You may have noticed a scarcity of posts ’round these parts of late. Then again, you may not … is there no one to yell at me when I haven’t posted in a while?! Someone step up to the plate!

Truth be told, we’ve been doing a fair bit of travelling recently, compounded with my innate laziness and my status as God Emperor of Procrastination. To make matters worse, we’re taking off again today, and won’t be back ’til the end of next week. Until now I hope that nice New Orleans playlist has kept you busy, and I hope to keep you busy for a while with today’s post as well.

By sheer happenstance I stumbled across what could possibly be The Greatest Cooking Show Ever. It’s a BBC production called “Posh Nosh,” starring the Hon. Simon and Minty Marchmont, who have dedicated their lives to bringing extraordinary food to ordinary people. Here’s Episode 1, “Architect’s Fish and Chips”:

As you might have noticed … it’s a parody. And it’s hysterical. The first episode I saw was number 3, and it had me shrieking. From Minty’s ridiculous terminology (she doesn’t peel vegetables, she “embarrasses” them), the outrageously expensive ingredients they call for, the person to whom Simon’s true affection is directed (it ain’t Minty) and many quotable quotes:

“I know which side my Brad is battered!”

“There’s a famous saying: ‘Like schoolboys, Rieslings are best enjoyed young.'” “Er … school DAYS.” “What? Yes.”

“We make our own stock, but by all means buy stock cubes, if you have no self-esteem.”

They only made eight of them, and the shows are only about 9 minutes each, so you should be able to knock them all out fairly quickly. Our friend Fiona informed us that it was produced as an interstitial between shows, and quickly developed a following of its own — people would tune in for this rather than the shows at either end. Arabella Weir and Richard E. Grant (aka Withnail from “Withnail and I”) are brilliant, and keep an eye on who plays José Luis. According to one of the YouTube commenters (one of the few useful comments I’ve ever seen on that service) there’s an additional level of humor for native Britons. Minty’s accent is distinctively lower-middle class — “all her snobbiness is aspiration from someone who married into it, which Brits find hysterically funny.” It’s funny enough even without that.

Here are links to the other episodes:

Episode 2. Birthday Parties
Episode 3. Paella
Episode 4. Beautiful Food
Episode 5. Bread and Butter Pudding
Episode 6. Leftovers
Episode 7. Sauces
Episode 8. Comfort Food

Join us next week on “Posh Nosh,” when I’ll be disabling a partridge in its own jus.

And now for something completely different …

Idle conversation at work the other day brought up this question: Did Luke Skywalker feel any guilt over the couple million working stiffs he snuffed when he blew up the Death Star? Were the cooks evil too? (RumDood informs us that the movie “Clerks” cleared up this point, but I didn’t see it, so I consider it un-cleared up.)

Big booster of the service industry that I am, what about the cooks on the Death Star? Somebody had to feed Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin and all those hungry cloned stormtroopers. Turns out Eddie Izzard wondered the same thing, and his musings are accompanied by some illustrative animation.

The penne all’arrabiatta would be lovely …

I’ll trickle out at least one more post this week, but I’ll see y’all in a week, quite likely with some drinking stories.
 

Mon, July 19, 2010: UPDATED with 28 more songs!

We’re not going to Tales of the Cocktail this year. (Waah.)

Vacation time and annoying little details like money didn’t quite work out, so I wish all my friends and readers who are going a GREAT time … and I don’t want to hear a single thing about it, or it’ll drive me crazy. Internet blackout for me! No Twitter! What I will do is find a great bar (which will, I hope, have left a few bartenders behind that aren’t going to Tales) and quaff some cocktails.

My friend Stevi, who does the excellent cocktail weblog Two At The Most, asked me if I could come up with a playlist to help people prepare for getting to Tales next week, which I thought might be fun. (I can’t help but shamelessly mention that there was that New Orleans box set I did a while back that was pretty good …)

I thought about how much I and so many other people enjoyed HBO’s superb New Orleans-based TV series “Tremé” this past year, and included a number of artists and songs featured on that show. If you’re a “Tremé” fan you’ll like this little quickie compilation, which I put together on iTunes using their iMix feature. It’s entitled “Tales of the Cocktail ’10 Prep!”

So, you can buy the whole list, or pick a handful that you might want to hear, or if you have an extensive NOLA music collection use the list and drag the songs into a new playlist on iTunes, whichever you like. (Alternately, you can just ignore it and make your own!) One annoying hitch — I made a 100-song playlist, and for some reason iTunes truncated it to 72 the first time I tried to upload it, so I’ve had to break it up into two playlists. There should be widgets below to take you to iTunes, but in case it doesn’t render properly here are the direct links: (Part 1, Part 2) Look for the full printed list after the break.

Continue reading …

Threadhead Records have released a new single entitled “Nobody Knows Nothin’,” performed by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Clint Maedgen, along with John Boutté, Susan Cowsill, Craig Klein, Bill Lynn, Gregory Menoher, Margie Perez and Paul Sanchez, and written by John Boutté, Bill Lynn and Paul Sanchez. Proceeds will benefit Gulf Aid, a 501(c3) nonprofit corporation established in response to the biggest oil spill in US history just 50 miles off of the Louisiana coast, and are distributed to organizations focused on supporting wetlands/coastal environmental issues & the well-being of fishermen, and the regional seafood industry.

To purchase the digital download of the song, and to help with the oil cleanup efforts, go to threadheadrecords.bandcamp.com. The song will also be available soon on iTunes.

While you’re at it, check out the song “It Ain’t My Fault,” by Mos Def and Ben Jaffe, along with Lenny Kravitz, Trombone Shorty and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, also to benefit GulfAid.org:

Buy it now on iTunes!

You may recall that last month I wrote about an ongoing cocktail competition at Drago Centro restaurant in downtown L.A., The People’s Cocktail Contest. It went on for four weeks — each week a theme ingredient was announced, recipes were submitted through the week, and during the weekend one recipe was selected by Michael Shearin, their sommelier/beverage director and Jaymee Mandeville, their head bartender, to continue through the finals. The winning cocktail gets added to the restaurant’s cocktail menu. The preliminaries are now closed, the four final cocktails have been selected, and it’s time for the face-off!

The finals for the People’s Cocktail Contest will be held at Drago Centro, 525 S. Flower St. this Wednesday the 30th starting sometime after 6pm. I don’t have a hard start time, but that’s when they asked me to arrive. [UPDATE: Judging begins at 7pm!] I suspect there’ll be a certain amount of cat-herding involved to get everyone there, set up and ready to roll. They’ll also be unveiling their new summer cocktail menu at the event, so there’ll be plenty of good stuff to try.

This is going to be such a blast, especially because two of the other three finalists are friends of mine. I’m looking forward to meeting Jeni, week four’s finalist, too; her blog is full of gorgeous food photos.

If you can’t attend the final face-off you can still play along at home; make the cocktails and see which one’s your favorite. I posted the recipe for my cocktail entry in Week 1: Blueberry, the Bell’aspetto, last month. Here are the other three finalists’ cocktail recipes, pulled from Drago Centro’s Twitter feed (no pictures of the drinks, alas; I was too lazy):

Week 2: Fernet Branca
Finalist: Ron Dollete, lushangeles.com

TRAMONTANA

1 oz Fernet Branca
1 oz Krogstad Aquavit
1 oz Cointreau
2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

 

Week 3: Gin (or genever)
Finalist: Matt Robold, rumdood.com

DUTCH ELM DISEASE

2 oz Bols Genever
1/2 oz Scotch
1/4 oz Simple Syrup
2 dashes Angostura Bitters.

Stir with ice for 30 seconds. Strain into a rocks glass over ice. Garnish with a lemon twist.

 

Week 4: Lemon
Finalist: Jeni Afuso, Oishii Eats

MOMO RYE FIZZ

1/2 fresh peach
1 oz simple syrup
2 oz Rittenhouse 100 rye whiskey
1 oz lemon juice
Club soda

Muddle peach with simple syrup. Add rye and lemon juice. Shake with ice, strain into tall glass over ice, top with club soda.

Wish us luck! No matter who wins, it’s going to be a lot of fun. Join us if you can.

First of all, if you haven’t seen the site Liquor.com, and if you’re not subscribing to their daily email newsletter, you should go see it and subscribe now. It’s all about cocktails and spirits, and you’ll see many familiar names go by in the bylines: David Wondrich, Dale DeGroff, Audrey Saunders, Jim Meehan of PDT, H. Joseph Ehrmann of Elixir, and many more. The website is still relatively new and not quite all there yet, but the newsletter is particularly nice; it’s a great little boozy tidbit in your mailbox every day.

To entice you (and as a useful li’l list for us all), here’s an excerpt from a recent non-byline Liquor.com post about how to choose a Bourbon based on ones you already like, with the help of Knob Creek’s “whiskey professor,” Bernie Lubbers:

From how long the spirit ages to the proof, there are a number of key factors that contribute to the flavor of bourbon. But today we’re focusing on the most basic: the three grains used to make the whiskey. While all bourbons must be at least 51 percent corn and usually contain some barley, the third grain can vary from brand to brand. Using that so-called “flavoring grain,” Lubbers divides the whole bourbon category into three main groups. “I try to find the common dominator,” he says.

There’s the “traditional bourbon recipe,” which calls for about 70 percent corn and then roughly equal amounts of rye and barley. […] Then there’s the spicy “high-rye recipe,” which includes a higher percentage of, you guessed it, rye. […] The last group is the “traditional wheat recipe,” which, according to Lubbers, has a “sweeter and softer” taste since it’s made from corn, barley and wheat.

While the bourbons in each group will taste different, there’s a good chance that if you like one you’ll like the rest. With Lubbers’ assistance we created a cheat sheet that breaks down the most popular brands into these three categories. Now it’s time to go back to the liquor store.

TRADITIONAL BOURBON RECIPE:
Baker’s
Booker’s
Elijah Craig
Evan Williams
Jim Beam
Jim Beam Black
Knob Creek
Old Crow
Wild Turkey

HIGH-RYE RECIPE:
Basil Hayden’s
Buffalo Trace
Bulleit
Eagle Rare
Four Roses
George T. Stagg
Old Forester
Old Grand-Dad
Woodford Reserve

TRADITIONAL WHEAT RECIPE:
Maker’s Mark
Old Fitzgerald
Rebel Yell
Van Winkle
W.L. Weller

This was nicely enlightening, and I was unsurprised to see most of my favorite Bourbons in the high-rye category, being the lover of rye that I am. I was also pleased to see Old Forester in there, which was my first Bourbon — it was the only one Dad kept in his bar when I was a kid. (That, and the super-mild blended Seagram’s V.O. were the two whiskies he kept around.)

Then again, I really love Booker’s, which is in the “traditional” category; that beautiful caramelly sweetness with nuts and vanilla (and the ass-kicking proof) really does it for me. I’m also a fan of Maker’s, which we still keep around primarily for sipping; Buffalo Trace has replaced it as our default mixing Bourbon at home.

I never was that much of a fan of Jim Beam, but after trying Evan Williams over the past couple of years I’d like to try to keep some of that around. I’ve never tried Baker’s at all, so we’ll have to add that to the list.

I’m always happy to buy more Bourbon!

(Oh, and subscribe to the liquor.com newsletter! *nudge*)