Cocktails Recipes
Jamie Boudreau explains how to avoid unwanted explosions, offers up a cocktail recipe.
Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 11, 2010 at 01:14PM
In case you missed it, my coworker-in-crime Chris Werner recently talked to Jamie Boudreau about making ginger beer. Check out Boudreau’s recipe and advice on how to avoid unwanted ginger-brew explosions, then make the Cablegram: a simple mixtures of whiskey, lemon juice, simple syrup, and ginger beer.
Cablegram Cocktail
Recipe courtesy Jamie Boudreau
Ingredients
2oz rye or bourbon
¾oz lemon juice
¼oz simple syrup
ginger beer
Technique
Shake and strain first two ingredients into an iced Collins glass, top with ginger beer.
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Booze Musing
I hope so.
Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 03, 2010 at 08:04AM
A cocktail from Beaker and Flask, the Portland bar where the Norwegian Negroni was born.
So I’m flipping through my new Bon Appétit last night, and I come to a sunshine yellow page with a big cocktail glass on it. Turns out to be the Norwegian Negroni, a “Scandinavian version of the Italian negroni.” The drink is attributed to Kevin Ludwig, owner of Beaker and Flask in Portland, and it is described as “Scandinavian” because it is made with aquavit instead of gin. It also contains sweet vermouth and Cynar (an Italian artichoke liqueur that most of us have to learn to love) and is garnished with an orange twist.
The reason I bring all this up is because as I was sitting there reading, it occurred to me that I wasn’t looking at Imbibe, or some regional Seattle, Portland, or San Fran foodie publication whose readers were accustomed to odd little cocktail bars with bracing drinks that, while frequently fantastic, are often acquired tastes. (Cocktail lovers: do you remember the first time you tasted Cynar?)
I’m not criticizing BA, I was thrilled to see this funky drink amidst articles like “Best Places for Donuts” (shout-out to Mighty-O) and a recipe for a chicken parmesan burger that can only be described as very straightforward. But there seems to be some mixed expectations here. On the page prior to the negroni article, the mag’s food expert explains to readers what their palate is, and how they can use it to discover flavors in food and drinks. I hope people making this drink reads that page first, because they are about to put their palates through something serious with that cocktail.
Or let’s think about it this way: What would be the food-recipe equivalent for an aquavit, sweet vermouth, and Cynar drink? It ain’t a chicken parm sandwich, that’s for sure. And I think that’s awesome, from a cocktail lover’s standpoint. It seems that in the national media, drinkers might be getting a free pass on weird. And when weird is also complex and rewarding, that’s a good thing. Plus it’s fun to think about an adventurous older lady in some far-from-the-freeway town whipping up Norwegian Negronis for her book club.
Brace yourself, ladies.
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Cocktail Recipes
Bar Manager James MacWilliams presents a new take on a 1930s classic from London.
Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Feb 25, 2010 at 11:07AM
Photo: Brian Canlis
I wish I made it to the bar at Canlis more often. I like people watching there, and I like bar manager James MacWilliams’s eggheady approach to his profession.
Here’s something else I like: Cherry Heering. MacWilliams uses the liqueur in a Rose By Any Other Name, a drink inspired by a 1930s cocktail called the English Rose (lemon juice, grenadine, apricot brandy, dry vermouth, and gin). I highly recommend buying a bottle of Heering for your home bar, the Danish liqueur is a great replacement for cassis in a kir—something I learned at the Copper Gate.
“Cherry Heering dates back to 1818 Denmark,” writes MacWilliams. “The cherries used are Stevens Cherries, a variety indigenous to Denmark. These sweet dark cherries are pressed with stones and married with brandy that has been aged for three to five years. The maceration is rested in oak barrels for three months.”
Without further ado, here is the recipe for A Rose By Any Other Name.
INGREDIENTS
1oz Bombay Sapphire Gin
.5oz Maison Surrenne Cognac
.5oz Rothman and Winter Apricot Liqueur
.5oz Dolin Dry Vermouth
.5oz Fresh lemon juice
.25oz Cherry Heering
Half of one egg white
Peychaud’s bitters
TECHNIQUE
In a mixing glass whip egg white into peaks with a hand blender. While blender is running add apricot liqueur, vermouth, lemon juice, Cherry Heering, gin, and cognac. Shake hard with ice for 15 seconds and strain, using a Hawthorn strainer, into a cocktail glass. Wait for several seconds for foam to settle, then top with several drops of Peychaud’s bitters and swirl into the shape of a rose. Quote a Shakespearian sonnet and serve.
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Valentine's Day
Meet the “cocktail psychic” or have a champagne cocktail.
Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Feb 01, 2010 at 11:00AM
Just two weeks out from the so-called Hallmark Holiday, it’s time to start thinking about what you’re going to do.
First, from the Valentine’s Day press release pile, a drinking event:
Kerry Colburn is the author of a book called Good Drinks for Bad Days who calls herself a “cocktail psychic.” (I spent this morning struggling through the first four stages of grief with that term before arriving at acceptance. Really she just means she can tell you what to drink in order to cheer up a bad day. Can she really do this? I don’t know.) Colburn is hosting a Valentine’s Day party—pardon me, Anti Valentine’s Day party—at the bar at the Pan Pacific on February 11. It begins at 6pm.
Whatever your feelings about V-Day, you can’t deny it’s a great excuse to drink a champagne cocktail, otherwise known as joy in a flute. The basic model is pretty easy to make at home: you put a sugar cube at the bottom of a glass, douse it with a dash of Angostura bitters (the Angostura shortage that had bartenders stockpiling should be over by now, last time I checked it was in stock at DeLaurenti), slowly pour champagne to the top, and garnish with a lemon twist.
But it’s kind of a drink that is more fun to imbibe while out at some place romantic where they will offer all sorts of flavor embellishments, places like Bricco della Regina Anna on Queen Anne, like Sambar and Hazlewood in Ballard, like Poppy on Capitol Hill, or like 35th Street Bistro in Fremont.
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Mixology 101
Here’s what you are drinking when you order a “Haiti.”
Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jan 22, 2010 at 09:00AM
I was wondering what was in the Haiti, that drink at Liberty that owner Andrew Friedman created to benefit relief efforts in Haiti—100 percent of income generated from the cocktail is donated to Mercy Corps or the Clinton Foundation. It costs $6.
Here’s the deal. It’s:
2oz Barbancourt 8yr Rum—from Haiti
.5oz Cynar (an artichoke-flavored Italian liqueur)
.25oz Cointreau
.5oz fresh lime juice
a lime twist
simple syrup to taste
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