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!

Happy World Cocktail Week!

by Pink Lady

Dear Boston Drinkers,

The ladies of LUPEC Boston would like to invite you all to raise a glass to our very favorite holiday week: World Cocktail Week.

The brainchild of the geniuses behind the Museum of the American Cocktail, World Cocktail Week was established to celebrate the rich history of the cocktail and recognize the craftsmanship and skill of the bartenders who have been mixing them for over 200 years. It starts today, May 8th and culminates on World Cocktail Day, Tuesday, May 13th.

We will be celebrating World Cocktail Day on May 13th at the Drinkboston party at Green Street (details to follow on that.) Hopefully some of you will join us there. In the event that you can't, why not start the celebration today with a Sazerac? Believed by some to be the "original" cocktail, and unarguably one of the oldest cocktails around, we couldn't think of a better way to kick off the celebration than kicking back with one of these.

The Sazerac
Recipe borrowed from Drinkboston
1 sugar cube (4-7 grams)
7 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
1 oz water
3 oz Sazerac rye whiskey
A few drops of Herbsaint (pastis)

Muddle first three ingredients in mixing glass. “Rinse” a pre-chilled, old-fashioned glass with Herbsaint (pour drops of Herbsaint into glass, swirl and discard). Add rye to mixing glass and fill with ice. Stir well for 30 seconds and strain into Herbsaint-rinsed glass. Squeeze lemon twist over glass and rub around rim. Discard peel.

Cin-cin!

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!

World Cocktail Day!

Ah, the most refreshingly delicious day of the year! World Cocktail Day!

World Cocktail Day occurs annually on the day the Balance and Columbian Repository, a Hudson, New York newspaper, printed a wonderful exchange in which the editors defined the word cocktail. During the previous week, the loser of a political race had created a witty account of their gains and losses during the race. One of the losses listed was "25 do. cock-tail." A confused reader wrote in asking what a cock-tail was. Here is the letter to the editor and the editor's response:


To the Editor of the Balance.
Sir,
I observe in your paper of the 6th instant, in the account of a democratic candidate for a seat in the legislature, marked under the head of Loss, 25 do. cock-tail. Will you be so obliging as to inform me what is meant by this species of refreshment? Though a stranger to you, I believe, from your general character, you will not suppose this request to be impertinent.
I have heard of a forum, of phlegm-cutter and fog driver, of wetting the whistle, of moistening the clay, of a fillip, a spur in the head, quenching a spark in the throat, of flip & c, but never in my life, though have lived a good many years, did I hear of cock tail before. Is it peculiar to a part of this country? Or is it a late invention? Is the name expressive of the effect which the drink has on a particular part of the body? Or does it signify that the democrats who take the potion are turned topsycurvy, and have their heads where their tails should be? I should think the latter to be the real solution; but am unwilling to determine finally until I receive all the information in my power.
At the beginning of the revolution, a physician publicly recommended the moss which grew on a tree as a substitute for tea. He found on experiment, that it had more of a stimulating quality then he approved; and therefore, he afterward as publicly denounced it. Whatever cock tail is, it may be properly administered only at certain times and to certain constitutions. A few years ago, when the democrats were bawling for Jefferson and Clinton, one of the polls was held in the city of New York at a place where ice cream was sold. Their temperament then was remarkably adust and bilious. Something was necessary to cool them. Now when they are sunk into rigidity, it might be equally necessary, by cock-tail to warm and rouse them.
I hope you will construe nothing that I have said as disrespectful. I read your paper with great pleasure and wish it the most extensive circulation. Whether you answer my inquiry or not, I shall still remain,
Yours,
A SUBSCRIBER

[As I make it a point, never to publish anything (under my editorial head) but which I can explain, I shall not hesitate to gratify the curiosity of my inquisitive correspondent: Cock tail, then is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters it is vulgarly called a bittered sling, and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said also, to be of great use to a democratic candidate: because, a person having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow any thing else.
Edit. Bal.]

To us it sounds like it's time for a good Old Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail!

In an Old-Fashioned glass place a sugar cube.
Saturate the sugar cube with 2 or 3 dashes of bitters and a splash of water.
Crush the cube with a muddler.
Rotate the glass so the sugar and bitters line the glass.
Add ice and 2.5 oz rye or bourbon.
Squeeze a lemon twist over it, decorate with your favorite stirring rod and serve!

Cheers!