Some classy cocktails to get the party started this summer...

Get your hands on a bottle of sloe gin, turn up Rumors by Fleetwood Mac, and let the games begin!

Sloe Comfortable Screw
from Dale DeGroff's Craft of the Cocktail

1 oz sloe gin
1 oz Southern Comfort
4 oz fresh orange juice
Orange slice for garnish

This drink has sloe gin, southern comfort, and OJ -- get it? A sloe, comfortable screw. Build in a highball glass. Garnish with an orange slice.

Alabama Slammer
from Dale DeGroff's Craft of the Cocktail

3/4 oz Southern Comfort
1 oz vodka
3/4 oz sloe gin
4 oz fresh orange juice
6 dashes grenadine, for garnish

Shake all ingredients hard with ice, strain into six 1-oz shot glasses, and dash the top of each with grenadine. Bottoms up!

Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide Revised Edition has a whole section devoted to Sloe Gin (and Pisco!) so pick up a copy and get inspired. I tried this cocktail and loved it -- it's surprisingly well balanced, sweet but not cloying, and utterly imbibeable.

San Francisco Cocktail

3/4 oz sloe gin
3/4 oz Italian vermouth
3/4 oz French vermouth
1 dash Angostura bitters
1 dash orange bitters

Shake with ice cubes. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Add a cherry.

Cin-cin!

The Measure of Success

I never thought I would become attached to a kitchen tool. That is, until I met the Oxo angled measuring cup. The 2 oz measuring cup, shown on the right, allows one to accurately measure amounts as small as one quarter ounce. In addition to ounces, their are interior markings for tablespoons and the more traditional exterior markings for milliliters and cups. Mr. Jigger you have served me well, but from now on this detail oriented cocktail lover will be angling for Oxo. Let's put that quarter ounce line to use.

The Hoskins Cocktail
2 oz Plymouth Gin
.75 oz Torani Amer (or Amer Picon)
.5 oz Maraschino Liqueur
.25 oz Cointreau
1 dash orange bitters

Combine ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a flamed orange peel.

Cheers!

Dispatches from the May meeting

by Pink Gin

The theme of the May LUPEC Boston meeting was Travel.

We live in an amazing time when women have status and choices and when travel is cheap and easy. The ladies of LUPEC Boston celebrated the convergence of these 'movements' with food, drink, conversation, and authentic costumes from around the world. Featured readings came from Stuff at Night (on the topic of LUPEC's Little Black Book of Cocktails), the Complete Book for the Intelligent Woman Traveler by Frances Koltun, published in 1967 (on the lively topic of bidets), and Easy to Make Maidens and Cocktails: A Mixing, Swingers Bar Guide published by Enrol in 1965 (illustrated with a saucy dame for each base spirit).

Recipes were selected on the theme of travel, including the traveler's imperative to seek out local specialties - in this case, JP!

Monday-night Mug

2 bottles of Cantina Bostonia White Table Wine
~12 oz. Picon
~6 oz. St. Germain
10-12 dashes orange bitters
1 lemon

Mix the refrigerated wine and other liquid ingredients into a punch bowl. Slice the lemon and float on top.

This recipe was inspired by the French classic of mixing local white wine and Picon. Cantina Bostonia is the only Boston-based wine maker. They make sulfite-free wines just a few blocks away in the brewery complex. The wines have plenty of character and will definitely remind you of homemade. In this case the recipe testing and decision to create a punch came late the night before the LUPEC meeting. Thanks to k. montuori for recipe development and for saying, "In JP you don't get punched, you get mugged."

Pink Gin

Recipe as given in the Little Black Book. Inspired by thoughts of the high seas, of course!

Normandy

Recipe as given in the Little Black Book. Harpoon Cider is the featured Boston ingredient.

Irish Coffee with a secret

~1 tsp. sugar of any sort (I happened to have agave syrup last night and it was fine)
2 oz. Irish whiskey (Powers was the brand on hand)
8 oz. stovetop espresso brewed with a generous portion of red pepper flake (thanks to mcoffee for the brew)
Heavy cream (from a New England farm of course)

Assemble the sugar, whiskey, and coffee in a stemmed glass. Stir. Whip unsweetened cold cream to desired consistency (I like it just shy of soft peaks) and carefully spoon on top.

One story has it that the original Irish Coffee was invented in the Shannon International Airport Lounge. Truth or fiction? Who cares! The secret is in the spice.

Cheers!

Hello, sucker!

by Pinky Gonzales

...This was the standard greeting you'd likely receive from the jovial, peroxide blonde manning the house at one of several Manhattan speakeasies during Prohibition. Of course, this would foreshadow the spending of all your dough, on illegal hooch and tips for the showgirls. You'd happily fork over $25 (back then no chump change) for a fifth of Scotch, or $2 for a pitcher of water if you brought your own "booster", and whatever else followed. The place would probably be packed, open a few hours later than all the rest, and the wisecracking, witty pal of Mae West named Texas Guinan would be seeing to it you were having a darned good time.

(Ouch! Dancer Drena Beach, 1926.)

Before being seduced into the world of club ownership through bartending and guest emceeing, Texas started out in Vaudville, then in Westerns as an actress and producer. 1917's The Wildcat introduced America's first movie cowgirl.

Her nite club career included "the grandaddy of speakeasies," the El Fey Club, opened in 1924 with gangster Larry Fey. Later came Club Intime, a Dorothy Parker hangout and subterranean spot near Times Square where entry would involve a steep staircase, two bouncers and a peephole. There was also the Rendezvous, the 300 Club, the Argonaut, the Century, the Salon Royal, and Tex Guinan's.

Infamous for being hauled off to the pokey on a regular basis and having her joints shut down by Feds, Texas enjoyed having the band strikeup "The Prisoner's Song" on her way out the door. And always would she deny selling anything but "mixers" to at her clubs, noting "a man could get hurt falling off a bar stool!" Re-opening after raids, she would sometimes wear a necklace of gold padlocks just to show the cops there were no hard feelings.

She worked tirelessly until age 49, when she was stricken by illness and passed away. 12,000 attended her 1933 funeral procession in Manhattan, and a month later to the day of her death, Prohibition was repealed.

Looks like a Women's History Month toast is in store for this gal!

Scoff Law Cocktail (what else?)

1 oz rye whiskey
1 oz dry vermouth
.75 oz fresh lemon juice
.75 oz green Chartreuse (or pomegranate grenadine according to some recipes - also excellent)
2 dashes orange bitters

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Cheers!

Going to the Chapel!

Today was a big day for the ladies of LUPEC Boston. No, it's not because we're so excited about Women's History Month starting tomorrow we can't even stand it! It's because one of LUPEC Boston's very own tied the knot today!

That's right, today Miss Contessa became a Mrs. She and her beloved just couldn't let Leap Day go by without doing something special...so they got hitched this morning at city hall! Then it was off to Harvard Square to get matching nuptial tattoos.

A very special wedding reception was held in their honor this afternoon at Silvertone. LUPEC Boston was very well represented. We were positively overjoyed when the bride & groom made their grand entrance , looking as picture perfect as the figurines atop a wedding cake.

Let's raise a glass of one of these to the nuptial couple this weekend!

Tin Wedding Cocktail

1 oz brandy

3/4 oz sweet vermouth

3/4 oz gin

2 dashes orange bitters

Stir in mixing glass with ice & strain. Serve in a cocktail glass.

Wedding Belles

3/4 oz gin

3/4 oz Red Dubonnet

1/2 oz orange juice

1/2 oz cherry flavored brandy

Shake in iced cocktail shaker & strain. Serve in a cocktail glass.

Love and other stuff!

It's the romantic day of the year...according to Hallmark, anyway.

Love it or hate it, Valentine's Day gives us all good reason to kick back a few. Here are some LUPEC approved vaguely pink concoctions to get you through:

Bourbon Belle suggests...

The French Velvet

In a champagne flute add equal parts

Guinness

Champagne or Sparkling Wine

.25 oz Chambord

Sounds like a delightfully butch take on V-Day, n'est-ce pas? Thanks, BB!

Moscow Mule didn't think Sex on the Beach sounded dreamy & romantic enough. Instead, try...

Bachelor's Bait

1 1/2 oz gin

1 egg white

1 dash orange bitters

1/4 grenadine

Shake in iced cocktail shaker & strain. Serve in a cocktail glass.

Is it bait for the bachelor or bait for the objet d'amour? Thanks, MM!

Now let's all raise a glass to love and the color pink!