The ultimate answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe and Everything. That’s me! Today, November 11, 2003, I am 42.

It was very nice of them to design the Earth-sized and -shaped computer Deep Thought and have it work on me for billions of years. I only wish I knew what the question was.

Given the significance of today’s birthday, there really can be only one drink with which I can celebrate. Robb was thoughtful enough in another comments thread to suggest Sazeracs — a splendid suggestion, no doubt — but today only this will do.

The best drink in existence, according to Douglas Adams, is the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. The effect of drinking one of these is rather like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon, wrapped around a large gold brick. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will tell you on which planets the best ones are brewed, how much you can expect to pay for one, and which voluntary organizations exist to help you recover afterwards.

Fortunately, the Guide also tells you how you can make one yourself. (And, of course, it’s gin-based.)

Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster

1 bottle Ol’ Janx Spirit.
1 measure Santraginean seawater.
3 cubes frozen Arcturan MegaGin.
4 liters Fallian marsh gas.
1 measure Qualactin Hypermint Extract.
1 Algolian Suntiger tooth.
Zamphour to taste.
Olive garnish.

Take the juice from one bottle of the Ol’ Janx Spirit (see page 15 of the actual Guide).

Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V — Oh, that Santraginean seawater, it says. Oh, those Santraginean fish!

Allow three cubes of Arcturan MegaGin to melt into the mixture (it must be properly iced or the benzene is lost).

Allow four liters of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it, in memory of all those happy hikers who have died of pleasure in the marshes of Fallia.

Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qualactin Hypermint Extract, redolent of all the heady odors of the dark Qualactin Zones, subtle, sweet and mystic.

Drop in the tooth of an Algolan Suntiger. Watch it dissolve, spreading the fires of the Algolan suns deep into the heart of the drink.

Sprinkle Zamphour.

Add an olive.

Drink… but… very… carefully.

If my brains are bashed out, I’ll just get a second head.

I love CocktailDB. This massive, years-in-the-making collaborative project between Martin Doudoroff and Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh, still a work-in-progress, contains a database of over 4,700 authenticated cocktail recipes (from trusted published sources). When I’m in the mood for a particular spirit combined with a particular ingredient but can’t think of a recipe offhand, I’ll go to CocktailDB, input the ingredients and it’ll give me a list of cocktails featuring those ingredients. (This is like Webtender, you say; not so. The main difference is that CocktailDB doesn’t contain 10,000 vile drinks thought up by college frat boys and you won’t get those in your search results.)

We had a wonderful day on Saturday — some friends came over and brought fixins for goi cuon (Vietnamese spring rolls), I made Shrimp Creole, and we had lots of cocktails. On Sunday evening we were thinking of what we might want to have before dinner, and Wes pointed out that so far this weekend we’d had whiskey-, vodka- and gin-based cocktails. I thought, time for some rum. I was also keen to play with the bottle of Marie Brizard Apry, so I input “rum” and “apricot brandy” into CocktailDB … and came up with this one. As far as I know, it first appeared in the Savoy Cocktail Book. It’s light and quite lovely.

Culross

1 ounce white rum.
1 ounce Apry or other apricot brandy.
1 ounce Lillet.
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice.

Combine with cracked ice in a cocktail shaker; shake and strain.
Garnish with a cherry.

I’ve seen some drier variations that look worth trying too: try 2 ounces rum, 1/2 ounce each of Apry and Lillet, and 1/4 ounce lemon juice.

Erik tells us that this cocktail is miles better when substituting Cocchi Americano for the Lillet (as today’s Lillet is less flavorful and less bitter than the Kina Lillet that existed when this cocktail was created). Cocchi Americano is a wonderful quinquina (a fortified wine with quinine as a bittering agent) and I absolutely love it. Give it a try here if you can find some. He also suggests, since Cocchi is a bit sweet, to use a dry apricot brandy (such as Blume Marillien apricot eau-de-vie). Talk about making this drink POP … wow.

This one came to my attention in one of Gary Regan’s columns, where the Professor and Doc sample a 1930 classic. It was named after a 1920s Rudolph Valentino movie, based on a novel of the same title by Vincente Blasco Ibáñez. It has since become one of my favorite Scotch-based cocktails (and that’s not all …).

Blood and Sand

3/4 ounce blended Scotch.
3/4 ounce sweet vermouth.
3/4 ounce Cherry Heering.
3/4 ounce fresh orange juice.

Shake with cracked ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass.

The smokiness of the Scotch works well in harmony with the other ingredients here, as unlikely as that may sound. If you want to take it to another level, swap out the Scotch for a good smoky mezcal, such as one of the Del Maguey offerings, or perhaps Sombra if you want to crank the smoke level up even more. With this substitution, though, you should call it an Arena y Sangre.

[UPDATE] The above photo was taken at the 2007 Spirited Dinner at Commander’s Palace at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans, in which Chef Tory McPhail’s dishes were paired with cocktails by Audrey Saunders and Dale DeGroff. The Blood and Sand is a classic cocktail, and the only straight-ahead classic that was served at the meal. Usually it calls for a blended Scotch, and though I’m not sure what Scotch they used in this one, it did have a bit of smoke it it, which made it so perfect to go along with what was to come. Let’s talk cocktail pairings with food … here’s the dish that this drink accompanied.

Our entrée was Sugarcane and Bourbon Smoked Duck, smoked over smoldering whiskey barrels with local figs, a sweet potato pone, BBQ’ed onions, vanilla bourbon syrup and foie gras ganache.

Jesus Gawd.

Let’s just go through this again, shall we? Duck with Bourbon and sugarcane rub, smoked over smoldering wood from whiskey barrels. This is one reason why Tory McPhail is one of my favorite people on the planet. This dish was just fantastic; I think Wes and I had our eyes rolled up in our heads more than once while eating this dish. And the really fascinating thing is that the booze in the dish wasn’t paired with the booze in the drink this time … the smoke in the booze in the drink was paired with the smoke in the duck in the dish.

THAT, my friends, is how you pair a cocktail with a dish.

I wanted thirds and fourths of this, and I’m going to cry next time I go to Commander’s because this dish won’t be on the menu. Maybe I’ll luck out and it will, though. Fingers crossed.

This is a truly amazing cocktail, one of the great examples of cocktail alchemy that creates completely new flavors from its component ingredients and produces a drink that makes you want to shout for joy.

Our good friend Dr. Cocktail sings its praises; in fact, it’s the very drink that started him on his world-class journey to cocktailian archaeological expertise. That’s good enough for me, and so it should be for us all.

The name comes from the days when people drank cocktails in the morning (and why not indeed?), and was in a category of “pick-me-ups” meant to be served the morning after the night before. Various drinks called “corpse revivers” dated back to the 19th Century, but cocktail guides appeared to settle on three or four numbered version — some of the other numbered Corpse Revivers involve port, or vermouth and brandy, but I think this one is the best. London’s Savoy Hotel’s legendary head barman Harry Craddock, in his indispensible 1930 tome The Savoy Cocktail Book, notes that “[f]our of these in taken in swift succession will unrevive the corpse again.”

There’s so much going on in this drink, which is sophisticated and complex to the point that my first sips of one had me tasting things that weren’t even there (my first guess was that this drink might have had rum in it!), but once you know what’s in it you can taste every ingredient. This is a perfect drink to serve guests who might fear gin, or who might not have experience with classic cocktails of old. In keeping with its name, it’s a concoction that might just help you out a bit … the morning after the night before. Or any other time, really.

A Corpse Reviver No. 2, as served by Chris Hannah at Arnaud's French 75 Bar, New Orleans

Corpse Reviver No. 2

3/4 ounce gin.
3/4 ounce Cointreau.
3/4 ounce Lillet blanc.
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1 dash absinthe or Herbsaint.

Combine in a shaker with cracked ice; shake and strain.
Garnish with a stemless cherry.

As I write this, the night before the morning after, my corpse is already feeling rather revived indeed, and I’m not even dead yet.

We also like to use this as a “gateway drink,” especially when converting unsuspecting vodka drinkers to the joys of gin. I know, vodka drinkers, way back in the Olden Days I used to be afraid of gin too. Not anymore. Gin is wonderful. Trust me on this.

As Erik advises, this is also a superb example of a drink in which to swap out Lillet for Cocchi Americano, if you can find it — it’s a chinato, a quinine-bearing, fortified aperitif wine. It’ll be a fair bit more like the original concept of the drink, which used the more bitter and now-unavailable Kina Lillet, which was replaced by the non-bitter and more citrusy Lillet Blanc in 1986.

If you’d like to tinker with proportions, my friend Rick has done a great deal of experimentation with this drink.

If you really want to serve this drink with a flourish, when presenting them to your guests on a silver tray, do your best impression of Gene Wilder as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (“That’s FRONK-en-steen.”) and shriek, “LIFE! GIVE MY CREATION … LIIIIIFE!”

Or not.

This one’s a longtime favorite around the house. Our favorite reaction when serving this cocktail has been from our friend Doug, who had never had anything like it when we served him one at a cocktail party several years ago. “This is an incredibly elegant drink,” he said. He’s right.

The earliest recipe for the Aviation was found in Hugo Ensslin’s Recipes for Mixed Drinks, which first appeared in 1916 and has been lovingly reprinted in a gorgeous facsimile edition by Mud Puddle Books (buy it and others here). Turns out the original was made with crème de violette as well which, if you could even get an Aviation in a bar at all for the longest time, would be omitted. The slight purplish-blue cast makes it look like a clear sky perfect for flying, which makes the name of the cocktail make a bit more sense.

The thing about this cocktail is that you can vary the proportions very slightly and it makes a big difference in the final result. Any of them make a good version, but will it make the version you like?

This is the a good version of the typical Aviation you’ll see these days.

Aviation

2 ounces gin (Plymouth is great here).
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1/4 ounce maraschino liqueur.

Shake with ice (10-15 seconds) and strain into a cocktail glass. No garnish.

This is still a good drink, but a lot of people tend to overdo it on the maraschino, which leads to an overly sweet drink that doesn’t let enough of the other flavors shine through. A lot of the time people will reverse the proportions of the maraschino and lemon, and I think that throws it off balance, especially if you’re using Luxardo Maraschino. That’s powerful stuff.

Here’s the version that appeared in the Savoy Cocktail Book which, for some reason, left out the violette (amounts adapted from the original recipe proportions).

Aviation
(Savoy version)

1-1/2 ounces Plymouth gin.
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice.
2 dashes maraschino liqueur.

Shake and strain.

This is pretty tart, which is mighty fine with me but not so much for some folks. Erik Ellestad recommends adding 1/2 teaspoon of rich simple syrup to this version to help take the edge off the lemon, and that’s a good idea.

If you want to go back to the original you’ll need to add violette, and cut back on the maraschino a bit. Here’s Ensslin’s original, adapted with measured amounts:

Aviation
Original version, 1916

1-1/2 ounces gin.
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice.
2 dashes maraschino liqueur.
2 dashes crème de violette.

Shake and strain.

Here’s how we usually make them at home, either from Dave Wondrich’s adaptation of Ensslin’s recipe that’s a bit tarter, or ours that’s just a tad lighter on the liqueurs.

Aviation
(adapted from the Hugo Ensslin recipe by Dave Wondrich)

2 ounces gin.
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1-1/2 teaspoons maraschino liqueur.
1/2 teaspoon crème de violette.

Shake & strain. No garnish.

 

Aviation
(Chuck & Wes’ version)

2 ounces Plymouth gin.
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1 barspoon maraschino.
2 dashes crème de violette.

Shake and strain. No garnish.

Experiment with proportions, and see which one you like best.