elderflower syrup

(You're probably thinking to yourself at this point "Christ, man, where's the alcohol?!" Admittedly, it does not share everything in common with its inspiration)

• 1 1/2 oz. rum, your favorite mix of light and dark.
• 1/4 oz. Campari
• Dash Angostura bitters

Mix everything together, imbibe and be merry.

I have to say, I'm proud that after figuring out this recipe I ran into a lime/grapefruit/grenadine/elderflower cocktail from one of the big cocktail bars in New York (PDT? Death and Co.? I think one of those). It didn't go the same direction with the bitters and such, but nonetheless it makes me like my intuition is moving in the right direction.

A Sexy Way to Cry

Tiki drinks are drinks people have in movies that suck. This is the definition in wikipedia. Perhaps in subconscious rebellion against this, or perhaps because Mr. Dragon is becoming a tiny adult, I became a towering child and took a literary approach to this challenge. In his novel Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov explores the trivialization of Russian culture, and the fundamentally populist (proletarian?) nature of bourgeois condescension. He also, as it turns out, lays out one hell of a cocktail recipe. At the anticlimactic party near the end of this book, the title character puts together a punch that the pitying guests really rather enjoy. Here is the passage:

"Drinks were to be represented by whiskey (Betty's contribution), ryabinovka (a rowanberry liqueur), brandy-and-grenadine cocktails, and of course Pnin's punch, a heady mixture of chilled Chateau Yquem, grapefruit juice, and maraschino, which the solemn host had already started to stir in a a large bowl of brilliant aquamarine glass with a decorative design of swirled ribbing and lily pads."

Chateau Yquem is a Sauternes, but more, all at once. It is THE Sauternes. I may like these people, but I figured I didn't need to spend $300 to make no point. So using a lesser Sauternes, I made the following:

Pnin's Punch

2 oz. Sauternes (I used 2001 Chateau Rolland)

.5 to .75 oz fresh grapefruit juice

.5 teaspoons maraschino

serve with a couple ice cubes.

This drink is wonderful. In this case it tasted distinctly of passionfruit, but passionfruit dissolved, rebuilt, and made perfect. May this drink recipe live on, fly on, in its reflected sky. It is a classic to me.

My second drink was decent, I thought, when I made it right. Unfortunately, I got a couple ratios wrong at the crucial moment and it ended up too sweet. The proper recipe is shown below. By reason of this mistake, and for the completely twisted literary vision of tiki-ness that it can conjure (think abused mentally retarded girl becomes pagan god and tears the heads off a thousand geese), I call this drink

Shame

2 oz. smooth, volatile rum (Barbancourt 5 star)

1/2 oz. Amaro Melletti

squeeze lemon

squeeze lime

This drink is about rum. It tastes like rum, deepened and stretched. If you accidentally double the amaro, then it tastes like amaro, so don't do that. You want it to taste like rum. Trust me.

Above is an artist's impression of Harry Potter looking at Pnin's Punch and wondering why Butter Beer (tm) sucks so bad.

you can keep your coconuts

My friends across the ocean are playing with rum and noix de coco and those other fancy colonial fruits, but screw them. Here in Paris we have walnuts. That's right folks: straight up, old-world noix.

I saw this bottle on the shelf of our neighborhood fancy bread/cheese/booze store, Juhlés, and quickly became obsessed. Some quick internet research told me that both walnut wine and walnut liqueur are actually quite easy to make, if you can get your hands on green walnuts and have time to kill. Of course, it's not the season for green walnuts, and we're out of our apartment in less than a year, so we don't really have either.

I was little over excited about the whole walnut thing and didn't read the bottle correctly. It's neither vin de noix nor liqueur de noix, but rather apéritif à BASE de vin et de noix, which means it's basically walnut-infused brandy. But fuck it, it's good. I don't know if we'll be using it on top of ice cream any time soon, but it's a lovely for a little nip. Think port, but with nutty overtones. It is an apéritif, that is for sure, and with the right snacks (probably some good strong cheese) will make the perfect sucré/salé opening act for a good meal. I'd like to see if I can get my hands on some actual vin or liqueur de noix for comparison.

On the agenda this weekend: La Maison du Whisky or maybe Lavinia (which sells a crème de rose that I've got my eye on. I imagine it will make bangin' kirs). I hope they fulfill all my fancy French booze fantasies, or have something that resembles reasonably priced bourbon, because stocks in the secret lair are running pitifully low...

Bisous,

Plenty

Ulaulekeahi, Strike Down My Foes!

What is the secret to a good cocktail battle? Fear. Fear sharpens the senses. Fear hones our judgement. Fear pushes everything else into the background, and puts survival front and center.

I don't think you could say that any of us are specialists in Tiki drinks. In fact, I'm not sure that all of us had even had a Tiki drink before. And what were we afraid of? Drinks that were too fruity. Drinks that were too sweet. Drinks that we wouldn't even recognize as cocktails. And I think that we came out ok. In fact, I think we stepped up our collective games, and did some of our finest work.

First, a traditional delight, the Nui Nui. I can't say I've done enough research to figure out just how traditional it is, but light Googling suggests it has an older history than the "Sexy Nipple on the Beach," or whatever the kids are drinking these days. It appealed to me because it didn't rely on exotic juices, which I knew I would only be able to get in highly adulterated forms. As interesting as the juicier drinks sound, I still live in The Middle, and it's not exactly Mango country.

I adapted the recipe from Webtender to fit the available ingredients:

Nui Nui

• 1/2 oz Lime Juice
• 1/2 oz Orange Juice
• 1/2 oz Combined Allspice Syrup, Cinnamon Syrup, and Vanilla
• 2 oz Dark Rum (Barbancourt Reserve Speciale)
• Dash Angostura
• No, I couldn't bring myself to add crushed ice

I think that "nui" translates as "much," and so "nui nui" translates as "very much."As you might guess, the active ingredient in this cocktail is the spice syrups. I burned... way too much time trying to get this right. I ran into a suggestion that one could achieve the effect of these syrups by microwaving the raw spices and simple syrup for a few seconds. This is, to put it politely, false. And it leaves some totally sweet grit in your drink!

I settled on three tablespoons of freshly ground allspice, 1 cup sugar, and two cups water. Bring just to a boil, then set on warm for about an hour. Then, try to strain it through a coffee filter. When it won't run through the filter, add water (1/2 cup at a time), heat till the sugar dissolves, and try again. The result is pretty tasty! As a bonus, you can mix it with soda water and make a nice drink for your pregnant wife. For example.

Cinnamon syrup is more of a pain. I tried following the plan above, grating (microplaning) three cassia sticks into a pan in place of the three tbsp of allspice. I think there's something about the cassia, maybe the cellulose, that turns into glue while the syrup cooks. It took a lot of extra water to get the syrup down to a consistency that would go through the coffee filter, resulting in a syrup that wasn't very strong. I'm working on a cinnamon infusion right now that maybe, just maybe, will get the flavor right. We'll see.

For my modern cocktail, I tried to come up with a super partner for the Nui Nui. I was also trying to think of something that would fit with the MxMo challenge of the week, "Dizzy Dairy." Hopefully this explains the name and the flavors:

Nuinuino

• 3/4 oz Dark Rum (Pyrat or Barbancourt)
• 1/2 oz Coconut Water
• 1/4 oz Creme de Violette
• 1/4 oz Lime Juice

I can't say that the color evokes a tropical sunset, or anything else particularly attractive, but I think it tastes pretty good. The coconut water gives it a nice nose, and a light funk that combines well with the violette. The lime juice helps to blend the flavors more than anything else. I tried this both with the Pyrat rum and the Barbancourt. If you like a sweeter drink, go with the Pyrat. It's really nice with the Barbancourt too!

Now, I don't know if this will make it on to MxMo or not. On reading the challenge, my first thought was "coconut milk is amazing!" Then I found out that the clear fluid that comes out of a coconut is actually coconut water, not coconut milk. And that it takes "more work" to make coconut milk. So I went with my original idea, which really doesn't have anything to do with dairy, but neither do eggs, right?