I love eggs and bacon for breakfast. It’s even nicer if I can drink my eggs in a cocktail.

As you may have noticed, I’ve really been getting into flips lately. It doesn’t hurt that Mary gave us some fresh eggs, fresh out of her friend’s chickens. (These are much, much better than factory-farmed supermarket eggs.)

Last June I linked to an L.A. Times article about Mexican liqueurs which has now unfortunately fallen into the catacombs of their paid archive. I recently picked up another one they wrote about: Xtabentún (pronounced “shtah-behn-toon”), which means “vines growing on stone” in the Mayan language.

Its maker D’Aristi calls it the Mayan liqueur of the Yucatán, made from fermented honey and aniseed in a rum base (described in the article as “Pernod for honey lovers,” although I myself would be more likely to say “Herbsaint for honey lovers”). It’s lovely, and I understand it’s terrific in coffee (can’t wait to try that!). We decided to take Murray Stenson’s advice, though, after he left a comment on that post which included this recipe, encouraging us to try it for breakfast. “Mmmm, breakfast.” I, being no stranger to breakfast cocktails, wholeheartedly embraced this idea.

The Xtabentún Flip
(from Murray Stenson, Zig Zag Café, Seattle)

1-1/2 ounces brandy (we used Don Pedro Mexican brandy).
1/2 ounces Xtabentún
1/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
3/4 ounce fresh orange juice
Whole egg
Simple syrup to taste (we used 1/2 ounce of rich Demerara syrup).

Combine with ice and shake vigorously for 20 seconds. Strain into appropriately pretty glassware and optionally top with some freshly grated nutmeg.

Yay, eggs for breakfast! But, you know … I like bacon with my eggs.

Unfortunately a bit earlier that morning I discovered a mishap with our second refrigerator out in the garage — the freezer door had come open and had been that way for at least a day, ruining lots of frozen crawfish tails, boudin, duck sausage, black pudding, passion fruit purée and a gorgonzola and walnut frozen pizza from Roma Deli. Sigh. Not only that, but the three remaining packs of Allan Benton’s Hickory Smoked Country Bacon, one of the best I’ve ever had and one of my running favorites, had been at room temperature for too long and smelled just a little too funky when I opened them. DAMMIT!!

I looked in the inside fridge to see if there was anything else, and … ta-daaa! Kolozsvári to the rescue!

Not the first cocktail with which I’ve served bacon as an accompaniment, but maybe the best so far. I think the combo might work a little better with a more simply flavored flip or milk punch (“It’s really different,” said Wesly, who added that he’d drink this one but wasn’t sure he’d ask for another one). I rather enjoyed it, and look forward to more experimentation with Xtabentún.

As we discussed earlier, the Old Fashioned goes back to the earliest days of the cocktail, and is actually the first definition of what a “cocktail” was — spirits, water, sugar and bitters.

You can make an Old Fashioned out of any base spirit, and it works really well with almost anything. It works especially well with aged tequila.

The Añejo Old Fashioned is very popular among Los Angeles bartenders, and elsewhere as well. Everyone puts their own spin on it — when Robert Hess first mentioned it in his video episode about the Old Fashioned he thought first of lemon bitters, then grapefruit bitters. The bartenders I see most often like classic Angostura, but I like a little of both.

While agave nectar seems to be the sweetener of choice, I also like to make it with piloncillo syrup. Piloncillo is the hard Mexican brown sugar, heavy on the molasses, that comes in rock-hard cones. To make a syrup from it shave it on a heavy grater so it’ll dissolve more easily, and do a 1:1 simple syrup with it.

Our favored añejo tequila these days is Partida, then El Charro, but use your favorite. Oh, and in case you can’t tell, I like ’em big.

Añejo Old Fashioned

3 ounces añejo tequila.
1/4 ounce piloncillo syrup or agave nectar.
2 dashes Angostura bitters.
1 dash Bittermens Grapefruit Bitters.
Orange or grapefruit peel.

Combine in a double Old Fashioned glass, add ice and stir for 20 seconds. Garnish with a large swath of orange or grapefruit peel.

This is a classic breakfast or brunch cocktail, beloved of generations of New Orleanians. It’s also quite fine late at night — I still like mine ice cold, but on a cold night you could even gently heat it.

The historic version is a Brandy Milk Punch, but lots of people like a Bourbon Milk Punch as well. Dr. Cocktail suggests a mix of brandy and rum, about an ounce of the former and 1/2 ounce of the latter. Whichever version you make, it’s easy to make and quite a crowd-pleaser. You should also be able to order this at any of the good Creole restaurants and bars in New Orleans, and it’s not difficult to talk someone through just about anywhere.

If you want to make it a bit richer, use half-and-half instead of whole milk. Never use 2% or, gods forbid, skim milk.

I like mine a little less sweet — you can certainly add more simple syrup if you like. Here’s the way I like ’em.

Milk Punch

1-1/2 ounces brandy or Bourbon, or 1 ounce brandy and 1/2 ounce dark rum.
2 teaspoons simple syrup.
2 dashes vanilla extract.
4 ounces milk or half-and-half.
Nutmeg.

Combine with ice and shake vigorously — this drink is nice when it’s frothy. Strain into a chilled wine glass and serve up, or into chilled Old Fashioned glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with a grating of nutmeg.

Here’s master New Orleans bartender Chris McMillian making one, although he likes his considerably sweeter than I do.

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 Clarke 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 …

The Red Hook Cocktail
(by Enzo Errico, Milk & Honey, New York City)

2 ounces rye whiskey.
1/2 ounce Carpano Punt E Mes.
1/2 ounce maraschino liqueur.

Combine with ice in a mixing glass and stir for at least 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish is specified but I added two homemade brandied cherries.

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. Yes, we have a menu on our bar at home for guests, which we change seasonally. What a coupla geeks.

This Manhattan variation comes from bartender Marco Dionysos, formerly of the Starlite Room in San Francisco. The sweet vermouth is replaced by one of the gentler yet still complex Italian amaros.

Uptown Manhattan
(created by Marco Dionysos)

2 ounces Bourbon.
1/2 ounce Amaro Nonino.
2 dashes orange bitters.
1 barspoon cherry brandy from jar of brandied cherries.
Orange peel.
Brandied cherry.

Combine first four ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Flame the orange peel over the surface of the drink and discard. Garnish with the cherry.

This works well with rye, too.

The brandied cherries we use are La Parisienne, and they’re wonderful. We get a 1 kilogram jar that lasts us for ages, and it’s easily mail-ordered from Marky’s.