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!

Shaken or Stirred?

Which cocktails should be shaken and which ones should be stirred? If you're a student of classic mixology, you might answer, "That's easy. Drinks with eggs, dairy or fruit juices should be shaken, and 'clear' drinks made with only spirits, vermouth, etc. should be stirred." OK, the first of those mandates is seldom disputed. Stirring an egg drink? Not gonna work. But shaking a Martini? James Bond has some surprising company here.

Take the respected Savoy Cocktail Book: its mixing instructions for clear drinks are all over the map; some recipes say "stir," some say "shake." New York Times restaurant critic William Grimes' much-consulted Straight Up or on the Rocks: the Story of the American Cocktail instructs you to shake a Martini. Even the "Professor," Jerry Thomas, "couldn't make up his mind whether the Cocktail is shaken or stirred," writes David Wondrich in Imbibe! "His brandy Cocktail calls for the spoon, his gin and whiskey ones the shaker. Nor are his professional colleagues much help ... Judging by the numerous depictions of 'tossing the foaming cocktail' back and forth in a huge arc, in the 1860s and 1870s consensus favored this method -- or perhaps it was just the more picturesque one and hence was noticed more often."

That consensus still holds in, like, 99 percent of modern bars. Most drinkers like the theatricality of a shaken drink, and most bartenders are happy to oblige, especially since it's easier for them to employ only one mixing technique. Sure, your Grey Goose with olives will be cloudy with air bubbles, but it'll be drinkable.

Is "drinkable" good enough when you're paying $10-$15 for a cocktail? If you gravitate toward clear mixtures, as the Ladies often do, the answer is probably "no." There's something about a Martini, a Manhattan, a Saratoga or a Gin and It that has been deftly swirled over ice for a good minute, then strained into a chilled cocktail glass without a trace of agitation. What you get is a shimmeringly transparent drink that looks and tastes that much more elegant than its shaken sibling. And consider this: a bartender who takes the time to stir a cocktail is likely going to get its proportions and temperature right, too. Time to re-think your drink, Bond.

suggested reading for our significant others...

...compliments of Brother Cleve.

The Joys of Vintage Glassware, PT. 1

by Pinky Gonzales
with Pink Gin

From the collection of Pinky Gonzales and uh... John Collins, we'll call him

So much can be said about old glassware and drinking habits that this will be the first of hopefully a few more posts on the subject. We can probably all agree that the pleasure of drinking is only enhanced (or lessened) by the vessel from which it is drunk, whether that be a Julep, shot of whiskey, glass of champagne, pint of Guinness. All of these have their corresponding, appropriate glassware and for good reasons relating to sensory pleasure. But all that aside, what fun would it be to sip a Scorpion Bowl from say, a beer stein? This is not to say that drinking anything out of a beer stein or smelly old shoe for that matter is not okay either - it's your perogative. You're talking to someone who once drank a vintage Montrachet out of a Poland Springs bottle and loved it. In essence, what I and the ladies of LUPEC would like to say is: have some fun, and get yourself some vintage cocktailware.




Who knows who or what the Spatas were? Who cares! Let's make Zombies.
at Buckaroo's Mercantile, Cambridge





Restaurant economics and today's bigger-is-better consumer culture dictate our glass choices in the public sphere. The ubiquitous, sturdy, plain "martini" glass, for instance, in which anything from a Manhattan to a Margarita can be served is the standard in bars and retail today. The best of these stock tasteful, "smaller" glasses, some "modern vintage", roughly 5-8 oz., while the worst sell ginormous (12 oz.!) glasses on which you could prop a cheeseburger as a garnish.

Diminutive, more manageable-sized cocktails were the norm from the dawn of the cocktail in early nineteenth century America upwards through the sixties. Whether "taken" before a meal to stimulate the appetite or to simply loosen one up, a glass of chilled liquor needn't have been supersized to do the trick. Take a closer look at those aperitifs in the hands of James Bond in Dr. No or Powell & Loy in The Thin Man and see for yourself. And what did they do when they felt they hadn't had enough? Well duh, they had another.

David Embury, cocktail aficionado, back in 1948 wrote in his Fine Art of Mixing Drinks that when seeking glassware one should look for "the large ones - not less than 3 ounces." He also added that a glass "should never be filled to the brim," for overfilling places not only "too great a strain on the aplomb of the guest - especially with the second or third drink - but even the few drops of liquor which someone will inevitably spill will not improve either the guests' clothing or the top of your grand piano on which the glass may be placed."




Wouldn't this look good atop your piano?










The place to start is of course not Crate & Barrel but your local thrifts, flea markets, specialty shops and online sites for some vintage stems - or better yet, your Grandma's attic. You don't have to spend a fortune. Check out the great Buckaroo's Mercantile [link: www.buckmerc.com] for random and wonderfully weird tiki and party bits. The flea market Todd Farm [link: www.toddfarm.com] in Rowley on a Sunday for amazing finds, and sites like Rubylane.com for online thrift. Stir up an ice cold beverage and sip from what you found. Toast to your Grandpappy's Meemaw. Toast to Noni, my Midwestern Great-grandflapper, or why not to Jerry Thomas?





"John Collins" serving up a pair of beautiful old silver-mugged mint juleps for lunch. Life is hard.

Whoa - what's she?
Original Trader Vic's
Pinky Gonzales mug.
Me gusta.

Don't be a jackass. Not all the time, anyway.

The Green Hour

After 95 years of being a big no no, absinthe is once again legal in the United States. Here in Boston we are fortunate to have wonderful liquor retailers such as Brix and Downtown Wine and Spirits so finding the two available absinthes, Lucid and Kubler, is a simple enough task. But what do you do once you've made that purchase?

Traditionally the consumption of absinthe was highly ritualized. At the end of a long, arduous day folks would meet for the green hour. With a glass of absinthe in hand, people would gather around an absinthe fountain. From multiple spigots ice water would slowly drip over sugar cube laden slotted absinthe spoons. As the glasses of absinthe slowly clouded over from the bottom up those waiting to imbibe would catch up on the day's news and local gossip. Once the liquid was a uniform, pearly color the absinthe was ready to drink. Obviously not many of us today have an absinthe fountain hanging around, but you can easily replicate this process at home with a small pitcher of ice water, spoons and your good friends.

Of course as lovers of all things cocktail, the ladies of LUPEC love to use our absinthe to mix up something tasty during our green hour! Here are a few recipes to get you started.

Chrysanthemum Cocktail

2 oz French Vermouth

1 oz Benedictine

3 dashes Absinthe

Stir ingredients with ice. Strain into your favorite chilled vintage cocktail glass. Squeeze orange peel on top.

Corpse Reviver (No. 2)*

.75 oz Dry Gin

.75 oz Lillet

.75 oz Cointreau

.75 oz Lemon Juice

1 dash Absinthe

Shake ingredients well with ice. Strain into your favorite chilled vintage cocktail glass.

* In The Savoy Cocktail Book author Harry Craddock noted "Four of these taken in quick succession will unrevive the corpse again."

Fascinator Cocktail

2 oz Dry Gin

1 oz French Vermouth

2 dashes Absinthe

1 mint sprig

Shake ingredients well with ice. Strain cocktail through a tea strainer into your favorite chilled vintage cocktail glass.

Are you still thirsty and feeling a bit adventurous? Pull out your favorite recipes that call for pastis and substitute absinthe. Remember that absinthe can be kind of a bully, so start by using small quantities and then adjust to taste.

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!

gin and vermouth -- two tickets to paradise

by Pink Lady

The LUPEC Boston column in this week's issue of the Weekly Dig stars two spirits that have become less and less vogue in the age of the extra extra dry, extra extra dirty vodka martini: gin and vermouth. I will save discussion of the "original" martini recipe (and modern bastardizations thereof) for a later date. For now, let's get to know these two glorious spirits a little better. They are key ingredients in a good many endangered cocktails, as LUPEC Boston member and Drinkboston founder Barbara West explains beautifully here. To coax these classics back from beyond the grave you will need to cozy up to both.

So, vermouth: qu'est-ce que c'est?

It's simply fortified wine aromatized with herbs and spices. As the story goes, vermouth was invented in Italy in the 1780s by Anthony Carpano -- allegedly it was grandma's recipe -- and the name is derived from the German term for key ingredient wormwood ("Wermuth"). Vermouth herb & spice blends are as protected and proprietary as recipes for gin botanicals, and can contain something on the order of 40 - 50 ingredients. Carpano's original vermouth was sweet and red; about a generation later, French herbalist Joseph Noilly invented a dry vermouth based on the delicate, dry white wines and local plants of his region, and also made with wormwood (which is also a key ingredient in Absinthe; more info on that in next week's column.)

Vermouth was originally referred to according to its country of origin, especially in old cocktail books. Italian vermouth references the sweet stuff and French vermouth references dry. Grazie, Antonio! Merci, Joseph!

Many Americans fear vermouth in this modern age of drinking, as The Spirit World's post on the topic articulates. Perhaps your first encounter was with vermouth that had gone stale for lack of use in your parent's liquor cabinet? Lesson learned, you shouldn't have been dipping into their stash while they were out of town, anyway. In any event, I implore you to give vermouth another try as a grown up. It's cheap enough to buy a few bottles, taste and compare, and discover on your own what you like best -- and what works best in different cocktail recipes. Married...with Dinner conducted a vermouth-by-vermouth in home taste test, the results of which are very enlightening.

My most recent vermouth "a-ha!" moment came with the purchase of a bottle each of Extra Dry and Sweet Vya at Brix in the South End. It's expensive for sure, retailing for $25 whereas other bottles in the category hover around $7 - $10, but Vya is a truly worth it investment, especially if you can find a way to write off alcohol purchases. Vya Extra Dry is light, herbaceous, and melon-y; Vya Sweet is warm, complex, citrus-y and spicy -- it reminds me of sipping my Swedish Pop-pop's glug by the fire on a snowy New Year's Eve in Vermont.

And for you gin-shy folks...

I actually did have a gin-cident circa my freshman year of college. I do not speak of what ensued that night and I didn't touch the juniper scented stuff for nearly a decade thereafter. Then I fell in love with classic cocktails and it was only a matter of time before my vodka days were numbered. If I can do it, you can too.

What really brought me back was the gin tasting we did at our very first LUPEC meeting in February 2007. It was an aggressive re-entry but it got me over the initial hump, and also taught me a very important lesson: not all gins are created equal. I found Hendrick's, with its crisp, clean flavors and fresh cucumber notes t be a great gateway gin. I also like the then locally unavailable Blue Coat Gin that a friend had smuggled across state lines for our hostess from the "City of Brotherly Love." I also learned as we tasted each gin side-by-side that it is the botanical blend of Tanqueray that my mind and palate equate with my gincident, not gin or it's juniper flavors. Et voila, I am now officially a gin girl.

I'm sure you've tried Absolut Citron or Grey Goose Orange; gin is just a few steps away from those flavored neutral grain spirits. Here are a few starter cocktails to get you going:

The Pegu Club
So refreshing & delicious, this is the one that REALLY brought me back to gin, at Taste of the South End last year. I had about seventeen of these.

1.5 oz Plymouth Gin
.5 oz Orange Curacao
.5 oz Fresh Lime Juice
1 dash Angostura Bitters
1 dash Orange Bitters

Blue Skies
Tried this again recently at our April '08 meeting at Barbara West's house -- so delicious!

1 oz Applejack
1 oz Gin
.5 oz Lemon Juice
.25 oz Simple Syrup
1 or dashes grenadine
Shake with cracked ice and strain into your favorite vintage cocktail glass!

The French 75
What better way to sneak gin into the glass of an unsuspecting gin-phobe? By adding lemon, sugar, and champagne...

2 oz Gin
1 oz fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons sugar or 1 tsp simple syrup
Champagne

Cin-cin!