Posted by Paul Clarke, May 9, 2008 at 5:30 PM
Sure, you could make mimosas on Mother’s Day. But if you’re looking for something a little more adventurous to make with your bubbly—or, perhaps the idea of spending an afternoon at your mother’s place requires a little extra fortification—you can send your greetings via Air Mail.
Bar manager Thad Vogler at Beretta in San Francisco likes these with the dry, floral taste of Barbancourt rum from Haiti, but the gentle, vanilla-y richness of Bacardi 8 also works well. And you’ll want to use a dry Champagne or sparkling wine here; something sweet will overshadow the rum, and you can adjust the sweetness of the drink by tinkering with the honey. The important thing is, the Air Mail is flexible while being suitably celebratory, and the potency can be dialed up or down depending on your mother’s tastes—and the day’s situation.
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Posted by Mario Batali, December 24, 2007 at 4:00 PM
Christmas Eve this year is the Feast of the Two Fishes. We are doing my linguine with clams, hot chiles, and pancetta, but I'm subbing my dad's "mole" salami for pancetta to give it a deeper spice component. The main course will be super jumbo stone crab claws from Joe's—yes, served with their mustard sauce—a green salad, and some Guido's garlic bread.
Desserts will be espresso drops and coconut balls (first step, find the coconut's legs) both from Martha Stewart's magazine Everyday Food because my kids find it very accessible and there is a photo for every cookie. I will make a version of Gina DePalma's chocolate hazelnut kisses, and we will surrender early to a deep mug of hot buttered rum from my mom's recipe file, which I'm sharing with you in this post here.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, December 14, 2007 at 5:00 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles) to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
Think of it as an easy, no-egg eggnog. Or think of it as a classic Southern tipple, with an alluring blend of sweetness and richness, and a deep-flavored kick. However you approach the milk punch, just be sure to think of it sometime during the holiday season.
I had a great time sipping one of these on a July morning in New Orleans, but with its fullness of flavor, its silky texture and its nutmeg finish, the milk punch seems particularly well-suited to this time of year. Classically made with a combo of brandy and rum, the milk punch also works well with bourbon in the place of either or both. And while it’s lovely to drink the punch when poured into a glass full of crushed ice, you can instead serve it hot, for a rich and potent warmer. Either way, this drink that dates back to horse-and-buggy days has a way of slowing everything down, taking the edge off a hectic holiday season if only for an hour or two.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, August 31, 2007 at 6:00 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail to kick things off. Need more than one? Here you go. Cheers!
First things first: it's not really Hemingway's daiquiri.
That one was much more fierce. In his memoir Papa Hemingway, longtime friend A. E. Hotchner described the daiquiri served under that name (or under its more familiar moniker, the Papa Doble) at Havana's legendary Floridita bar.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, August 24, 2007 at 11:00 AM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail to kick things off. Need more than one? Here you go. Cheers!
Even though summer is waning, it's still sunny and you’re hot—what could be better than the icy, minty, rum-soaked goodness of a mojito?
This isn’t a mojito. It’s close, though—and maybe even better.
Think of the Old Cuban as what a mojito wants to be when it grows up. Suave and urbane, yet with the mojito’s summer-busting power, the Old Cuban is one of the finest rum drinks around. A contemporary classic created by Audrey Saunders—she of Pegu Club fame—the Old Cuban is the cocktail to spring on your mojito-loving friends when you want to take them to a new dimension.
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Posted by Erin Zimmer, July 25, 2007 at 2:00 PM
The name reminds me of Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. "It was a dark and stormy night," opens the novel, giving off that clichéd horror film quality. But it was a reality yesterday afternoon in Washington, D.C. Such is the case for many seemingly sunny days here, which can be all fine and dandy in the mid-70s but by mid-afternoon get annoyingly wet and drippy. Weather.com predicts T-storms all week. Grrrr.
A drink to make up for our damp clothes?
The Bermudan dark rum–based Dark and Stormy, made with ginger beer and lime juice. Kind of tastes like a citrus-spiked gingerbread cookie (in a good way). The rum makes you feel all warm inside, but the lime aftertaste reminds you that gingerbread isn't for a few more months. This one's so easy to swallow, perhaps it could be considered a girly drink? But don't old Bermudan men down these all the time?
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