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From Recipes
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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From Required Eating
Posted by Paul Clarke, May 7, 2008 at 3:45 PM
If last Sunday’s New York Times T magazine is to be believed, Batavia arrack is one of the "New Staples"—one of the top ingredients of the season. If that’s the case, then never has one spirit gone so far so fast, from a century-plus of obscurity to must-have status in the liquor cabinet.
Produced since at least the early 17th-century on the island of Java, Batavia arrack is rum’s funky ancestor. Made from sugarcane and fermented red rice (one quibble with the Times story: while Sri Lankan arrack made from palm sap has a similar name, it’s a totally different creature), this smoky, aromatic spirit was a mariner’s favorite for years, and was an essential ingredient in punch until well into the 19th-century. Eventually supplanted by rum, Batavia arrack faded from the back bar and the liquor store; in recent years it was primarily found close to its Asian roots, as well as in parts of Northern Europe, where it appeared in chocolates, desserts and sweetened, flavored punches.
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From Recipes
Posted by Paul Clarke, May 2, 2008 at 6:30 PM
Let's start the weekend right—with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
Ah, Kentucky Derby weekend—the time each year when people across the country begin affecting Southern accents and taking stabs at mixing, or at least drinking, mint juleps.
This isn’t a mint julep. Let’s be honest: unless you’ve honed your julep-making skills over years of withering summers, or are fortunate enough to be sitting across the bar from legendary julep-making bartender Chris MacMillian in New Orleans, chances are the julep you'll find in your silver tumbler or, god help us, plastic cup is going to range somewhere between mildly disappointing and downright undrinkable. Now, don’t get me wrong: I absolutely love mint juleps, and feel they are one of the great culinary contributions America has given the world; it’s just that making an excellent julep (really, is it worth drinking any other kind?) is an exercise that requires an inordinate amount of labor, skill and love.
Fortunately, there are other drinks that are Kentucky to the core, and that are absolutely appropriate to be mixed on Derby weekend. One of these is the Seelbach Cocktail: hailing from the Louisville hotel of that name, the Seelbach rests on a base of bourbon—as if it would be anything but—and dresses up this spirit with a little Cointreau, a healthy dose of bitters and an indulgent splash of Champagne.
The Seelbach Cocktail may not be a julep, but it doesn’t have to be: it’s respectable, powerful and all-Kentucky right down to the bottom of the glass.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Paul Clarke, May 2, 2008 at 4:15 PM
A few weeks ago I put up a post about drinking on the cheap during tough economic times. I’m obviously not the only one giving thought to the virtues of affordable booze.
In last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Eric Felten walked through a blind tasting of six affordable bourbons. While regular readers of the WSJ aren’t likely to be reaching for the rotgut shelf anytime soon, Felten wanted to step away from the boutique bourbons that typically get all the ink, and try a few brands that are available at most any bar in America. To raise the stakes (somewhat), he tasted the bourbons blind, so any prejudices against particular labels or price points would ideally be eliminated as a factor.
His top pick? The humble Evan Williams, which Felten picked up for about $10; this venerable whiskey bested more upmarket brands such as Wild Turkey and Maker’s Mark, which Felten described as tasting "thin, raw and twangy."
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From Recipes
Posted by Paul Clarke, April 25, 2008 at 5:30 PM
Let's start the weekend right—with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
Before there was tiki, there was tropical. Back in the 1930s and early ‘40s, as Don the Beachcomber was spawning what was to become a wave of openings of Polynesian palaces, bartenders and restaurateurs were filling up their liquor shelves with rum and experimenting with new concoctions.
One of the earliest to be influenced by the Beachcomber was Victor Bergeron, who saw what Donn Beach had started in L.A. and took the idea home to Oakland, revamping his old Hinky Dinks watering hole and renaming it Trader Vic’s. In 1947, Bergeron published Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide, an extensive recipe guide detailing hundreds of drinks, including many proto-tiki mixes that reflected the experimentation that had been going on in earlier years.
The Royal Bermuda Yacht Club Cocktail has a few of the tropical essentials: first, it’s based on rum; second, its flavor is fleshed out with fresh lime juice and the little-known syrup called falernum; and third, the name has both Caribbean and nautical overtones. It’s a few steps short of a full-blown Nui Nui, Sumatra Kula or Pearl Diver’s Punch, but there’s no shame in that. On a warm spring day, when the mood for something bright and tropical hits you but you’re not quite up for breaking into full luau mode, the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club Cocktail fits the bill quite nicely.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Paul Clarke, April 23, 2008 at 3:30 PM
When it comes to living an environmentally friendly lifestyle, the consumption of spirits & cocktails is a definite bump in the road. But as Jonathan Miles wrote in last Sunday’s New York Times, there are a few bars and bartenders who are trying to step lightly when wielding the cocktail shaker.
Miles covered Bar 44 in Manhattan, which is trying to reduce its environmental impact by using regional ingredients for some drinks, including a micro-distilled gin made from organic ingredients in Philadelphia. But Bar 44 isn’t alone; in San Francisco there’s Elixir, certified green by the city and serving drinks made with organic spirits and mixers in energy-efficient surroundings. And like Bar 44 and Elixir, many establishments, especially on the West Coast, are sourcing fruits and herbs for their cocktails from local farms.
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From Recipes
Posted by Paul Clarke, April 18, 2008 at 6:30 PM
Let's start the weekend right—with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? Hit up the archives. Cheers!
What, you thought Manhattan was the only borough of New York that had a drink named after it? We’ll get to the Brooklyn later, but Staten Island and Queens? Well, sorry—better luck next time.
Like its namesake, The Bronx cocktail has taken a beating over the years. It all started out well (with origins at the old Waldorf-Astoria back when that was the place to drink), but when Prohibition hit, the Bronx became ... popular. This was a bad thing, you see, because all sorts of rotgut gin were being mixed into cocktails, and the Bronx was one of those that had enough other stuff in it to somewhat obscure the vile taste of the booze. By the time Repeal rolled around, many drinkers had lost a few layers of stomach lining to Bronxes and others of its ilk. As a result, it was remembered with so much ill will that the drink practically disappeared.
Let’s be honest: The Bronx is unlikely to be anyone’s favorite drink. But while it’s not exactly bottled excitement, The Bronx is actually pretty good, and surprisingly refreshing. Be sure to use fresh-squeezed orange juice (and if you add a dash or two of Angostura bitters, you’ve got a somewhat tastier Income Tax Cocktail on your hands), and approach it with an open mind. There are some things from the past worth revisiting from time to time.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Paul Clarke, April 17, 2008 at 2:15 PM
An olive skewered on a toothpick is the universal symbol for a martini; but are such trappings really necessary?
Eric Felten touches on the olive and other cocktail-related ornamentation in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal column, “Consider the Trimmings.” Invoking Walter Gropius’ harangue against “florid aestheticism,” Felten addresses the questionable necessity of cocktail garnish, along with the East Coast - West Coast divide that’s starting to arise.
In recent years, bartenders such as Jackson Cannon at Eastern Standard in Boston have eschewed garnishes that don’t provide any flavorful or aromatic contributions to the drink, while the “Farmers' Market” bartenders on the West Coast have started to employ a wide array of garnishes ranging from single basil leaves to arrangements of edible flowers.
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From Recipes
Posted by Paul Clarke, April 11, 2008 at 5:45 PM
Let's start the weekend right—with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
As much as I like to imagine it happening, chances are that Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woolcott and the rest of the gang never tipped up a round of these.
While the members of the Algonquin Round Table likely never got on the outside of an Algonquin—the drink’s recipe didn’t appear in print until years after the legendary lunch meetings ended—this mixture bearing the name of that venerable hotel is as dry and captivating as was their wit. Fortunately, while the Round Table disbanded around 1929, it’s not too late to explore the flavor of the Algonquin.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Paul Clarke, April 9, 2008 at 3:15 PM
It’s tax time, and once you’re done sweating over the paperwork and writing out your check, you could probably use a drink. Ah, but there’s the rub—the IRS just walked away with your wallet, there’s a recession staring us in the face, and, to top it all, the real estate market is peeking into the abyss. At times like these, it’s hard to saunter out of the liquor store with a $50 bottle of scotch in your hand when within a few months it could turn out to be worth more than your house.
But that’s okay (well, it’s really not, but let’s pretend it is for now)—you can still have friends over for a perfectly satisfying and relaxing drink without cracking into the kids’ college fund. Here are a few ways to accomplish this (beyond the patently obvious "drink less"); be sure to join us in the comments section with any ideas you have.
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Website: http://www.cocktailchronicles.com
Location: Seattle
About: I'm a Seattle-based writer and editor who was bitten by the mixology bug a few years ago, and has spent every available hour since reading about, talking about, mixing (and occasionally drinking) fine spirits and cocktails.
Favorite foods: sushi, gumbo, crab enchiladas -- if it's fishy & spicy, I'm on it.
Last bite on earth: Who thinks about food at a moment like this? I'd wrap up the whole shebang with the ultimate Sazerac -- a big pour of Thomas Handy Sazerac rye with Peychaud's bitters, in a glass -- a BIG glass -- rinsed with Jade's Nouvelle Orleans absinthe.