Entries tagged with 'cocktails'
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[Flickr: edwardkimuk] Quince Brandy View the complete recipe here » A little over a year ago, inspired by the unexpected acquisition of a bowl full of beautiful fresh quinces—and imagining what their ethereal perfume and flavor would be like in a drink—I started a small project. After removing the core and finely chopping the quinces, I placed the fragrant fruit in jars and covered it with cognac. Adding a piece of cinnamon to one jar and a few cloves to another, I sealed the jars and stuck them in the back of my liquor cabinet. And though I blogged about it at the time, I soon moved on to other projects and quickly forgot about my jars of boozy...
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"It's like a violent storm of fruit and...ham." That's the Ham Daiquiri for you—a blend of rum, pineapple, pineapple soda, honey, liquid smoke, ice, and ham. Keep a barf bag on the side, just to be safe. Watch the video after the jump....
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"Secret passwords and exclusive policies be damned." [Photograph: Robyn Lee] In yesterday's Diner's Journal, Pete Wells writes that Pegu Club co-owner and bartender extraordinaire Audrey Saunders is opening a new place, the Tar Pit, with chef Mark Peel in Los Angeles next month. With this move, Saunders—one of the most talented and influential bartenders in the ongoing cocktail renaissance—becomes the latest New York bartender to spread the craft west of Weehawken. Sasha Petraske, whose New York bars Milk & Honey and Little Branch (among others) helped spur the trend of the now ubiquitous speakeasy-style cocktail bars, played a hand in opening The Varnish in Los Angeles earlier this year, as well as taking his skills to the nation's capitol, working...
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Bartenders are getting into the game, not only producing high-quality bar ingredients for themselves but for wider audiences. [Photograph: Robyn Lee] As Jonathan Miles wrote in Sunday's New York Times, the vintage-cocktail renaissance has a few drawbacks. While this interest in the drinks of yesteryear has led to the revival of once-lost favorites such as the Aviation and the Corpse Reviver #2, assembling some of these cocktails can still be frustrating. He writes: It's the ingredients that can get really arcane: ground gentian, capillaire, raspberry syrup, tansy, ambergris, gum syrup. Throw in some eye of newt and toe of frog and you've got the cauldron from 'Macbeth.' Fortunately for those who love vintage drinks, it's easier to find the once...
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©iStockphoto.com/ManuWe Autumn is whiskey season in Kentucky, and at the recent Whiskyfest in San Francisco, I was able to try out some of the recent releases now appearing in bars and liquor stores (typically in very small amounts). One of the most appealing American whiskies I tasted was Wild Turkey "Tradition," a 14-year-old, 101-proof bourbon that entered the U.S. market last week in a limited run of 14,000 bottles. With the characteristic spicy tang of Wild Turkey bourbons, the Tradition bottling has a deeper, richer character that comes from its older age, as well as its aging position in the "center cut" of the distillery's warehouse. Also memorable is the latest bottling of Old Forester Birthday Bourbon, a 12-year-old,...
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[Photograph: Robyn Lee] This Friday is Whiskyfest in San Francisco, the annual event (it also takes place in Chicago and New York) that's part collector's geek-out and part Detroit Auto Show for booze, where distillers reintroduce thousands of enthusiasts, media, and industry colleagues to their standard selections, as well as debut unique and rare bottlings and special editions. I'll no doubt have some interesting whisk(e)y-related news in the coming weeks, but as I prepare for my visit to Whiskyfest, there's one question in particular that'll be on my mind: how many women are going to be there? No, it's not what you think—rather, I'm heading to Whiskyfest thinking about the changing world of whiskey consumers. As recently noted by...
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"Long before they were hallmarks of any cocktail geek's liquor cabinets, Gourmet ran recipes for homemade allspice liqueur (1977) and Cherry Bounce (1966)." [Flickr: lulubrooks] This news of Gourmet's shuttering has touched every food lover, and this sense of sadness and disappointment extends into the world of drinks. While the magazine's drinks coverage always seemed to feel more natural when the topic was wine, over the decades the editors occasionally gave spirits and cocktails a serious eye. Perhaps nowhere has this been more evident recently than on the magazine's website, which features drinks plumbed from Gourmet's archives arranged by decade, starting with the first issue in 1941. This series of drinks forms a curious liquid time capsule. While certain drinks...
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"Sometimes people see chocolate and think alcoholic milkshakes." [Flickr: loremipsum] For the most part, those seeking to indulge both chocolate and cocktails have been restricted to the realm of heavy, sugary after-dinner drinks. But as chefs take chocolate more seriously—working with the savory, bitter flavors that cacao can bring to a dish—so have mixologists. As I wrote for last weekend's San Francisco Chronicle, a number of bartenders are getting into the chocolate game, making their own bitters, tinctures, and liqueurs that capture the rich character of chocolate without weighing down the drink's flavor with a palate-thumping load of sugar. Some classic cocktails and 18th century punches utilize the power of chocolate to good effect, playing the flavor against that of...
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[Flickr: shiokuma] Since the autumn transition is now official, I’m taking a seasonal approach to my liquor cabinet. The white booze, like the white shoes, has been packed away until the warm months roll around again. OK, that’s not entirely true. Good gin is a year-round pleasure, and sometimes you need a daiquiri or two during the winter to remind you that summer does indeed exist. But now that the nights are cooler and the leaves are starting to change, I’m looking at aged spirits with renewed enthusiasm, and one style of spirit in particular: Calvados. In today’s Washington Post, drink columnist Jason Wilson touches on a theme he started last fall: the often-overlooked apple brandy from Normandy. He...
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[Flickr: cbcastro] For a spirit that seems to inspire such a diverse set of reactions in drinkers, including no shortage of outspoken loathing, gin has certainly been faring well in recent years. As I write in the September/October issue of Imbibe, while gin sales have been modestly progressing since the 1990s, the explosive growth in the number of brands on the market demonstrates a great enthusiasm for the spirit among distillers, especially those just getting into the game. That's not surprising. Unlike spirits such as brandy or whiskey, gin requires no aging, so the time between still and store shelf can be as short as a matter of days—an important factor for start-up distilleries needing a quick source of...
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