 
 "Eating, drinking and carrying on..." -- Adelaide Brennan
The Cocktailian: Crème de violette lifts the Aviation to the moon. To the very blue moon, in fact. 
In today's edition of Gary Regan's fortnightly column he writes as himself, joyously announcing the arrival to these shores of a long-awaited and long-lost cocktail ingredient, one that you had to go to quite a bit of trouble to obtain if you could obtain it at all ... until now. Thanks to the effots of Eric Seed and Haus Alpenz, we now have the first Crème de Violette liqueur offered for sale in the U.S. in decades, from Rothman & Winter in Austria. In case you're new 'round these parts and haven't heard me sing its praises before, it's a lovely, delicate liqueur made from violet petals, in this case from two different varieties of the flower, macerated in grape spirits and sweetened with cane sugar syrup. It's the key ingredient in such classic cocktails as the Blue Moon and the original version of the Aviation cocktail. I actually wasn't aware of violette's presence in the original Aviation until I read an article to that effect by David Wondrich a while back, and it makes perfect sense; the little hint of violette in the original recipe gives the drink the hue of a bluish purplish sky that you could fly right into. Gary offers a new cocktail, his tweak on the Aviation switching up a liqueur and a juice; here's the version he made of the original Aviation, after finding that the old recipe of 2 parts gin, 1 part lemon juice and a couple dashes each of violette and maraschino made the drink far too sour for his taste. Use a robust gin like Tanqueray or Beefeater.
Here's the version of the Blue Moon we've been serving, using our dwindling stash of the rare Benoit Serres violette from Toulouse, France ... which we'll now happily be able to replace with the excellent Rothman & Winter product.
The blueberry garnish looks really great. More cherry goodness!
They're available by mail order from a company called Marky's, which specializes in delicacies like caviar, smoked salmon, foie gras, truffles and other delectables. Don't panic, though -- the 18.5 oz/575g jar of Cherries in Kirsch is only $11.90 plus shipping, which is actually a better deal than the Luxardo. (It's a pretty jar too, so hush.) It's also available in a big but less pretty 37 oz/1050g jar with a rubber seal for $22.40 and a massive 112 oz/3.15kg jar for $63, in case you want to open your own cocktailian bar. This product sounds like a heck of a deal, and Dan, who's been using them for a couple of years now, says they're "perfect in a Manhattan, on ice cream, or right from a spoon ... truly delectable." (You've also gotta love this Marky's place, that has an entire category for "brandied fruit in liquor." Actually, the category is entirely La Parisienne's, also featuring their Prunes in Armagnac and Raspberries in Brandy.) So go for the La Parisienne, the Luxardo or your own homemade batch, but let's start saying "no" to neon-red faux-maraschino cherries from the grocery store, just as we're saying "no" to badly made cocktails. If you're not going to skimp on your ingredients, if you're going to eschew the use of low-quality commercial ingredients like bottled sweet-and-sour, why skimp here? (Thanks, Daniel!) O Streetcar! Very, very good news from New Orleans:
That's gonna feel really, really good. More good news: N.O. East rises ... just a bit. But it's a pretty encouraging bit.
I used to live right behind that Winn-Dixie when I was a kid. When I drove back to that neighborhood it was even more devastated than my parents' neighborhood, with water lines ranging from 6 feet to up to the eaves, and that shopping center was trashed, and I mean trashed. It looked like permanent ghost town. The very idea that they've fixed up that Winn-Dixie is going to mean a lot for Da East. When I was a kid that was quite the bustling little shopping center. There was a K&B (c'mon, sing dat song) a tavern, my barber, a TG&Y five-and-dime, a McKenzie's Pastry Shoppe (mmm, turtles ... take anudda bite outta dat Blackout Cake, Dick Bruce!), and across the parking lot a Barker's department store and a Harry's Ace Hardware. I wonder what else'll come back. Has anything else reopened there besides the Winn-Dixie? Anybody out there in Da East who can tell me? Buuuuurgers. Ooh, we were bad last Friday. Very bad indeed. 
We had dinner at Everest, a burger joint on North Lake Avenue in Altadena. They used to be a Tops Jr., affiliated with the local Tops burger joints, but this one either changed just its name or maybe its ownership too. That aside, the menu's exactly the same, for the most part. Great burgers, plus dogs, pastrami, gyros and a few Mexican items. This is their Avocado Bacon Cheeseburger, and for a thin-patty well-done burger, it's really really good. You do have to be a bit careful at Everest and Tops, though. Make sure you order a "junior" sized French fries, because if you don't your fries will fill a box that's either shoebox-sized or a box big enough to pack a mink stole. They're quite good too. If only that burger was a little thicker and medium-rare ... mmmmm. We're gonna be bad tonight, too. One of my all-time favorite bands, BeauSoleil from Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, are playing at The Mint tonight, right around the corner from my old house. And right across the street from The Mint is L.A. Burger, one of the best burger stands in the city. Their signature dish, considered by many to be the best burger in L.A., is called the ABC Burger. That, of course, stands for ... Avocado Bacon Cheeseburger. Oh boy. The greatest uilleann piper in the world? Why were we having dinner on N. Lake Ave. in Altadena last Friday? Only because one of the greatest musicians in the world was playing, in a wonderful, tiny (49-seat) performance space that's in the back room of a coffee house called Coffee Gallery. The Coffee Gallery Backstage has been running a terrific series of acoustic music shows over the last few years, but this time they've outdone themselves. 
Paddy Keenan plays the uilleann pipes, or Irish bagpipes, and was a founding member of The Bothy Band, an Irish traditional band who, along with Planxty, changed Irish music forever in the early- to mid-1970s, playing traditional music in new arrangements and with the ferocity of a rock band. Paddy's bandmate Dónal Lunny once called him "the Jimi Hendrix of the pipes," which has stuck for over 30 years (for better or for worse). I've always been partial to Liam O'Flynn of Planxty as my favorite piper, and in many ways he is, but Paddy ... the man's a monster! To look at him or talk to him you'd never realize, though; he's a very low-key, quiet, unassuming and very friendly guy. But on that most sweet (and irascible and notoriously uncooperative) instrument he's ferocious. Then he'll turn around and play slow airs that'll bring tears to your eyes. Jigs, reels, hornpipes, set dances and slow airs, plus some songs offered by his guitar accompanist, John Walsh of Kilkenny. Watching and hearing the man play, my scalp tingling, I realized that Wes and I were two of the 49 most fortunate people on the planet on that particular Friday evening. 
At the end of the second set he invited any musicians on the audience who had instruments with them to come up and jam with him, playing some of the more well-known tunes he's been associated with. It was great to see a couple of kids join in, and the impromptu session players also included Nicolas Buckmelter on tin whistle, formerly of the local Irish band Ciúnas, sadly no longer a going concern, according to Nic. "I certainly didn't anticipate playing with Paddy Keenan tonight," he said after the show, and it was incredibly cool of Paddy to invite them. It's so typical of the Irish traditional session attitude, though -- if you've got an instrument and you can play, join us! You really need to check out Paddy's music. See his website for his solo work, and seek out the Bothy Band material as best as you can. It suddenly seems to have gone out of print, so some digging might be necessary. Homemade gin. No, not the dreaded "bathtub gin" of Prohibition days, but making your own gin, at home, without a still, starting off with vodka and a pile of botanicals. (Hey, who was it that said that he considers vodka to be just "unfinished gin?" I think it was the guy who makes No. 209 gin, but I forget.) Jeffrey Morgenthaler, a bartender and excellent cocktailian blogger in Portland, takes the same approach, saying, "[W]hat many people don't realize is that gin and vodka begin life in the exact same way. You could even say that gin is nothing more than infused vodka. In fact, I've used this exact line on so many customers trying gin for the first time that I've decided to prove it to myself! What a better way to waste a bunch of time and ingredients while getting an opportunity to learn more about my favorite mixable spirit, right?" Right indeed, and a nifty idea. While the homemade product isn't really going to provide much competition to all the fabulous gin makers out there, and while gin kinda isn't really infused vodka (because once you infuse the neutral spirit with the botanicals it goes through a second distillation, which as one of the commenters says "makes all the difference in the world") and while you end up with a spirit with a little brown tint to it, you can come up with some very interesting, very personal blends that might help you understand gin a little better. Add this to the list of fun homemade things to try one day! This could be the perfect use for the next bottle of vodka I receive as a gift. Booze from Hell. While I'm nicking posts from other cocktailian weblogs, I simply couldn't believe what this post from Camper led me to. It was a descent into Hell. First off, a "seizure inducing website" as Blair put it (although that's the first thing I thought of as my eyes beheld it and I fought not to keel over with convulsions) for what's got to be the worst abomination to hit liquor store shelves yet -- caffeinated schnapps. Gee, it's both an upper and a downer, and given the list of flavors ("Cherry Bomb?" Good Christ. How Robitussiny do you think that is?) I'd say it's a triple-threat: upper, downer and emetic. To quote Mistah Kurtz / Col. Walter Kurtz, "The horror ... the horror ..." To quote Arthur, King of the Britons ... "Run away! Run away! ... Keep running!" Quite possibly the vilest swill I've seen from the liquor industry, but with a certain entertainment value, given that it's something at which to point one's fingers and laugh. Hey, how's the food at that restaurant? It's crap. (A followup to our amusing menu post of the other day.) 
Via my pal Mike at Franklin Avenue, who said, "Put aside the unwise decision to name their restaurant 'Golden River.' Apparently someone should have really proofed this ad before it hit print. The great thing about language... there's a world of difference between a 'b' and a 'p.'" Yes, I'd love some crap in my golden river, thanks very much. (*flee*) I'm also fascinated by the fact that their business is as "Chinese Cuisine and Florist." I suppose that's convenient for any dish containing rose petals, at least. [ Link to today's entries ]
Proper cherries for your cocktails. You're a true believer in "garbage in, garbage out." You've taken the time and gone to the expense of obtaining the finest ingredients for your cocktails -- great spirits, fresh juices, etc. You make a classic recipe, and then, looking for the garnish the recipe calls for ... you plop in a neon red, artificially flavored, artificially colored "maraschino cherry." 'Cause that's pretty much all you can get, right? No, not right at all. Store bought "maraschino cherries" are a cruel joke, actually, and a remnant of Prohibition and 19th Century food preservation techniques. Let's go over a little history, shall we? Well, before we get to the history, let's deal with language and pronunciation for a bit. Most people pronounce the word "mara-SHEE-no," but it's actually pronounced "mara-SKEE-no," especially if you're talking about the liqueur. (And while we're tangentially on the subject, may I remind you that similarly the word "bruschetta" is pronounced "broos-KET-ta," not "brush-SHET-ta," especially if you're a waiter in an Italian restaurant. Argh. But I digress.) "Maraschino" is an Italian word, meaning of or from the Marasca cherry, a sour variety of Morello cherry that grows well only in the Croatian coastal region of Dalmatia, and across the Adriatic Sea in parts of Italy. It's the source of the wonderful Maraschino liqueur so essential in many classic cocktails, mostly as the Italian brand Luxardo or the Croatian brand Maraska. (In fact, according to one historical article I read, the Croatians had been making liquor out of Marasca cherries since the 1500s, and in 1817 an Italian named Girolamo Luxardo moved to the Zadar region of Croatia with his family as a consular representative, and his wife Maria discovered the joys of the local liqueur and began making it herself. Her husband opened a distillery a few years later, and the rest is history.) In the old days, pre-Prohibition, a Maraschino cherry was a dark red sour Marasca cherry preserved in Maraschino liqueur, and was predictably delicious. Around that time American food scientists, never content to leave a good-tasting thing alone, were looking for ways to preserve cherries other than by soaking them in booze (as brandied cherries were a popular item as well). The method they settled on was to take fresh cherries, usually a Royal Anne, and brine them in a lye solution (!), which strips them completely of all color and flavor but firms up the flesh considerably, making them very hard to damage and giving them a very long shelf life. A hideously garish red dye was chosen to replace their color, and they were kept in a sugar syrup flavored with an almond extract or, more likely bitter almond oil or artificial flavoring (some speculated this was a feeble attempt to approximate the wonderful nutty undertones the inclusion of the pits gives to true Maraschino liqueur.) For some reason these became wildly popular in America, echoing Louisiana musician Marc Savoy's sad-shake-of-the-head observation that our societal commercialism excels at taking something real, true and good and fucking it up so that the American public will buy it. Oddly enough, while this transition from real to fake maraschino cherries was occurring in the early part of the 20th Century, a 1912 law mandated that the definition of a maraschino cherry was "marasca cherries preserved in maraschino," and that the bleached-and-dyed Royal Anne variety had to be called "imitation maraschino cherries." Although this type of preserved cherry had been around for 20 or more years by 1919, the introduction of Prohibition dealt them a death blow in America, as nothing preserved in alcohol was allowed to be legally sold. What it all boils down to is this: commercially-produced "maraschino" cherries in this country look and taste terrible. I'm referring to the red ones, of course; the monstrously vile green ones barely merit a mention at all, other than a strong warning that if you see one your best bet is to treat it as if it were toxic waste and dispose of it quickly, never allowing it to touch, much less pass, your lips. So then. What the hell do you use to garnish a cocktail? Well, making your own brandied or maraschino-preserved cherries is dead easy. Get a few pints of fresh cherries when they're in season, pit and de-stem them (I hear that running them through a food dehydrator works really well for this), heat them up in maraschino liqueur, brandy or a combination of the two to your taste, optionally adding a bit of sugar to taste for sweetness. Heat them very gently, over very low heat for about 5 minutes. Allow them to cool, seal them up in rubber-seal jars and keep them in the fridge. You can also plump dried Bing or sour Morello cherries in brandy or Maraschino for a few days and also keep those in the fridge as well. They won't be quite as pretty -- although they do plump up they never quite shed all their wrinkles -- but they're tasty too. Or you can do like top-notch cocktailian bars like The Pegu Club do and find Luxardo cherries. The Luxardo company which produces the most excellent maraschino liqueur that's their signature product also sells jars of "Marasche al frutto," real Marasca cherries preserved not in maraschino liqueur (sadly) but in a rich, pure cherry syrup. They're dark and round and perfect and really, really good. They're also expensive and extremely hard to find. Dean and Deluca in New York used to carry them but apparently don't anymore. Preiss Imports is the primary importer of Luxardo cherries into this country but they're a wholesale distributor and only sell to the trade; you can see if your local liquor emporium is a customer of theirs and implore them to order them for you. Or you can take that bit of advice Wesly always offers: "Google is your friend." 
My Luxardo cherries arrived last night. Wooooohooo! My source is Corti Brothers, a "fine wine and gourmet foods Italian grocery store" in Sacramento. Oddly enough it was listed on their website but not in a way such that I could click on it and order it. One phone call solved that, and the very nice man took my order over the phone. You can call them toll-free at (800) 509-FOOD and ask for the Luxardo "Marasche al frutto" cherries, 360 gram jar, item #1821, $17.99 each. "If you want to use a 'maraschino' cherry in your drink," say Corti Brothers, "then use the grown up version ... Corti Brothers is delighted to supply you." The flavor of these cherries is marvelous, light years removed from that day-glo red stuff in the supermarket, which you should really never use again. It's easy enough to make your own, but even though they're kind of expensive, I can't recommend the Luxardo product enough. Two of those on a cocktail pick in your drink creates an atmosphere that simply reeks with class. Cocktail of the day. So, you've got these fancy new cherries, real Marasca cherries! What do you do? What drink with which to showcase them properly? Well, the choice is obvious. We've been talking about it a lot lately anyway. What better cocktail to garnish with Luxardo cherries than the most classic cherry-garnished cocktail of all? 
Look at that. So much classier, and a million times tastier, than those neon-red monstrosities from the grocery store. Wes had had a pretty rotten day yesterday; it was really no picnic for either of us. We've got a dying-or-dead car -- the Bug's about to give up the ghost -- and we're thinking at this point that it's not really worth fixing, certainly not worth spending another thousand dollars on. We're probably going to have to take on another car payment now. Sigh. We made the decision to go for it last night. Therefore, this cocktail was medicinal as well as for pleasure. We broke out some of the good stuff.
It's what the doctor ordered. Dinner. The plan was to bring home some mole verde con puerco (green mole sauce with roasted pork over rice) from Monte Alban, a wonderful Oaxacan restaurant in west L.A., for dinner last night. Genius Chuck forgot it in the fridge at work. Sigh. The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Yats gang aft agley. Time to improvise. I had some of those Trader Joe's thin-crust small pizza rounds in the fridge, very thin pizza dough topped with chopped spinach, herbs and olive oil, all ready for whatever toppings we could come up with. Speck (smoked prosciutto) uld have been nice, but we didn't have any, so julienned Danish ham filled in. Some herbed goat cheese from France (our neighbors Chris and Kim had showered us with nearly a year's supply of cheese, which Kim's mom had gotten as spoils from working a fancy food show), some fresh figs from the tree, some tiny cherry tomatoes from our Organic Express delivery box, salt and pepper, into the oven for 5 minutes and then a few more under the broiler. 
On the side, we sliced up some perfectly ripe pears, also from the bi-weekly delivery. They were so ripe, in fact, that they started browning almost immediately. They were perfect, though; your teeth just sank through 'em, and they had a marvelous flavor and texture. All that and it was only 7 Weight Watchers points too. Who says good eats have to be bad for you? [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the Day. I was browsing through the eGullet Spirits and Cocktails forum yesterday, reading about vermouth, and stumbled across this one. It sounded vaguely familiar but I knew I had never tried it before, so it was a natural candidate for our evening's cocktail. Unfortunately I was the only one who had one, though; Wes was feeling a bit off after trying a neighborhood hot dog stand advertising "Chile Dogs." Let's just say it was no Hot Doug's, that the frank was good and the bun was fine but rather than "chile" it was an endlessly greasy industrial-grade commercial chili that did a bit of a number on him. He was craving a soothing digestivo (although it wasn't quite into straight-shot-of-Branca territory), so the glass of Amaro Nonino I poured for him seemed to do nicely. As for me, I got out the Rittenhouse rye and got to work on this drink, which was invented by bartender Enzo Errico of Milk & Honey in New York. You've undoubtedly heard me talk about Carpano's Punt E Mes before, but in case you haven't -- it's considered to be a sweet vermouth but is quite unlike the garden-variety sweet vermouths you find, in that it has a delightfully bitter characteristic to it, sort of halfway between sweet vermouth and Campari (maybe at or a little less than Aperol level) which, if substituted for regular sweet vermouth, lends considerable oomph to a drink. I first thought of this as a wonderful Manhattan variation -- we do make Manhattans with Punt E Mes sometimes -- but further Googling led me to a piece Paul had written on this drink a couple of years ago. According to one of the commenters, Enzo's inspiration for this drink came not from the Manhattan (rye, sweet vermouth, bitters) but from another favorite of ours, the Brooklyn (rye, sweet vermouth, Amer Picon and maraschino), with the Punt E Mes standing in for the sweet vermouth/Picon combination. Fascinating! I wonder what this drink would taste like with a dash of orange bitters tossed in. Before I start futzing with it, though, I made one as Enzo intended ... 
It's mighty, mighty good. It's one of those combinations that seem so natural, even obvious, that you want to smack yourself on the forehead and say, "Jeez, why didn't I think of this?!" (You didn't think of it because you're a big doof and Enzo is made of awesome, that's why.) This one definitely goes on the fall cocktail menu I'm working on for our home bar. (We have a menu on our bar at home for guests, which we change seasonally. What a coupla geeks.) Belated Happy National Cherries Jubilee Day! Technical goofs kept me from getting a timely post up Monday, and I lost an entry which I had to recreate, hence my tardiness in wishing you well on Monday's national holiday. Such as it wasn't, as it were. "National Cherries Jubilee Day?" Who thinks up this stuff?! Actually, though ... Cherries Jubilee is worth celebrating. It's one of those "old-school" dishes, back in the day when people went to fancy restaurants had had dishes like Veal Oscar and Shrimp Louie and Lobster Newburg, and is made into instant fun because it's a dessert containing liquor which you set on fire. And while it may have died out in many if not most restaurants these days, it's still served in New Orleans at old-guard Creole instituitions like Galatoire's, Broussard's and Antoine's. I remember the first time I ordered the dessert at Galatoire's, many years ago -- John, our waiter, flamed it at the table and then drizzled flaming cherry syrup onto the tablecloth, writing a capital cursive "G", before ladling the sauce and cherries into our dishes. It doesn't get much showier than that. (Don't try this at home, kids.) Here's a pretty good recipe:
Please try not to do the flaming "G" thing and end up burning your house down. That would be bad. [ Link to today's entries ]
The Cocktail Spirit, with Robert Hess. Aaaaah. Robert gets to The Big One, the first cocktail to enter my consciousness, thanks to Dad. (Thanks, Dad!) His latest video is thirteen minutes on ...
I don't like having a fruit salad being mashed into my drink, as I've mentioned before -- pulverized orange slice and (in a truly dopey move) shredded neon-red maraschino cherry. (What in the world is the point of that?! Don't muddle the cherry, for feck's sake!) I do, however, like the oil from an orange peel being expressed into the drink (this is how they do it at Seven Grand, too); I also like adding a dash of orange bitters if there's no orange peel handy. On his DrinkBoy site, Robert has an amazing essay on the history of the Old Fashioned Cocktail, entitled "Renewing an Old Fashion". If you like this drink, everything you'll ever want to know about it is there, in a wonderful piece of cocktail scholarship. Guest food pornographer of the day. This came in email yesterday from Dave, who just got back from Las Vegas. We'd been eager to hear about Mario Batali's latest venture, so take it away, Dave! (No pics, sorry.)
Wow. The last thing we need in Vegas is another not-to-be-missed place (we've already got Rosemary's and Capriotti's ... but we have been wanting to go to Hash House a Go Go for a while now. Hmm, maybe that day trip to San Diego isn't a bad idea. [ Link to today's entries ]
Hello, stash! I've been working on converting a former broom closet in our house into a liquor cabinet. Our little bar is pretty nice, but it doesn't come close to fitting all our bottles, which are on the floor to the left and right of the bar, behind the shelf/table unit that's behind the sofa, also on the floor to the left and right of that, and in the kitchen, and on the floor of the broom closet, and in the pantry. Sheesh. So I knocked out the vertical partitions that kept me from being able to put liquor shelves in the closet, thinking I was being all handy and tough (and ending up with gigantic bruises on both shoulders from where I tried to apply some bodily leverage to get them out ... ugh). Now all I have to do is get the shelves cut and we'll have a huge amount of liquor storage. Yay! As I started putting back some of the bottles that were already in the bottom of the old mostly-useless closet, I was struck by the beauty of our stash of 18 year old Sazerac Rye Whiskey. Several years ago, once we realized how scarce it was getting, we started socking some away for rainy days. Nine bottles left, in bottlings ranging from 2001 to 2005. 
Shore is purty! Alinea. Alinea Restaurant in Chicago, one of the most innovative and some say best restaurants in the country (and one of the practitioners of "molecular gastronomy" where said practice hasn't slid into the ridiculous) has a cookbook coming out. Chef Grant Achatz, former sous chef of The French Laundry who's made quite the name for himself at Trio and now at his own place) has apparently written a book so precisely and lovingly describing what he does that you could practically open an Alinea clone in your own living room (provided you were a monstrously talented and passionate chef with massive amounts of restaurant knowledge, that is). The book is already available for pre-order, which will also give you access to another website that's a companion to the book, which will feature things like demo videos of the dishes being prepared. Pretty amazing achievement, and I can't wait to see it. We're definitely adding Alinea to the must-go places when we return to Chicago (now that Trotter's is off the list pretty much forever). In a bizarre recent turn of events, apparently Chef Achatz has been diagnosed with a substantial squamous cell tumor on his tongue (good lord!). According to Michael Ruhlman, he's doing well -- doctors have said his treatment is "exceeding expectations" -- and his first round of chemotherapy has shrunk the tumor by 75%. I understand that squamous cell tumors are rarely fatal but can be disfiguring, and I certainly hope this doesn't affect his sense of taste, which would be a catastrophic blow for one of the best chefs in the country. Ruhlman updates that the next step is radiation, which is going to be tough. Best of luck, Chef Grant! 1859: First New York Times restaurant review? As you may have read last week, the New York Times finally eliminated its absurd pay-to-read policy and now the entire content of the paper, and a significant and growing part of its archive, is now available to read free of charge. While digging around the massive NYT archive, Jason Kottke came across was purports to be the first restaurant review in that paper. [Full text here, as a PDF.] The review has no byline, and is credited only to "the Strong-Minded Reporter of the Times." The genesis of this assignment came thusly, as described in the opening of the article:
And so it began, and off he went on a journey that led us through nearly 150 years of restaurant reviews, all the way up to Frank Bruni. Along the way he explains the difference between dining and mere eating -- "whereas all people know how to eat, it is only the French who know how to dine" -- lists seven types of dinner experiences to be found in New York, from most to least pleasant, and describes what one may expect from each type of establishment. At the time the finest restaurant in New York was Delmonico's, generally thought to be the first proper American restaurant (followed closely by Antoine's in New Orleans, still run by the same family since 1840), and describes an experience at that establishment thusly:
Sounds lovely, although I could do without a perfumed waiter. The Strong-Minded Reporter also visited the "sandwich room" at Browne's Auction Hotel, described as an "eating-house:"
"The experience of being a regular has barely changed in 150 years," Jason noted, and quite correctly. My usual waitress at John O'Groats doesn't quite just set my favored sandwich before me, but knows the particulars of my usual order to the smallest detail yet still double-checks it with me in case I've changed my mind that day. (I usually don't.) Then the reporter visits the lowest form of public eating establishment on his list, a "third-class eating-house:"
Hmm, what modern establishments does this remind you of? It's a great read; please do check out the whole article, it's fascinating. One small aside ... Jason refers to New York's Delmonico's as having invented many dishes with which we're all now familiar, including Oysters Rockefeller. (Oh dear.) In an update at the bottom of the post he says, "According to their web site, a restaurant in New Orleans named Antoine's claims that they invented Oysters Rockefeller." *chuckle* No, dear boy ... Antoine's doesn't claim to have invented it. They did invent it. [ Link to today's entries ]
Goodbye, summer. Damn, just as I got those great new silver(plate) julep cups in. Maybe I'll keep those handy for an unseasonal heat snap, but as it is now autumn as of today, time for a shift to some more autumnal tipples ... spicy whiskies, vermouths, and this is the time of year we tend to make more Hoskins Cocktails at home (which I heartily recommend for you too). I'm also going to start playing around more with flips over the next couple of months, and I have an original recipe or two I'm mulling over. That oughta be fun, stay tuned! Last night's "Down Home" archive now streaming. If you missed my radio show last night, you've still got a week to catch it at your leisure, thanks to Sean. Find it here in three bandwidth flavors. Featured artists include Lee Dorsey, Fats Domino, Ruth Brown, Leadbelly, Diamond Joe, Leo PRice, Larry Williams, Luther Kent & Trick Bag, Jerry Lee Lewis, Kevin Clark & Tom McDermott, Sidney Bechet, Papa Celestin's Original Tuxedo Jazz Band, Johnny Dodds, the Sir Douglas Quintet, Väsen, Josh Ritter, The Pine Leaf Boys, Zachary Richard, The Lost Bayou Ramblers, Planxty, Christy Moore, Fisherstreet, Hothouse Flowers, John Mooney, Anders Osborne, Uncle Tupelo and brand-new music from Mem Shannon and Geno Delafose. New Orleans' Best Cocktails: The Whiskey Sour. Chris McMillian, our master bartender at the Library Lounge in New Orleans, takes me (and us) on a trip to my childhood again. This was another of my dad's favorites, along with the Old Fashioned and the drink that was probably most oft-consumed at family gatherings, the "Highball" (which in my family was always Seagram's V.O. and 7-Up). This one, which went down smoother than the powerful Old Fashioned, was the one I was allowed to have a tiny sip of most often. Dad never did put egg white in his, but managed to get a halfway-decent head on them anyway. I love the addition of egg white in a sour -- don't fear eggs in your drinks! Just wait until I start foisting flips on you (which include a whole egg ... for a shiny coat). I'll take Manhattan. I love so many different cocktails it'd be hard to list them all and be fair, but there are three I keep coming back to, all whiskey-based (with all due apologies to the Martini and the Pegu Club and all the drinks based on other spirits), but I guess my three "comfort food" cocktails are the Old Fashioned, the Sazerac and what Gary Regan described in yesterday's article in the Chronicle as "the king of cocktails," the Manhattan. Gary describes that while the Martini has morphed into what is frequently a mere shadow of its former self as a balanced cocktail, the Manhattan has generally been left alone:
Ah yes, I've given similar lectures myself (and those of y'all who've already heard my Manhattan lecture, feel free to skip this post except for the two links to Gary), but unfortunately far more often than Gary seems to. I've had bartenders put just a drop of sweet vermouth in a Manhattan, the way they (in my opinion) mis-make a Martini. (The last time that happened I uncharacteristically didn't send it back, because I was in a non-lecturing mood, and at least he put bitters in. That won't happen again; next time it will go back.) I've had bartenders omit the bitters and actually say, occasonally with a scoff, "Nobody puts bitters in a Manhattan anymore." (I have to take a deep breath at that point and remind myself to be nice.) "My friend," a typical reply goes, "a good bartender would no more omit the bitters in his (or her) Manhattan than a chef would omit salt and pepper on a fine steak." Etc. I usually try to avoid this last bit by 1) scanning the bar for the presence of a bottle of bitters, or 2) inquiring if the bar stocks them if I don't see any, usually accompanied by an apology, and 3) ordering my Manhattan with "an extra dash of bitters," which is the way I like it anyway, and because it gets the word "bitters" into the bartender's head. Still, I usually end up watching him or her like a hawk, making sure the bitters go in; if I see the Boston shaker being assembled without it, then ... "Excuse me!" But unlike lucky Gary, I also have to watch to make sure enough vermouth goes in. In fact, I find myself having to remind them of the proportions (saying "I like it 2:1" rather than "You will make sure to put enough vermouth in it, won't you?"). All the time. Sheesh. Major exception -- Seven Grand, of course. All I have to say is "I'd love a Manhattan, please," and then the guys will ask me what kind of whiskey I want in it, or will the standard Rittenhouse 100 do. One practically weeps in gratitude. In his excellent article Gary goes over the history of the drink, talks about the importance of all its elements -- the whiskey, the vermouth, the bitters, the garnishes. The thing that's important to me about a Manhattan is the balance. Wes is the Manhattan-meister at home, and he's constantly tinkering with proportion and seasoning with the bitters, depending on what whiskey you're using. We tend to go back and forth between a 2:1 and 3:1 ratio, depending on the whiskey -- powerful, spicy, high proof like Rittenhouse Rye, or a softer, milder rye like Old Overholt, or if you're using Bourbon, which you're going to get in 95% of bars these days. You need to know your ingredients to know how to balance them, but 2:1 is a good place to start. Gary also talks about Manhattan variations, including this yummy one we've made at home on occasion, substituting the Italian bitters Amaro Nonino for the sweet vermouth for an Uptown Manhattan. Next step -- having a Manhattan in Manhattan. Soon, I hope. Food porn photo of the day. We went to a barbecue at the home of some friends last weekend, and our friend Carol, who's a chef, the brains behind a website called The Hungry Passport and leader of culinary tours to places like Ireland and France, brought a dessert. Quite a dessert, in fact. 
That's a Charlotte Royale (not, not a porn star name, sheesh) -- slices of jelly roll lining a Bavarian mold, filled with flavored Bavarian cream. Yum! Musical performance of the day. I've been a fan of the Irish band The Frames since they first started in 1990. Recently their lead singer and songwriter Glen Hansard has resumed his very brief acting career (you may remember him as Outspan Foster in "The Commitments" in '91) to star in one of the best films of the year, the Irish-made independent film Once (shot on a staggeringly huge budget of ... $160,000). It's a completely wonderful little movie, and I wish there were more of them -- a beautiful story simply told, very well-acted, well-written and so sweet, with so much heart. It's an offshoot of a side project of The Frames called The Swell Season -- for the past few years Glen's been performing with a young Czech singer and songwriter named Markéta Irglová, who was the daughter of friends (and Frames fans) that Glen stayed with when he performed in the Czech Republic. This song, "Falling Slowly," performed recently on "The David Letterman Show" while Glen and Markéta were touring the States, is one of the standouts from the movie and the album (originally a Frames song on their most recent album The Cost). Go see this movie if it's still around. If it's not, get the DVD as soon as it gets its New Release Tuesday. [ Link to today's entries ]
"Down Home" streaming archive. My friend Sean is determined and possesses a ferocity of will -- once he sets his mind to something you'd better stay out of his way. He's also a really great guy; I was very grateful when we wrote me a while back and said, "Your radio show needs to be a podcast. I will make it happen." (I also stayed out of his way.) Now, thanks to the kindness of his heart and his coding skills which are almost indistinguishable from magic, my radio show is now available for one week after broadcast as a streaming archive. Initially he made it available as a downloadable podcast, but I was a little iffy on the legality of that, and was subsequently told that such a thing was "incredibly illegal." However, streaming seems to be OK, at least for the time being. We've found some other prominent radio stations doing it, and right now our GM is looking into it. I've heard nothing good or bad yet, so in the meantime we'll just keep at it until some RIAA putz who hates music and wants to take it away from you takes it away from you. The link is http://www.interglacial.com/downhome/, and the stream is available in three flavors -- a medium-sized, good quality stream; a low-bandwidth stream that sounds like AM radio but would be listenable via dialup; and a high-quality stream that's twice the bandwidth of the first version. Should be enough to satisfy everyone's needs. As I said, the show will only be up for one week after broadcast, after which time it'll be replaced by the following show. Right now my September 13th show, featuring my musical tribute to the late Willie Tee, is still online, but as of tomorrow it should be replaced by tonight's show. You can always listen to the live stream at kcsn.org from 7:00 to 9:00pm Pacific time (0300 to 0500 GMT). Woo! Thanks, Sean!! A visit to Seven Grand. Only our third, alas -- it may be our favorite new bar and only 7.7 miles away from home, but it takes a bit of effort to get there, especially if we want to take the train (two trains, actually) to get there without having to worry about driving back. As I've said, though, it's more than worth the effort to find a place that cares about cocktails, that has expert bartenders and makes their drinks with only the best ingredients. 
We got there around 9, which is a bit later than we like to go. After that (and especially after 10 or so) the place gets really crowded, and you start to hear fewer orders of "Sazerac, please" or "Blackberry Julep, please" and more "Crown and Coke." In fact, as it got more and more packed, someone next to us actualy asked for a Red Bull and vodka. (Sweet sufferin' Jesus.) The bartender, to their infinite credit, said "We don't stock that stuff." We did see some of their house specials like the Brock & Co. go out, and a few other interesting things, but when it gets that crowded it tends to be more of the drink-to-get-drunk crowd and not the cocktailian crowd. Great for the bar's income, not so great for me having a good time. We prefer quieter times in our bars anyway, so next time we'll remember to keep hitting the place relatively early, so that we can have some quiet and some quality time with our bartenders. Oh, and I love this sign behind the bar: 
The fourth in the list, partially obscured by the old lamp (the shade of which is made from a big prop bottle of Old Fitzgerald Bourbon) says, "Make it an Old Fashioned." Boy, do I love this place. I had one of their house specials from the cocktail menu, and I think I'm mis-remembering the name -- Irish Appointment, I think; if it's not that it's close. It's a sour made with two kinds of Irish whiskey, actually, both Jameson's and Black Bush. The principle reminds me of lots of Don the Beachcomber's tropical rum drinks, in which two or even three rums were blended in one drink, all of their characteristics coming together to create something that you couldn't achieve with only one rum. It was the first time I'd ever had a drink with two Irish whiskies in one, and the two played together really well. (A harbinger for Catholic/Protestant - Nationalist/Loyalist reconciliation in a glass, let's hope.) Wes went for bartender Damian's version of a Whiskey Smash, although this one, unlike the classic smash, contained no mint. Bourbon, lemon juice, a bit of orange juice, simple syrup, and ... hrm, something else I'm forgetting. It was very tasty, though. 
For my second drink, I felt like just having a whiskey. This is a whiskey bar too, after all, with 200 different kinds on the wall behind the bar. I decided to go for a whisky rather than a whiskey -- Scots whisky, that is, where one daren't spell it with an "e." I may have mentioned a while back that I finally had a Laphroaig epiphany (the magic switch in my head flipping after a friend's 7-year-old smelled it from the bottle and said, "It smells like bacon!"). Scotch-drinking friends had recommended that if I had embraced Laphroaig it might be time to take one leap further, to an even more intensely peaty/smoky single malt that many call "the aristocrat" if Islay whisky -- a 16-year-old called Lagavulin. There also seemed to be some brisk argu-- er, discussion as to which is the most intense and the best of the two. I was about to find out. 
The nose was a bit fruity, a little nutty, with a whiff of smoke as if I was standing near the smokehouse room in my favorite sausage shop (which, incidentally, would be the European Deluxe Sausage Kitchen on Olympic near Doheny in Beverly Hills, and Continental Gourmet Meats in Glendale). On the palate ... extraordinarily smooth! Layers of flavor, like a tawny port with depth of oak wood and vanilla and standing right in the middle of the smokehouse and so much peat I almost felt as if I were cutting turf in the bogs of County Kildare (even though that's Irleand, it's still peat) and shoving it in my mouth as if it were chawin' tabacky. In the finish, more spice and the spray of the sea and a huge whomp of iodine. Holy crap. (Here I let loose with a burst of Scottish expletives not unlike certain characters in "Trainspotting," although non-violent and not shooting smack, but rolling my Rs perfectly.) I've never had anything like this, not even Laphroaig (which I still really like) is quite like this. Further exploration is mandated. I think now's the time to lay in a bottle of this stuf, as the weather begins to get a little snappier and we head toward autumn and winter. [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the Day: The Creole Fizz. This one's a bit of a leftover from MxMo XIX, from Rick's mentioning getting his entry from Baker and also listing several other fascinating fizz recipes Baker had in The Gentleman's Companion. (Speaking of which, I've had a tendency to skip around in that book, and I've actually never read it straight through from cover to cover. I oughta do that. Soon.) One of the ones Rick mentioned that really fascinated me was the Creole Fizz, which I thought I'd whip up since we've got some beautiful Plymouth Sloe Gin. I mentioned this to Rick, and in shock and surprise he uttered an expletive that called into question the legitimacy of the circumstances of my birth. Such is the reaction among cocktailians when you mention this stuff, especially in the context of you having some when they don't. (Hee hee. Sorry, didn't mean to be a gloating bastard.) That's because this is phenomenal stuff, redolent of the true fruit taste of the sloes, a perfect balance between sweet and tart, and none of the artifical cough syrupy flavor you get from pretty much every other sloe gin sold in this country. Fortunately he can get it the same place I got it -- by mail, from Royal Mile Whiskies in Edinburgh, Scotland. They were one of the only liquor shops in the U.K. willing to ship to the U.S., and I got mine quickly and with little trouble. Unfortunately, such bottled joy comes with hideously expensive shipping costs. The 700ml bottles (odd, why not 750ml?) cost £16.13 each without VAT. Shipping will run £22, for a grand total of £54.26, or about $109.05. That's a lot ... but I think it's worth it if you care about quality, and only the best ingredients going into your cocktails. If all I have is bottom shelf, $8.95 a bottle sloe gin, then I'd rather not use any. Let us implore the Plymouth company to export their sloe gin to the United States! In the meantime, let's make a drink. Here's Charles Baker's description:
With all due apologies to Mr. Baker, I did tweak the proportions a bit. Here's the drink as I made it last night: 
I can't emphasize enough how much it's worth it to procure Plymouth Sloe Gin. The use of any sloe gin other than Plymouth will make this drink infintely inferior. "K-Ville" = Crapville. The premise sounded so good so, perfect, so full of promise. A cop show, set in New Orleans -- specifically, post-Katrina New Orleans. A show that'll use the city as more than an atmospheric backdrop; a show that'll make the state of things in the city and the city's struggle for recovery one of the primary themes of the show. A show that'll tell it like it is, while telling stories of life in a city that was nearly completely destroyed by the government's failure to protect its citizens and property as they promised. On FOX, no less.Too good to be true, of course. "K-Ville" is a bad cop show -- formulaic, clumsily written -- but it's so much more/less than that. It wastes potential. It doesn't really tell it like it is (although it occasionally tries). And it's another of those locally-filmed productions that SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. We had a long discussion about this email yesterday, and one of my friends said, "The show has hired 80% of its staff from locals, has spend $17 million there thus far, is shooting as much on location as they possibly can and is totally committed to the city, with some people who aren't locals now considering it home. Support the show, y'all." Well ... yeah. All that stuff's good, especially the part about people actually moving there to stay. The economic impact is good, the fact that they've hired local staff is good. Unfortunately from what I've seen so far, their local staff doesn't include a technical/cultural consultant or a music consultant. They also didn't seem to have spent any of their budget in seeking out and finding good writers. Where shall I begin? The show is full of bad dialogue in which they seem to have taken a list of local terms, loaded it in a salt shaker and merely sprinkled it onto the bad dialogue, without it flowing from any kind of feeling, reality or natural aspects of the dialogue or characters. "Gumbo gumbo gumbo, Ninth Ward Ninth Ward Ninth Ward, cypress tree po-boy, take the neutral ground!!!" Sigh. Not quite as bad as that utterly wretched, degenerate abortion "The Big Easy," but almost. (Ironically enough, although I completely ignored it because the movie was so bad, apparently the extremely short-lived "Big Easy" TV series apparently got it right, according to friends; locales, language and music was supposedly spot-on. There were tons of local musicians in all the episodes, and Nettie said Kermit Ruffins was practically a regular. Go figure.) GET BETTER WRITERS! Eyerolling moments like the woman who drives up in the new convertible that "only cost me two FEMA checks!" That absurd car chase that starts on Bourbon Street, screeches down the street and suddenly is below the bridge approach, and then crashes into the Casino. (Well, to be fair, nobody gets that kind of thing right in any city.) The silly, lame, generic, tourist-on-Bourbon-Street musical performance in the beginning, which could have included some recognizable local musicians who really need the gig. The ridiculous name "DuBois" for one of the episode's main characters ... did y'all even bother to find out some common local names, or did you get no further than "A Streetcar Named Desire?" Incidentally, switchboard.com's White Pages listings show that only eight people in the city of New Orleans are named DuBois. And our hero, who drinks constantly on the job and who tortures a suspect who turns out to be innocent. (Ah, in the George Bush era of entertainment we have to have our torture scene, don't we?) To the character's credit he does seem to be dedicated to the rebuilding of the city, and demonstrates the real pain that a lot of locals feel. I have to confess, I still haven't finished watching the first episode -- I got fed up and turned it off after 20 minutes. I should at least try to finish it up before I go to bed. This show has such potential that it's almost a responsibilty -- if they're going to take on this subject and this setting, they need to do it right. They need to tell the right stories, they need to get the local cultural details right, they need to use their unique position on weekly network television to show America what it's really like there, and WHY it's important to recover and rebuild. They have an inkling of the latter, but they need better writers. Swampwoman, in a comment responding to Schroeder's criticism of the show, said, "Despite all the inaccuracies which also made me cringe, overall it gets "the New Orleans brand" out there. I liked it, the all encompassing message it did send is that New Orleans is far from whole, and her people are still suffering mentally and emotionally." There were a couple of flashes that held out some hope, scenes which reflected the sentiment mentioned above -- Boulet talking to his wife about what he's going through living in the city now ... I hope that sentiment connects. I'll give 'em another episode or two, but so far I'm not holding my breath. I know it's only TV, but I watch shows that are far, far better written than this. I know there are good television writers out there. Hire them now, K-Ville. Odd Web Screen Capture of the Day. From a news sidebar on CNN.com. Ummm ... ya think? 
(Thanks, Michael!) [ Link to today's entries ]
MxMo XIX: Mixology Monday Fizz Roundup.
Thanks so much for hosting, Gabriel ... great job! I'm sorry it took me so long to get involved with Mixology Monday (I am the God Emperor of Procrastination), but better late than never, and I won't miss it again. This is what the online cocktail community is all about -- sharing and learning and having fun. Lunch at John O'Groats. I know, I've talked about it before, but that doesn't mean it doesn't warrant another mention. One of my favorite places to eat in Los Angeles, John O'Groats, on Pico Boulevard just west of 20th Century-Fox studios, makes the best breakfasts in town and many of the best lunches too (although sadly they're no longer open in the evenings for their wonderful dinners, but happily that means that their general m anager and executive chef Paul Tyler, one of the nicest human beings in the Known Universe, gets to actually have a life). In fact, they rack up quite a number of bests, including their omelettes, shortbread, oatmeal, biscuits and fish and chips. To my chagrin I realized recently that I hadn't been there in a while -- I'd really been trying to behave myself save for the occasional weekend indulgence, and I hadn't been there for weekday lunch since my last couple of trips home to New Orleans. Given that otherwise I've been a 17-year regular there, I was long overdue. Wes and I found ourselves on the Westside on Labor Day and there was no question as to where to eat. I got my lunchtime usual: 
On the menu it's simply called a Club Sandwich, the most common and what some would say pedestrian of classic diner offerings. Here, though, call it The Club Sandwich-as-work-of-art, which is what this is. This isn't just a sandwich. It's not just the best club sandwich in Los Angeles. It's one of the best sandwiches period, anywhere. And it's simple, really. But it's the high quality of the ingredients and the care with which they're put together that make this dish, as any other great dish, something special and not "just a sandwich." Sourdough bread, cut in-house from a whole loaf from an artisanal bakery (not just off the shelf). Toasted perfectly, so that it's still a bit soft inside but on the outside just rough enough to shred the roof of your mouth just a little. White meat turkey, carved off the bone (and not processed turkey roll). Emmenthaler Swiss cheese, also cut by hand. Applewood-smoked bacon, crisp. Ripe tomatoes that actually taste like something (i.e., a good tomato) rather than those red tennis balls in the supermarket, that resemble tomatoes after having been put through a deflavorizing machine. Crisp iceberg lettuce, with a great crunchy texture. A thick slather of real mayonnaise, not something diluted and squired from a squeeze bottle. When Warren Zevon said, "Enjoy every sandwich," he may not have realized it but he really meant this one. This whole exceeds the sum of its most excellent parts. Other than the red beans and rice I make myself at home, this is THE greatest comfort food dish in the city of Los Angeles. Wes went for another of his old favorites: 
Widely regarded as the best Fish and Chips in the city (sorry, King's Head), this is beer-battered Icelandic cod, crisp and decidedly non-greasy, with their always-perfect fries. Again, simple. Again, highest-quality ingredients. Again, perfectly prepared. Hmm. I need to get there more often. If it means nothing but spinach salads for lunch during the week that I go, then so be it. The Cocktail Spirit, with Robert Hess. Ah, we can take these one at a time now. The newest video has been posted at the Small Screen Network site:
Two observations -- if I were a personnified Cosmopolitan I'd think it a bit of a backhanded compliment to be described by saying that "there's nothing at all wrong with it," even though that's very true. It suffers due to its ubiquity, but it is actually a good drink as Robert says, a classic "New Orleans sour" as categorized by Gary Regan in The Joy of Mixology. The better version of this drink was introduced by New York bartender Toby Cecchini, who claims the best recipe (I'll post it once I get home, as I don't remember it offhand). I doubt you'll ever see that recipe outside of Toby's bar very often, though. The problem with this drink lies with the second observation, which is that in 95% of bars where you order this drink you're not going to get it made with good quality ingredients, or in anywhere near a proper proportion. Go to a dozen bars, and it'll be made a dozen different ways. Nobody can seem to agree on what's the "proper" proportions for this drink, although Robert makes a learned version with balanced proportions. If you're really unlucky it'll be made by someone who doesn't measure, and who uses plain well vodka from the speed rail, too much cheap triple sec, Rose's lime cordial and way, way too much cranberry juice. The Cosmopolitan used to be my drink of choice for a while about 10 years ago, and more often than not they were made this way (I knew a few bars where I could get decent to good ones, at least). I like to do sneaky things with Cosmopolitans these days -- if a guest asks for one I might sneak in a softer gin instead of the vodka, or if feeling less devious I might suggest, "Hey, wanna try something a little different, maybe?" and make a Footloose or a Pegu Club or something. I can't really blame the drink itself for its ubiquity, but I think it might be time for the Cosmo to get in the back seat for a while and let some other drinks hav a chance to climb in popularity. More printed bar menus with more interesting choices would be a start! Bourdain's most overrated. Tony Bourdain (who was great on "Top Chef" last week, and whose last blog post was even better), tackles culinary trends he finds to be most precious and overrated in a funny bit in the current issue of Radar. Among them:
Agreed. That said, one of our favorite locals, Blair's Restaurant in Silverlake, makes a Truffled Mac 'n Cheese dish that's really tasty, a huge portion (more than enough for Wes and me) and is only five bucks.
Perhaps, but not so innovative when you think about the fact that cooks in India have been using it for 500 years.
Bwahahaha! Go get 'em, Tony. Appropriately enough it should be a water gun. "Water sommelier" ... what precious bullshit. If a restaurant wants to sell bottled water, that's fine. I don't have to buy it. (I recall an interesting interview with Chef Mark Peel of the most excellent Campanile about bottled water -- he serves it in his restaurant because he wants to offer that as part of a fine dining experience; that's cool. That said, he NEVER drinks bottled water himself, always tap, and at home he stopped getting his delivery of expensive bottled water for his water dispenser and started refilling the 5-gallon jug from the garden hose ... and nobody noticed for seven months.) As I've said before, if a server suggests bottled water and I ask for tap, then scowls or condescends to me for doing so, that's not fine and will be reflected in his or her tip. If someone were to come to my table and introduce himself or herself as a "water sommelier," showing me a menu of six, eight and ten dollar bottles of water and floridly describing them, I think I'd respond something like this: "Yes, thank you. I think we'll each have a 2007 Eau de Tap, on the rocks, vintage two minutes ago, please." I'd also have to consider whether or not I'd ever return to a restaurant that foisted something called a "water sommelier" on its customers. Sheesh. I'll leave you to Tony's comments on the final entry on his menu of the overrated, the "Chocolate Martini." [ Link to today's entries ]
Mixology Monday: The Fizz. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles ... Chuck finally got his act together and remembered to participate in Mixology Monday! Well, barely. 
This month it's being hosted by Gabriel at Cocktail Nerd, and because I'm behind on blog reading this week I missed the heads-up until last night. Rick emailed me to tell me he'd posted the New Orleans Fizz No. 1 and would I like to contribute some history to the comments. "Oh, feck," I thought, "I forgot MxMo again!!" I was determined not to miss it this time, so I leapt into last-minute frenzied research mode. Rick had gotten his fizz recipe from Charles Baker's Gentleman's Companion, and I didn't want to be quite so much of a copycat is to mine one of Baker's many other fizz offerings (although I might do one or two of them this week anyway, 'cause I haven't done them before and some of them look fantastic). I didn't want to do a gin fizz either, and decided to reach for an old standard -- Stanely Clisby Arthur's 1937 classic Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix 'Em (mine's a sixth printing from 1944 and hasn't fallen apart ... yet). I double-checked it for fizzes, and it was fairly thin in that regard. We had the Ramos Gin Fizz, plus a couple of Collinses, and basic "Gin Fizzes," consisting of gin, lemon juice, powdered sugar and seltzer water, either plain or in three other varieties -- Silver (containing egg white), Golden (containing egg yolk) or Royal (containing a whole egg). Classic, yes, but not exactly floating my boat. I tried to think of some other spirits I might like to see in a fizz, and since I've been enjoying rum so much lately, and since I'd never had one, I thought, "Hmm. How about a rum fizz?" Off to CocktailDB, where a search for "fizz" in a drink name turned up 114 results, 15 of which were based on rum -- some of which looked interesting, some of which really, really didn't, and one of which was called simply ... Rum Fizz -- rum, cherry brandy, sugar, lemon juice and soda. Relatively simple, but I saw it as a place to start rather than something I wanted to try for this event. Most of these fizz recipes called for soda, but I wanted something else. As I was flipping through Arthur's book, I came across a recipe I hadn't really noticed before -- the Tchoupitoulas Street Guzzle, described thusly:
Bingo. I had my idea for a more interesting rum fizz. I played around with a few ideas, and settled on this combination for what I consider to be the first version of this drink. I whipped up a batch, Wes and I tasted them, and he declared it worthy of a writeup for Fizz Day. For the rum, I used Old New Orleans Crystal Rum, but Cruzan Light 2-year-old Virgin Islands rum would work well, or any good light rum with some character (i.e., not Bacardi). I changed the lemon juice to lime, to give it more Caribbean character. I continued that by removing the cherry brandy (e.g. Cherry Heering) and substituting one of my favorite old/new liqueurs -- it's been around for ages but has only recently been available in this country -- Clément Créole Shrubb. If you haven't come across it or heard me mention it here before, it's an orange liqueur not unlike Grand Marnier, but based on rum rather than Cognac and with a lovely, almost mysterious spicy quality. I had some rich demerara syrup left over from making Paul Clarke's Swordfighter Swizzle, so I added a teaspoon of that for a bit more sweetness and depth from the bit of molasses in that sugar. Egg white for a foamy head, and Angostura bitters for a bit more spice to help tie it all together. And instead of soda, a nice, spicy ginger beer-type ginger ale. Not that wimpy, might-as-well-be-7Up Canada Dry stuff, we're talking about the kind of ginger ale that's intensely peppery, such that if you smell it after you open the bottle, you immediately sneeze. The result? Not too bad. Not too bad at all. 
I'm probably going to play around with this one a bit more, but not a bad start. New Orleans' best cocktails: The Brandy Alexander. Not only the Brandy Alexander, but master bartender Chris McMillian of the Library Lounge in New Orleans also shows us that by varying one ingredient in each, you can also end up with two other classic after-dinner drinks -- the Pink Squirrel and the Grasshopper (another New Orleans original). The Pink Squirrel, besides being a dessert drink, also falls into the general "squirrel" category of drinks, indicating that its primary flavoring ingredient is the almond-flavored liqueur crème de noyau. Quote of the day. Via Mary, who found it on EavesdropDC.com:
I'm not exactly sure what it is ... *googles*. Oh, wait. I know now. And I want some. Now. Aaaah, Mike Wazowski!! In honor of this morning's visit to the optometrist (and a new prescription for stronger lenses ... aah, getting old sucks) I thought I'd post this little experiment. 
The idea was shamelessly stolen from Jessie, after having seen a similar photo in his stream and thinking, "Holy crap! I gotta try that!"
The photo was posted to a group called iPhone camera as microscope, which involves putting a magnifying device up to the tiny little iPhone camera lens and seeing what happens. I must confess this never occurred to me until I saw the eyeball photo in Jessie's photostream, and I'll certainly be playing with this technique more -- preferably with some more original ideas. Oh, that's my eye, and I looked a little crazed here, and the look of the eye suddenly made my weird stream of consciousness shout out Boo's greeting to Mike in "Monsters, Inc." [ Link to today's entries ]
Photo of the day. Last May we were visiting our friends Greg and Tom and were marveling at how their front porch looked. It's ringed with passion fruit vines, which had just burst into bloom. There was a hive of carpenter bees nearby who went nuts for the nectar of the passion flowers (naturally), and they were all over the place. 
I couldn't decide which one to post; I have two more, each with things I like about them and things I don't. This one, for the moment, wins overall. The other two are here and here. The Cocktail Spirit, with Robert Hess. YAY! We're finally caught up as of today! From now on, we'll get one of these about once a week or so. I hope you enjoyed your ongoing crash cocktail courses; now at least you can slow down a bit.
I hope that the statement "vodka is the most popular of spirits" will become an outdated memory in this country, as (I hope) people begin to realize that it might be more pleasurable to drink a spirit that tastes like something. But as Robert points out, it does have its uses -- reducing the sweetness of a cocktail featuring a liqueur without eliminating the flavor of the liqueur itself. I haven't had a Harrington in a long time; maybe I'll try one soon. (I'll probably be tempted to remake it with gin, though.) Dave Wondrich, via his first book Esquire Drinks: An Opinionated & Irreverent Guide to Drinking, introduced me to a cocktail that class for vodka, seemingly as its base spirit but the true flavor of the cocktail is really based on the liqueur (by David Embury's formula, something thought of as a modifier).
This is actually quite nice. Dave says that you can make this with any "funky, herbal" European liqueur, such as Chartreuse, but he prefers this combination. Speaking of Bénédictine and Chartreuse ... I missed this story by Gary Regan when it appeared in the Chronicle about a month ago. Who knew that Purgatory could be a bit like heaven?
Whoo, I'm going to ask for one of these after I've had a crap day at work. I might even make one tonight (although I don't think I'll have a crap day today), but I think tonight we may be going to Seven Grand. UPDATE: We didn't make it to Seven Grand tonight. Wes was tired after a long, crappy week at work and felt like staying in, so I decided to make Purgatory Cocktails tonight. Hopefully we'll make it to Seven Grand tomorrow, but for now, here are the fruits of our labors. Well, drinking labor. (Feel free to sentence me to such hard labor.) 
Man. That's some big ol' drink. Gary's description was exactly right -- that particular rye is robust enough to keep the herbal flavors of the Bénénedictine and Chartreuse (especially the latter) at bay and make them play well together. Complex and spicy and powerful (we're talking about 2.5 ounces of 100 proof whiskey and 3/4 ounce of a 110 proof liqueur ... yowza), this is one to add to the repertoire. Keep Rittenhouse 100 on hand for this, most assuredly -- a softer rye like Old Overholt wouldn't work here; it's get wiped out. I'm not even sure Wild Turkey 101 Rye would work quite as well as the Rittenhouse does. By the way, I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but just in case I haven't ... Rittenhouse 100 is the best rye value on the market today, in my humble opinion. A big, strong, spicy rye, an absolutely superb product, and it's dirt-cheap -- we get it for about $16 a bottle. May I suggest the cowboy leg? Via Vidiot comes ... the greatest ... restuarant ... menu ... EVER. This sure beats the "sea lion pancakes" that the menu at "Mastro Food" in Alhambra (a Beijing-style restaurant where not a word was spoken unless it was in Mandarin) offered, among many other amusing translations that I can't remember at the moment. My other favorite, that I see on lots of other Chinese and even Thai menus, is something called "pork pump." We LOVE pork pump! From what we can tell it's a really big meaty ham shank, braised for what must be hours in aromatic spices like cinnamon and star anise, until it is bathed in fat and falling off the bone. It is truly wonderful, and all we can figure is that someone meant to write "pork rump" on the menu, even though it's a hock or a shank and not a rump, and it kinda stuck. If anyone has any clarification on this I'd love to hear it. Getting rid of the old mobile phone. Now that I've got the iPhone and am settled with it, it was time to recycle the old phone. Deleting all the phone numbers and personal info first, of course, but then ... I lookd at the saved text messages. There were a couple of messages I just couldn't delete without saving for posterity.
Needless to say, that one was misdirected. (There was another one I had never deleted, sent August 28, 2005 at 8:51pm, from my sister as Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans. I'm not posting that one.) You only give me your funny papers... When my friends get really chatty in email, I end up buried in an inbox avalanche that leaves me kinda feeling like Captain Kirk after he opened the storage container where the all the tribbles were breeding. 
Yeah, like that. (Okay, I'm a geek.) But despite the deluge the conversation is usually pretty entertaining. Today, for instance.
Okay, well ... but there's all that and bacon too! [ Link to today's entries ]
Non-Chuck Photo of the Day. The link to this one arrived in this morning's email from Michael, who said, "I didn't know you had a tattoo." Ha! I don't, actually, but he knows me well -- if I did have one it might just look like this:  Photo by Marc Carroll I had actually thought about getting a fleur-de-lis, demonstrating solidadrity and dedication to my hometown, but everyone's got a feckin' fleur-de-lis now ... Hmm. If I ever get one and I don't get a cocktail glass it should probably be the noble pig. Or maybe a version of Rick's bacon-wrapped world (from a t-shirt design he did as a gift for us several years ago). 
The Cocktail Spirit, with Robert Hess. Almost there ... Robert's first video in today's catch-up is another one I remember from childhood, one of my dad's that he'd have pretty frequently. Next is a Cuban classic that brought me back to the Mint Julep, after having been put off of them for so long due to a really bad one I had a really long time ago.
Unfortunate shortcuts indeed. There's a certain bar at a certain restaurant in Los Angeles, specializing in Latin cuisine and which should know better, which was reportedly at one time making Mojitos with dried mint. Not only would I have sent such a horror back, I might have had to break my general rule of "Always be nice to bartenders" by at least lambasting the guy with a "How coud you?" for doing such a thing. The bad one I had years ago had crème de menthe in it, and was vile. [ Link to today's entries ]
RIP Willie Tee (1944-2007). Born Wilson Turbinton in New Orleans, LA -- a marvelous keyboardist, singer, songwriter, arranger, producer and teacher, member of The Gaturs, the seminal backing back of the early Wild Magnolias and most recently The New Orleans Social Club, has died at age 63 of colon cancer. 
There'll be a long tribute to him on my radio show tomorrow night, 7-9pm PDT, KCSN 88.5 FM and kcsn.org. Cocktail of the day. We enjoyed the Ginger and Coconut Water Caipiroskas (by Dale DeGroff and/or Audrey Saunders) we'd had at the Commander's Palace Spirited Dinner during Tales of the Cocktail '07, and although we didn't ask Dale or Audrey about this, I just knew in my heart and my gut that this drink was supposed to be a Caipirinha -- i.e. based on cachaça and not vodka -- until a sponsor intervened. It just didn't make sense in that regard, being paired with a dish that had rum in the sauce. I may be wrong about that, but I also thought that this drink needed to be made with cachaça and not vodka, and that I was going to do so at some point after getting back home. The original recipe called for a jigger of vodka (oy vey), half a lime cut in four, an ounce of coconut water, a small slice of ginger and an ounce of agave nectar. When we tried this again the other day, it wasn't quite to my taste and I thought I would enjoy it more with a little adjustment. I apologize for the lack of pictures, but I was thinking more about drinking than blogging, I must confess. For the coconut water, what you need is a young coconut, available at some supermarkets but easiest to find at Asian or Latino markets, where they tend to be fresher and cheaper -- the ones we get are usually a buck. Opening them is the tough part -- use a cleaver, as shown in the above link. Once you crack that sucker open you'll get anywhere from 2 cups (usually) to even a quart of beautiful, nutritious, delicious coconut water out of it. Drink any leftovers that you don't use in making the drinks -- it's incredibly refreshing and very good for you. The flesh of a young coconut is very gelatinous and scoopable with a spoon, unlike the hard flesh of mature coconuts, so you can eat the rest right out of the shell (or even use some of it to garnish the drink). Next specialty ingredient is agave nectar, a syrup made from the same plant from which we get tequila and mezcal. Agave nectar is relatively new, having only been developed during the 1990s. It looks like runny honey but is sweeter -- very, very sweet, in fact; if you're using this instead of sugar you only need 1/3 the amount. It has a low glycemic index, and since a little goes a long way it's apparently been increasingly used for sweetening by diabetics. There are mail-order sources on the net, but your best bet is probably to try and find it in a health food store. We got one small bottle via mail-order but it costs us twelve bucks, which is a bit expensive for my taste. When we made this at home for the first time I was struck by how eye-poppingly sweet it was -- man, that's a lot of agave nectar, particularly considering that this stuff's 1.5-2 times sweeter than sugar. I can't imagine 1.5-2 ounces of simple syrup in a drink, so I knew I'd need to cut this down; we really needed to get the balance of sweet and tart more adjusted to my taste (I tend more toward the tart than the sweet). I thought about putting more lime in it -- I usually put a whole smallish lime in a Caipirinha -- but I didn't want the lime to overpower the fairly delicate flavor of the coconut water. In fact, I thought the coconut water needed to stand out more. I decided to decrease the agave nectar by 1/4 ounce and up the coconut water by 1/2 ounce, and see what happened. Here's the variation I arrived at, and I think I may tweak it even more. As it currently stands I thought it had a more appealing balance for my taste, but if I try it again this week I'll try it with 1/4 ounce less agave, down to 1/2 ounce, and another 1/2 ounce of coconut water, up to 2.
I want to do more with coconut water ... it's great stuff. The Cocktail Spirit, with Robert Hess. We should be caught up by Friday. In the meantime, let's hear a bit about whiskey, in fifth- and fourth-to-last videos so far.
Aah, whiskey. Hey, I've only got 200 or so to go through at Seven Grand (although honestly, I have had many of them already, so I've got a bit of a head start). Worried about your chocoholism? (Chocoholicism? Chocoholicness?) Alleged chocolate addiction? Well, don't. It doesn't actually cause a physical addiction, said a British researcher. The reason you can't stop eating it is just because it tastes so feckin' good.
Naughty? Forbidden? Nonsense. I think that for happiness and well-being you should eat chocolate every day. I do, pretty much -- usually a square from a bar like Valrhona or Vosges or something like that, no more than 1.5 or 2 points, and I'm good at making those suckers last. Nibble off a bite, and let it melt on the tongue, taking its time ... mmmmmmm. In fact, a food scientist is now saying that high-quality chocolate is "better than prescription medicine" when it comes to reducing the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Hmm, that 99% Lindt we talked about the other day might be just what the doctor ordered. [ Link to today's entries ]
Chocolate dark as the depths of deep space. Chris sent me a link to the first eating chocolate I've ever seen that's a whopping 99% cacao. I'm really curious to try this. I've got some Valrhona and Scharffen Berger 85% at home, but I've never even heard of 99% eating chocolate. That's usually what's called "baking chocolate" or, worse, "Baker's chocolate," a Hershey's sub-brand that by itself tastes like charcoal briquettes. That's because Hershey's chocolate is just about the worst in the country, and undoubtedly one of the worst in the world -- I tasted something called "Soviet chocolate" in Russia that was better. The article mentions why, in passing:
The "Special Dark" is just about the only one I like. I do like milk chocolate too, but as I've mentioned before, Hershey's chocolate just sits on the tongue like a piece of wax, and doesn't melt nearly as nicely as well-made chocolates do. As for the "getting worse" mentioned above, as I've posted before, Hershey's is spearheading a drive to get the FDA to change the legal definition of chocolate to include artificial sweeteners, milk substitutes, trans fats and other ersatz ingredients. Boooooooooo. That said, I've heard that their "Reserve" chocolate line is pretty good, but if they're trying to change the legal definition of chocolate so that they can sell crappier chocolate bars and still call it "chocolate," I'll be boycotting their product. But I digress. The thing that cracks me up about the Lindt 99% is that the foil wrapper actually has warnings for you to "ramp up" to this chocolate by working your way up from 70% to 85% to this. Yep, you need your gateway drugs, certainly, before you can handle the hard stuff. Innards! Via Michael Ruhlman, who was posting about Chef Chris Cosentino's acceptance of his challenge to put his Fried Confit Pork Belly Caesar Salad on his menu at Incanto. Cosentino's a big fan of offal, i.e. organ meats or "the fifth quarter." Chow.com has a superb video interview with Chef Cosentino all about his views on offal, his early experiences, and his general philosophy toward eating meat and the "whole animal ethic" -- "if you're willing to kill it, you should shut the fuck up and be willing to eat all of it." The interview culminates with his five-course offal menu at Incanto:
I'd be willing to go for pretty much all of this. I'm unsure about the cockscombs, but given this guy's reputation I trust him, and I'd certainly try it. I've eaten ground-up hearts and gizzards in dirty rice since childhood, so that's not a problem. I love sweetbreads, and I have to say ... while you might recoil at the description, pay close attention to the video when they get to that pig's trotter dish. It looks fantastic. I'm a bit unsure about the blood-and-chocolate dessert, but as I've eaten and enjoyed boudin rouge and Irish black pudding, I should shut the fuck up and eat it -- especially given that it's one of the most diabolically funny and whimsical dessert ideas I've ever seen in my life. I still have trouble with tripe and chitlins, though. Fortunately there was none of that to deal with on the menu. Peaches and herb. Gary Regan writes in the Chronicle about the interesting theme for his bartender workshops this year -- "retaining the integrity of the cocktail's base spirit... I wanted to be able to detect the specific brand of spirit used as a base in each and every new drink created by the attendees." Wow. Makes me wonder how I'd do in a blind taste test of things, if I could pick out individual brands. Some of 'em I could spot, but others ... I dunno. How do you think you'd do, average reader? The cocktail he uses to illustrate this idea, The White Nectar Cocktail, muddles a peach slice with mint leaves, adds Maker's Mark, simple syrup and something called "Numi White Nectar organic tea," which I'm not familiar with. Tea, he says, is "[o]ne of the most popular ingredients in this year's workshops." I do like tea in a drink, whether of the brewed variety or as an infusion (such as in Audrey Saunders' insanely good Earl Grey Marteani). The pint of oolong tea in the Columbian Punch is a marvelous and elusive ingredient that adds great flavor but which pretty much no one picks up on. (I love making proper oolong tea too ... watching those dark green rocks open up to this little forest of whole tea leaves and stems at the bottom of your teapot.) Speaking of muddled fruit in drinks, Imbibe Magazine is co-sponsoring a cocktail contest with USA Pears for the perfect pear cocktail. Hmm, could be fun. Speaking of Peaches and Herb, did you know that while there has only ever been one Herb there have been four different Peaches? Jeez, who knew they were so Menudo? "Popcorn lung?" I was popping a snack-sized bag of microwave popcorn yesterday (the "kettle corn" variety, that's a little sweet as well as salty, which I then season with ground chipotle chile, so that it's sweet and salty and smoky and hot, which is awesome, and only 2 WeightWatchers points) when one of my cow-orkers came into the kitchen and said, "You'd better be careful with that stuff. You could get popcorn lung." "Popcorn lung?" I asked. What the feck are you talking about, I wondered but did not say. Yep, there was this article in the Times last week about a guy who ate microwave popcorn every day, and now he has to have his lungs replaced because of some awful chemical in the butter flavor. People who work in the factory get this thing too." Good lord. "Well, I never eat or buy anything with 'butter flavoring,'" I said. "I used to work at a movie theatre when I was a kid, and the artificial butter flavor that came in these huge plastic tubs was the vilest stuff I've ever seen." "Go search the Times website, you'll see." I wondered if she was exaggerating. The disease is called Bronchiolitis obliterans, and is actually nicknamed "popcorn workers' lung." The culprit is a chemical called diacetyl, a natural by-product of the fermentation process, which when isolated has a buttery taste and has been used as the primary ingredient in artificial butter flavorings. (It's also apparently the substance cultivated by some winemakers to give their Chardonnays that "buttery" taste that some people like so much.) The problem with diaceytl is that it's toxic when inhaled over long periods, and people working with this chemical in microwave popcorn factories have ended up having their lungs destroyed. There is no cure. The only treatment is a lung transplant. I knew that butter flavoring was nasty, but man ... I had no idea. I'm touched by my cow-orker's concern, as she had seen me microwaving popcorn at work more than once. The guy she referred to in the article, though, had apparently eaten "several bags" of microwave popcorn every day for 10 years, and the unfortunate gentleman "liked the smell of popcorn so much that he would open and inhale from freshly popped bags." Sheesh. Here's a wacky idea. How about flavoring butter-flavored popcorn with, say ... butter? Clarify it by removing the milk solids and it becomes more shelf-stable. There must be a way then to use goddamn toxic chemicals. Of course, the best way to do this is to use a nice home popcorn popper -- ours can pop a huge tub of the stuff on just a few teaspoons of oil, and we can season it ourselves with whatever we want, such as real butter or olive oil or Tony Chachere's seasoning or whatever. Hold the diacetyl. $55 per bottle ... for water? Boy, there sure are a lot of really stupid rich people. This is such a great scam that I'm tempted to get in on it, as they seem to be just begging to be separated from their money. I particularly loved the statistic about how if you took the prices people seem to happily pay for bottled water and applied it to their water bill, they'd be paying about $100,000 per year. Remember that bottled water brands like Dasani (bottled by your local Coca-Cola bottler) and Aquafina (bottled by your local Pepsi bottler) are nothing more than a fraction of a cent's worth of your local tap water, unnecessarily "filtered" and sold back to you for two bucks. Again, buy a reusable bottle and fill it from your tap. Sheesh. (And the next waiter that condescends to me because I chose tap water rather than bottled while dining at a restaurant will see that condescension reflected in his or her tip.) [ Link to today's entries ]
Photo of the day. Wes and I have been seeing this church sign in Pasadena for months now, and I keep forgetting to bring my camera. Once again, the iPhone comes to the rescue. 
We'd been calling him "Hello Kitty Jesus" for the longest time, but yesterday I realized that he's more Powerpuff Jesus -- look at that smile. Go Jesus go! (And Powerpuff Jesus has saved the day once again!) New Orleans' Best Cocktails: The Irish Coffee. This one couldn't be easier for you to do at home -- just make sure your coffee's fresh and hot, your whiskey is good (Chris is using Jameson's, which is excellent stuff, but I'm a big fan of John Powers' myself) and your cream is freshly whipped, not squirted out of a can. While some may grouse that this isn't "authentically Irish," it's still damned good, and I've had some feckin' fine Irish coffees in Ireland. It really hits the spot on freezing cold nights, when you've just been assaulted by horizontal rain coming from an Atlantic storm. If someone were to accuse me of acting like a tourist for ordered such a non-"authentically Irish" drink, I would, in an authentically Irish manner, tell them to feck off. (And that's if I was being polite, only after sayin' "feck" and not the Big One ... you know which one I mean, Father!) Cocktail of the day. This one's from Eastern Standard in Boston, a place where I would undoubtedly be a regular if I lived there (and who serves the Hoskins Cocktail on their current menu, meaning that to me they are made of awesome), created by Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli, one of their bartenders.
The inspiration to make this came from Paul's post on it from a week or so ago, so you can read most of the details there. Although I really like it, I suspect it would be better when made with Jamie Boudreau's Amer Picon replica (as I think they do at Eastern Standard) than with the Torani Amer with which I made it. The celery notes in the Torani product that we've talked about before come through a little more than I'd like. The way the tequila works with everything here is beautiful, though. The Cocktail Spirit, with Robert Hess. In the home stretch of the catch-up, and in keeping with our Cocktail of the Day, Robert's going to talk about tequila today.
The Rosita is a favorite around here, and was the subject of one of my favorite cocktail photographs from a little over a year and a half ago. 
This is apparently usually served on the rocks, but it's up in the photo, which is how we usually have it. Hmm, might have to try it on the rocks next time. Doing our bit for the environment (not to mention our electric bill). Yesterday we converted the majority of the lightbulbs in the house (15 so far, with another half-dozen or so to go) to compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs. I was dragged into this kicking and screaming ... but after getting one look at them, I was excited. I can't believe I hear myself saying this, but you should replace all your incandescent lightbulbs witih CFLs. I've always despised fluorescent lighting -- flat and green and sickly looking. Little did I realize how far they've come in recent years. The ones meant to replace incandescent light bulbs (either the squiggly-looking kind, which we got and which are indistinguishable once it's in a lighting fixture, or the kind that look more like a regular bulb) match the intensity and especially the color temperature of my beloved incandescent bulbs so closely that I honestly can't tell the difference now. They're also instant-on, so you don't get that start-up flicker you may remember from the older-style fluorescent tubes. The CFL bulbs with the same luminance as a 60 watt incandescent bulb only draw 15 watts, and don't give off nearly as much waste heat. This saves energy, and money too -- someone we know who replaced all the bulbs in her house said the difference in the first month's electric bill was striking. They also last a lot longer than incandescents, and despite the fact that they're a fair bit more expensive, we got them all from Wes' church, to which the bulbs were donated, and then sold for a mere $2 each. Not a bad deal at all! There's an incredible amount of wasted energy in the use of incandescent light bulbs -- as much as I've always liked the way they look even I have to admit that. I was so pleasantly startled by how good the CFL bulbs look that I've wiped away my prejudice, and finally sensibly embraced how much energy they'll save, how much less coal they'll have to burn to power them, how much of an impact that can potentially make on the environment, and in the selfish department, how much money they can save us on the electric bill. There are a few caveats, though -- the larger wattages tend to be a bit larger than an incandescent bulb, so if your fixture is a tight fit, then the bulb might not fit. That said, the 15w/60w effective bulbs fit in every fixture in the house. Also, you can't use them in any fixture that has a dimmer, and so far they don't work in lamps made for 3-way bulbs, although those are apparently on the way. In the meantime they'll work on the middle setting of the 3-way switch. And if you're keen on maintaining the color temperature you're used to with incandescent bulbs, check the package for a color temperature of 2700-2800°K. I'm encouraging everyone I know to give them a try, maybe even just a couple of bulbs to start out with. See how they look, and if you end up getting lots of them, see how much you'll save while doing some good at the same time. [ Link to today's entries ]
The Death and Rebirth of Mandina's, Part 5: "It's still Mandina's" ... Back from the Ashes but Not Out of the Woods. In the final article in Brett Anderson's five-part series, the long-awaited day arrives. Eighteen months after Hurricane Katrina, old customers get a taste of a renewed New Orleans institution.
Find out what happened, and how it continues to happen every day (I'll spoil this much -- it's a happy ending), but Mandina's, as does so much of the rest of New Orleans, faces difficulties and higher costs. But they're more popular than ever, deservedly so, and thanks to their love and determination a true and vital part of New Orleans lives on. The Cocktail Spirit, with Robert Hess. Light at the end of the tunnel now, and within a few days we'll be down to posting one of these per week (or so). Until then, let's continue the catch-up:
Wayne's a great guy, and his book is fantastic -- a must-get for history buffs, cocktailians and rum aficionadoes alike. This bit of molecular mixology from Jamie is his wildest yet -- "Violette Caviar", made from crème de violette and gelatin, served alongside the drink. Plucky Survivors See America, Day 10. Finishing up in Chicago, and then heading home, alas. 
Amen. Now get busy planning next year's trip! [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. Wes' turn to mix last night, and he turned to an old favorite, Dr. Cocktail's Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, for one I don't think we'd actually ever tried.
Doc says, "Note the tropical character, invoking Carmen Miranda strutting down a New York boulevard." In fact, when I took my first whiff of the cocktail I thought he had put passion fruit nectar in it! "I didn't, but I smell it too," Wes said. Ah, the alchemy of cocktails. The Death and Rebirth of Mandina's, Part 4: The High Cost of Coming Back. The penultimate article in Brett Anderson's five-part series in the Times-Picayune continues, with a look at the financial bottom line of what it took to resurrect a 75-year-old restaurant from a termite-devoured building that had just been flooded with over 5 feet of toxic floodwaters.
Read all about what it took. The Cocktail Spirit, with Robert Hess. A little more catching up for you, if you're taking it a couple at a time ... today's pair of fine cocktail videos focuses on rum cocktails.
I'm finding myself to be not much of a fan of Bacardi these days. Given all the other rums I've tried, I'm finding Bacardi white rum to be sort of the vodka of rums (ooh, that's harsh). Try your Daiquiris with Cruzan Rum from the Virgin Islands, and I think you'll find it has more character and flavor. We're big Cruzan fans around here, and we even like some of their flavored rums, especially the coconut. I'm generally not a fan of those kinds of flavored spirits, but the coconut is particularly good (and they pineapple and banana aren't bad either). A simple Daiquiri made with Cruzan Coconut Rum is lovely on a summer afternoon ... you put de lime in de coconut and drink 'em both up; it relieve de bellyache. Plucky Survivors See America, Day 9. Mary and Rick say, "The last big day of driving takes us on a journey through a post-apocalyptic landscape of alien life forms and a death-themed mini-golf course. That's our kind of day!"
And they didn't get to go to Hot Doug's, due to it still being closed thanks to Doug's broken leg. They just missed it, though! Doug'll be back in business next Wednesday, September 12, because "Doug's leg is coming along nicely (and his bank account is not)." Stay tuned for day 10, and the road home. Ray Nagin sobers up. He's not running for governor. Mike made some interesting and amusing points in email: "In a way, I hope that Nagin does run for governor, only because he will likely get enough votes to prevent Jindal from winning in the primary. Republicans are pushing for Jindal to win in the primary so that they can spend more money on other races. Of course Nagin could never win a state wide election. He may be considering Dollar Bill Jefferson's seat. He would probably have a decent shot at it. [You've seen] the "C. Ray -- Not Lately" T-shirts? Now there are "Nay-GONE" bumper stickers. It would all be a lot funnier if things weren't so screwed up." Ain't that the truth. Things really are screwed up when you find yourself actually missing Edwin Edwards. [ Link to today's entries ]
Astonishing music video of the day. Somehow I'd managed never to see this performance, recorded in 1986 -- Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino, jamming together on three pianos. (!) This was recorded at Storyville Jazz Hall in New Orleans (and oh yeah,
that's Ron Wood on guitar, looking like he was having the time of his life), with "King of Ging" Paul
Shaffer leading the band. It's currently out on DVD as
"Fats and Friends"
UPDATE: Whoops ... the video has disappeared from the hosting service due to copyright infringement. Unsurprising, and probalby our fault. Oh well. Buy the DVD though, it's very much worth it! The Death and Rebirth of Mandina's, Part 3: Upholding a Family Tradition. We continue with Brett Anderson's superb five-part series on how New Orleans institution Mandina's Restaurant rose from the muck of over five feet of toxic Katrina floodwater (courtesy of the government's levee failures) to serve poor boys, soft shell crabs and turtle soup yet again. Today the tale begins with Cindy Mandina coming to realize how much her family business meant to New Orleanians, after being stunned while reading an airline magazine in which Harry Connick Jr. raves about the place.
Ain't that the truth? When I was outside Mandina's in early October of 2005, chatting with their insurance adjuster, my heart was sinking. He was telling me that Mr. Tommy was saying the exact things that were quoted in this article -- "That's it. I'm done." Apparently the insurance man hadn't talked to Cindy yet! Tune in again tomorrow, when we look at the high cost of coming back. Tales of the Cocktail video recap. Small Screen Network, who produce Robert Hess' excellent video series "The Cocktail Spirit," produced a couple of short clip reels of the whirlwind events of Tales 2007. I managed not to be in any shots (whew), but fortunately lots of cool people we know are in there. Here's Part One and Part Two. Plucky Survivors See America, Day 8. Mary and Rick's second to last day on the road involves Spam, a dragon and a stegosaurus, donuts (of course), and a dead cat in a box. That was a new one even for them. Read all about it.
As for Ed's Museum ... it's best just to read the rest. This was a surprise for Mary, which I've known about since before they left. Read more about Ed's Museum here. Me and Jack! I had forgotten that the guest on KCSN's "Two on the Dial" last night was going to be the legendary Jack Klugman, which meant that I forgot my good camera as well as having forgotten to pick up a copy of his book Tony and Me: A Story of Friendship for him to sign. The iPhone came to the rescue, though ... 
It was beyond awesome to meet him ... I grew up with "The Odd Couple," also seeing and enjoying him in everything from "The Twilight Zone" to "Quincy" (where one of my old teachers, Milt Gelman, was one of the writers). With all due respect to Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, Jack Klugman and Tony Randall are Oscar and Felix. (They used to do productions of the original play too; boy, would I have loved to have seen one of those.) He's the nicest guy in the world, by the way, and hilarious, and full of so many fantastic stories of 60 years in the theatre, film and television that it'd probably take almost that long to tell them all. At 85 years old he's still working -- he's about to start rehearsals for a stage production of "The Sunshine Boys" with Paul Dooley, that's going to run at a theatre in New Jersey from October 11 - November 11. Wow. I won't miss my chance to get him to sign the book either -- he'll be at A Different Light Bookstore in West Hollywood next Tuesday, September 11 at 7:30pm. Appearing with him will be Alison Arngrim, Julie Newmar (!) and Rose Marie (!!). [ Link to today's entries ]
The Death and Rebirth of Mandina's, Part 2: Preservation and Progress. Continuing with the Times-Picayune's five-part series about the destruction and reconstruction of local landmark Mandina's restaurant, as the restauranteurs envision a new and improved version of their grand old eatery, but face myriad construction and regulation issues.
The road is still long and hard, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel. More tomorrow. Second night at Seven Grand. Another night that makes us very, very happy this place exists, even though tonight it was particularly loud and crowded. There was a small-batch Bourbon tasting last night, which we missed, but we did get to meet Fred Noe, son of Booker Noe and seventh-generation distiller at Jim Beam, responsible for such lovely whiskies as Booker's and Knob Creek. He's quite a character, a good ol' boy from Kentucky who loves what he does, and has a great time doing it. Apparently he'll be doing less of the meet-and-greets, as the master distiller position at the distillery is now open, and he's next in line. They were so slammed last night that we wanted to avoid ordering anything too labor-intensive, so we opted for the drink we usually use to test a bar's mettle (even though we knew we didn't need to do so here), the drink listed first on their menu -- the Rye Manhattan. "Any preference?" asked Damian, our affable and expert bartender. (We're not only just getting a drink with bottom-shelf well Bourbon, we're being asked which of a dozen rye whiskies we want in our Manhattans. This never happens.) Nope, let's have it with Rittenhouse bonded (100 proof) rye, as the menu suggests. It was, of course, completely perfect -- the balance, the spice, even the cherry, which was dark and flavorful, not bright neon red and reeking of artificial almond flavor. I started comparing this to the last Manhattan we'd had out, which was at the Buggy Whip in Westchester -- spectacular steaks and sides, but lousy Mannattans. I was reminding Wes of how our bartender had made it -- "he makes it like he makes his lousy Martinis, completely unbalanced with only a drop of sweet vermouth," I was saying, just as Damian passed by us. "What, this one?!" he said, horrified. "No no no!" we reassured him. "This one's perfect, mate, absolutely perfect! We were just comparing to the last one we'd had elsewhere, which was lousy!" These guys really, really care. As we sat there and chatted and laughed at the monster movies they had on the video screen in the corner ("Beast from 2000 Fathoms"! "One Million Years B.C"! Raquel Welch in a fur bikini! It was amusing to note that all the men looked like bearded hamburger and all the women looked like fashion models), we watched Damian make Sazerac after Sazerac after Sazerac. Not only is it exciting to see a Sazerac on the menu anywhere around here, and made well, it's even more exciting to see people ordering it and learning what it is. After our Manhattans we took a deep breath and ordered the gorgeous Blackberry Juleps that our friends had last Friday, and I felt a little guilty at ordering something so labor-intensive while they were so slammed. At our request Dave, who took care of us while Damien was a nonstop blur of motion making drinks for other folks, just smiled and said, "Ahhh. I love making those." Again ... our kinda people. Simple enough -- a few gorgeous, plump blackberries muddled with mint and sugar, then with Bulleit Bourbon added and a silver cupful of hand-crushed ice, garnished with two blackberries on a pick and a sheaf of fresh mint to send the aroma right up your nostrils ... oh man, what a lovely drink. Just as we thought we'd finish up, Damien came back and asked us, "Do you like tequila and/or rye whiskey?" We loved both, we assured him, and he made us something that was apparently based on the El Diablo, although omitting the cassis, using freshly grated ginger instead of ginger ale, plus (I think) some pineapple juice, with Sazerac 6-year-old rye as the base spirit. Damian's hands were a blur, and we were a tad tipsy, so I didn't get the exact ingredients, but ... wow, I sure enjoyed that drink. Very spicy -- in fact, I think it was probably the first drink I've ever had to feature freshly grated ginger as an ingredient - and very, very refreshing. "You could get lost in this drink," he said, and he was right; there was layer after layer of flavor. I may sound like I'm going on and on, but the very idea of a bartender asking us if we wanted to try something new, and walking US through a drink (instead of the other way around) and then serving it to us with pleasure ... boy. It's a bar that does what a great restaurant does. We met tons more nice people, and laid our plans to work our way through lots of whiskies as well as to continue our cocktail explorations there, not to mention doin' some socializin'. Plucky Survivors See America, Day 7. In which our heroes had "an adventure filled day as we eat ice cream, meet a presidential candidate, eat more ice cream, meet a Hobo Queen, and then sleep in a place where a president slept. Just a typical Plucky day."
Can they top this day tomorrow? Well, it starts with Spam, so anything is possible. Stay tuned! The Cocktail Spirit, with Robert Hess. We're gonna finish all these by next week!
Not to worry, Robert. The Martini is worth pontificating about. I've stopped allowing the use of the word "Martini" to mean any generic cocktail, at least in my presence. A Martini consists of two things -- gin and vermouth (optionally with orange bitters, which I like). There's no chocolate in a Martini. Sorry, but I've chosen to be a pain in the ass about this. Somehow, I don't think most of my readers would disapprove (particularly because even though I'm being a pain in the ass I still try to be nice about it). [ Link to today's entries ]
The Death and Rebirth of Mandina's, Part 1: Hell's Kitchen. Thanks to Michael for alerting me to this; I'd only been skimming Da Paper for the last week or so. Starting last Sunday, the New Orleans Times-Picayune has been running a five-part series about the beloved Mandina's Restaurant, a local institution for 75 years and arguably the best neighborhood restaurant in the city. When I made it back home for the first time after Katrina and the floods, five weeks after, Mandina's looked like this on the outside.  
The water line was at 62 inches on the outside of the building. I was chatting with an insurance adjuster, who was waiting for Mr. Mandina to get there, and at the time there was some question as to whether the Mandina family would go on with it. Here's a description from the article on what they faced inside:
The journey took 18 months. Read more about it here today, and I'll link the rest of the stories, one each day. Plucky Survivors See America, Day 6. Yesterday was a full and rich adventure-filled Plucky day, as "we horked down MORE barbecue, saw a couple of great museums, and went a little insane." Not to mention all the axe murder stuff.
Will the Plucky Survivors still be able to fit into their pants by journey's end? Only time will tell, so tune in again tomorrow ... same pork time ... same pork channel. ... uh ... What?! Ray Nagin is delusional.
I don't think he needs to be governor. I think he needs to be committed. Especially if he thinks he has a political future in Louisiana. The Cocktail Spirit, with Robert Hess. Continuing our catch-up journey through all the videos I got behind on the last fwe months ... come along, shall we?
Thanks to my friend René Engel for buying me my first Sidecar many years ago. I can't believe I hadn't even had one until then. My, how far we've come ... Cocktail of the day. Inspired by my catch-up on Robert's video series, I revisited this drink for the first time in a while, and I'm glad I did.
The maraschino was Maraska, and the bitters were Regans'. Dubonnet, for those of you who may not be familiar with it, is a red aperitif wine in the same category as sweet vermouth, and fortified to 19% alcohol, so it'll keep for a little while (keep it in the fridge, though). It's classified as a quinquina, which is an aperitif wine that contains quinine, and a proprietary blend of spices. It originated in France, but is currently made in the U.S. It's quite lovely by itself, and is an ingredient in a number of classic cocktails. Dubonnet comes in two varieties, as does vermouth and the other well-known quinquina/aperitif wine Lillet, both red and white. The rule of thumb, though, is that if it calls for Dubonnet, you want red; if it calls for Lillet, you want white. The white Dubonnet and red Lillet varities aren't nearly as good as their counterparts. I like Dubonnet a lot, and haven't had it in a while. We had the dregs of a bottle in the fridge for Gawd knows how long, and now that I've got a fresh one (which is no probem for you to keep on hand; it's almost as cheap as vermouth) I'll be exploring more Dubonnet cocktails in the next few months. 13 Reasons Why We Are Not OK. I meant to post this last week, on the two-year anniversary of the day New Orleans was nearly destroyed by the failure of the U.S. government-built levees and floodwalls, but got a bit frazzled and behind on things. New Orleans author Poppy Z. Brite offered her list of 13 reason why the city of New Orleans is not OK last year on the first anniversary of this man-made disaster, and this year updated the list to refect what's happening a year after that, i.e. right now. It is sobering reading, and a pretty definitive take on the situation for anyone who wants to know what's really going on. I would normally never repost this much of a writer's writing, but this is a special case; Poppy's list was "disseminated far and wide" last year, and that made her happy; she wants everyone to know what's going on, so I'm going to do my best to help disseminate the update this year. Last year's points ore in italics; this year's update below each point, in non-italic font.
And that's the way it is, Wednesday, August 29, 2007 -- two years later. Sorry it took me a week to post this. Add to that the skyrocketing cost of housing, the fact that the insurance companies are dropping homeowners left and right or else raising their insurance rates to astronomical levels (some friends of mine who live in an area which did not flood, and whose house received almost no damage, saw their insurance company attempt to raise their rates 120%, and after protest only lowered them to about a 70% increase -- the rough equivalent of the monthly car payment they had just finished paying off) ... [ Link to today's entries ]
Seven Grand. Bliss. And Heaven. We'd heard that a new bar had opened in downtown L.A. a little over four months ago, called Seven Grand, described at the time as a "whiskey bar." Nice space, great selection ... one of our friends dropped an email and said, "We should go soon!" Well, we were about to head out to New Orleans for Jazzfest, and that kinda got lost. By the time we returned to New Orleans six weeks later for Tales of the Cocktail, we'd still been "meaning to get there," but hadn't yet, me being God Emperor of Procrastination and all (and when said God Emperor is forgetful and also "has no concept of time passing," as Wes puts it, that doesn't help). Then we were fortunate to meet a really nice guy named Marcos at the Lost Ingredients seminar I participated in at Tales, and ... lo and behold, Marcos was one of the main bartenders at Seven Grand. He started telling me about the place, and I started getting really excited, and we resolved to get there as soon as possible. We'd be flying back to L.A. the following Monday, and we promised to see him there on Tuesday night. The problem was that late Sunday and early Monday I started getting sick, thanks to Mr. Billy Bob, was flat on my back Tuesday night, missed two days of work that week and wasn't really better for seven days. Then at the tail end of that Wes got sick, and that lasted another week ... and before we knew it it was a few weeks later, we we still hadn't been to Seven Grand. Word got back to us that Marcos had been asking about us, wondering if we had been abducted by aliens, or something. That did it. We got on the train and went downtown last Friday. Taking so long to get to Seven Grand was one of the dumber things I've done this year, but in this case it's better late than never. Because I think this bar is going to change our lives. We've dreamed about a bar like this. Hell, we've practically prayed for a bar like this. I got tired of hearing friends in New York and Seattle and San Francisco talk about places like The Pegu Club and Zig Zag and Vessel Bourbon and Branch, with NO local equivalents, not only a good, warm, friendly bar but a cocktailian bar, where the people there really knew their stuff, knew cocktail history, was able to make drinks from the mid-19th Century as well as concoct new ones that we'd be excited about, that only cared to use the very best ingredients and took their time to make their drinks. The lack of this is the primary reason we stopped going out to drink, and started doing it almost entirely at home. This is about to change, because Seven Grand is all this and more. Marcos greeted us as we came up to the bar, and then offered us a tour of the place. It's a beautiful space, reclaiming the old Brock and Co. jewelry store in the 500 block of 7th Street downtown. Many of the architectural and interior details of the old space were reused in the design of the new -- the glass jewelry cases formed a bank of small windows near the ceiling in the room divider, wooden jewelry drawer fronts with gorgeous brass handles were mounted on the front of the bar, and the beautiful polished wood surface of the bar itself came from the boardroom table. Stuffed and mounted jackalopes adorn the walls, and the wall behind the bar features about 200 different kinds of whiskey (they're working on increasing their selection, hoping to put Bourbon and Branch in second place for selection, a noble and worthy goal). Warm, inviting and friendly. I beamed as soon as I saw their current featured drinks menu. Topping it was a Rye Manhattan, using Rittenhouse 100, properly balanced with sweet vermouth and bitters. Second on the list was ... sigh ... The Sazerac Cocktail. We make killer Sazeracs at home, in vintage Sazerac glasses from New Orleans' Roosevelt Hotel, but the very idea of being able to go out and order a Sazerac, to have someone else make it for us, and make it well. Someone who not only has heard of rye whiskey and knows what it is, but stocks many different kinds (including Sazerac 18-year) and who, when we ask what kind of rye whiskey they have, don't show us a bottle of frakking Canadian Club. I hadn't had a sip yet and already I was very happy. We struggled to decide what would be first, and agreed on one that I'd never had within the borders of the city of Los Angeles outside my own house -- another signature drink of the city of New Orleans, and one that's not easy to make properly, the Ramos Gin Fizz. 
The expertly blended ingredients were shaken for a long time and then topped with an ounce or so of soda and a grating of fresh nutmeg. Marcos and his fellow bartender Patrick started shaking ... and shaking ... and shaking. At one point each of them passed the shaker off to another bartender to shake for a whlie, then they took it back and shook it some more. It's rare to see Ramos Fizzes shaken this thoroughly even in New Orleans, so we knew they wouldn't settle for any short cuts. This drink was going to be done properly. It. Was. Perfect. I boggled, actually. Here we were, sipping beautiful Ramos Gin Fizzes. In a bar. In Los Angeles. Next, another New Orleans classic, and the ancestor of many drinks including the Sidecar and the Margarita -- The Bourbon Crusta, supposedly invented at a place called Santina's Saloon in the French Quarter in the mid-1800s. I believe the Brandy Crusta was the original drink, with Bourbon quickly taking over due to its rise in popularity in America over French Cognac. 
This is the Crusta recipe that's been going around these days, but I like to reduce the liqueurs a bit, maybe just a teaspoon of maraschino and 2 teaspoons of Cointreau to make it a bit drier, but it's a good drink in either proportion. Incidentally, the recipe called for in Jerry Thomas' How to Mix Drinks called for only a teaspoon of lemon juice, a half-teaspoon of curaçao and no maraschino at all. We sipped, and enjoyed, and I said it again. "We're drinking Crustas. In a bar. In Los Angeles. Next, one of Seven Grand's house cocktails, the Brock & Co., named for the space's former occupants. 
Knob Creek Bourbon, a ginger-honey syrup, lemon juice, a splash of orange juice, on the rocks with a big slice of ginger as garnish. Bright and summery and refreshing, and it felt just right on this 90°F evening in Los Angeles. Finally another house cocktail, featuring a Bourbon I'd never had before and a liqueur I can't seem to get enough of, The Elder Fitzgerald. 
I didn't get all of the ingredients on this one, but it features Old Fitzgerald 12-year-old Bourbon and St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur, the first time I'd seen St. Germain served in any Los Angeles bar. I hope it becomes a regular fixture. We also spectated at a couple of the drinks that the nice couple we befriended at the next barstools over had had: 
The Blackberry Julep, with fresh blackberries muddled with mint and a touch of sugar, with Bulleit Bourbon over crushed ice ... oh my. This was one of three juleps on their summer menu (they have seasonal cocktail menus!), also featuring the Kentucky Mint Julep (mint, house-made mint syrup and Maker's Mark, which they found worked best with this julep variation but made the blackberry one taste medicinal) and the Seven Large Julep (mint muddled with sugar and Black Maple Hill Bourbon, over crushed ice with a bit of sparkling wine). 
This was Marcos' "Special" Mojito, made more or less in the traditional manner but topped with several dashes of Peychaud's Bitters. Wow. 
As much as I still want to get to these places, I think I can cut down on the jealousy I feel toward our friends in New York, Seattle and San Francisco, who get to drink at all those amazing bars all the time. We finally have a place of our own, and I think they'll be joined by others too. Los Angeles' time has come. (That said, Murray, Jamie, Audrey ... we'll see y'all soon, no doubt!) The Cocktail Spirit, with Robert Hess. Let's keep catching up, shall we?
I'm fascinated by Jamie's explorations of "molecular mixology," yet some of the techniques might be a bit much for the home bar enthusiast and more suited toward the professional. That said ... I find myself really wanting to get a mister I can fill with Angostura Bitters so I can set the mist on fire. That's not such a handful, and appeals to my inner pyromaniac! Plucky Survivors See America, Day 5. Mary updates: "On Rick's birthday we started with donuts and we ended with barbecue. Oh and there was some other stuff in between. Mark Twain and Kansas City, but really... donuts and barbecue."
There was lots in between donuts and BBQ. Read on! [ Link to today's entries ]
Plucky Survivors See America, Days 2 - 4! We've got a bit of catching up to do ... I haven't been home to post much, and you'll see why below. Let's catch up with Mary and Rick, the Plucky Survivors, as they continue to discover America, donuts and pork.
Day 2: Bettendorf to Cedar Rapids, IA: Featuring dead jazz musicians, very much alive small-town America, something that approaches what might resemble the outer edges of the concept of "too much sugar," and an interesting new rule for Cow!
I read about those Iowa loose-meat sandwiches in John T. Edge's marvelous book Hamburgers and French Fries, and I've always been curious to try one. He did provide a recipe, as I recall, so maybe I can whip up a batch for them when they get back. Day 3: Cedar Rapids, IA to Peoria, IL: "Will it play in Peoria?" asks Chuck. Well, Peoria (or rather Kiwanee) can play with me, apparently -- "We only have one thing to say ... HOG FEST!! Actually, we have a lot more to say, so ..."
Oh dear ... we might have to do a Swine Tour one day. Basile to Kewanee! By the way, did I ever tell y'all the story about how I became a Hog Squealing Champion? I forget. But I also digress ... Day 4: Peoria to St. Louis: The Plucky Pair gets their kicks on Route 66, honors honest Abe, and develops a mad crush on a giant piece of steel and concrete. Who knew?
Stay tuned tomorrow, as you goof off at work, lamenting the end of summer (which by season still has a few weeks to go), for Day 5! The Cocktail Spirit, with Robert Hess. Let's keep catching up gradually, if you haven't leapt ahead and done so already, with the series of superb videos on cocktail technique and history from Robert "DrinkBoy" Hess, in which he features a favorite of mine, plus one I've only had a couple of times but would love to have more often:
I just picked up a fresh bottle of Dubonnet (the one we had had gotten a bit long in the tooth), so I think we'll rediscover the Opera tonight, perhaps even after having a Jasmine! The Republican double-standard. Nicked from Oyster, 'cause it's too damn hot to do anything that takes longer than nicking a post from someone else's superb weblog. "Regarding the Vitter/Craig scandals, Times-Picayune columnist James Gill writes:"
Politics, i.e., Idaho's Republican governor is appointing a Republican to replace Craig. If Vitter were forced to resign, Louisiana's Democratic governor probably wouldn't. Oh, and Vitter only cheated on his wife with (blessed relief) female whores, amidst alleged nudge-nudge-wink-winks from his colleagues, diaper fetishes notwithstanding. UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald had a superb article in Salon last Thursday, on the "contradictory and nakedly unprincipled posture [which] has now become the official position of the GOP leadership, led by its pious 'moral values' wing" which explains things very succinctly:
Keep it up, fellas. I'm reminded of a marvelous quote I read on AmericaBlog on Saturday, in a post entitled "2008 shaping up to be a very rough year for the GOP", which quoted a Washington Post story thusly:
Further analysis indicated that they're likely to lose at least five seats. Sweet. It's too hot. Hot. It's too hot. It's too hot in here. It's too hot outside. The temperature has been up to about 103-105°F all weekend. Given that only one room in our house is air-conditioned, we've either stayed in there or simply fled the premises for more comfortable venues -- bars, restaurants, movie theatres. Within the next day or so I'll have a writeup about the Nirvana we found at the former. I've found myself singing a song posted a few weeks ago by Hank from Brotherhood 2.0, which I came across in June and have been following ever since. It's damned catchy, actually, and it perfectly sums up my feelings today. It's too hot. In fact, it's only 10:45am as I write this, and already 91° in the living room. We'll be bailing momentarily. See y'all tomorrow. By the way Hank ... They Might Be Giants should totally cover that song. August Looka! entries have been permanently archived. [ Link to today's entries ]
|
Our friend 
| Several of my friends and loved ones (and a few kind strangers) contribute regularly to this weblog, providing links, comments and sometimes lots more. Thanks to Wesly Moore, Mike Luquet, Mary Herczog, Steve Hochman, Dave Schmerler, Nettie DeAugustine, Diana Schwam, Andy Senasac, Michael Yasui, Steve Gardner, Michael Pemberton, Steve Kelley, Barry Kelley, Eric Labow, Tom Krueger, Greg Beron, Sean Burke, Shari Minton and Barry Enderwick. |
chuq's links | the gumbo pages
creole and cajun recipe page | search this site
chuck taggart | email chef (at) gumbopages (dot) com
|
This site ©1994-2007 by Chuck Taggart. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. |
|
This means that you may not copy my writing onto other web
pages or anywhere else without my specific written permission. (Quotes of
short passages, properly attributed, may be considered fair use.)
If you do copy my work and pass it off as your own, it's called "stealing"
and "plagiarism". People who steal my stuff will be étoufféed and served to Dr. Lecter, with a nice Chianti. (I'm serious. Just don't do it. Thanks.) |
