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Hot Chocolate with a Twist

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2011-12-24T08:43:13Z

Remember when you were a kid, sipping hot chocolate on Christmas Eve before making a valiant attempt to stay up all night to see Santa Claus? (Silly wasn't it? That hot chocolate was a devious plan to get you to fall asleep.)

Now that we're almost all grown up, time to savour a childhood moment with a few decidedly adult touches of rum, Irish whiskey, mint, and even a touch of chile powder.

HOT RUM CHOCOLATE

(Makes 2 servings)

60 ml Havana Club Añejo 7-Year

240 ml fresh whole milk

75 gr bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Pinch of each: ground allspice, ground cinnamon

Ancho chile powder and chipotle chile powder, to taste

In a small saucepan, warm the milk, rum, and spices over medium heat. When it is slightly warm, gradually add the chocolate while whisking constantly. (Add more chopped chocolate, if you prefer a deep, rich drink.) Continue to heat, whisking constantly, until the milk begins to form bubbles around the edge of the pan. Do not allow the milk to boil. Pour into warmed mugs.

IRISH HOT CHOCOLATE

3 part Jameson Irish Whiskey

6 parts hot chocolate made with whole milk

1 part crème de menthe (optional)

Prepare hot chocolate in your preferred method and pour into a warmed punch bowl or Tom & Jerry bowl with a lid. Add Irish whiskey and liqueur. Serve in warm mugs. Garnish with a sprig of fresh mint.

Chocolate not your thing? Then try an old classic—Keoke Coffee:

KEOKE COFFEE

(Serves two)

240 ml hot, strong-brewed coffee

60 ml Jameson Irish Whiskey

30 ml dark crème de cacao

30 ml Martell cognac

30 ml single cream

Combine ingredient in order of their appearance into a warm jug. Pour into two warm mugs and garnish with a grating of nutmeg.

Back to making three-cheese scones and a few Christmas sweets. Happy Christmas Eve!

Tools of the Trade: The Story of the Shaker

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2011-12-05T10:53:08Z

Which came first, the cocktail or the shaker? There is no question—unless someone finds a cocktail recipe from the late 1500s—as that is when the shaker first appeared in one of its modern forms. It was called doppelfassbecher, a double-barrel beaker that was used presumably for drinking toasts rather than mixing drinks. It was common in Germany during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, made of silver, brass, or gold. This should not be confused with the doppelscheuer, interlocking silver wine goblets that were made around the same time.

The doppelfassbecher’s design was much like the two-part shakers of today: two metal cups of almost equal size, one slightly taller than the other as it included a lip that locked it into place with the other. Even the height and width was sometimes very similar to classic cocktail shakers. But this is not a coincidence.

Religious persecution, during the 1600s, drove massive German emigration to Britain. But the German-British connection went all the way to the throne. From the 1714 coronation of Hanoverian prince George I to present, every king, queen, or consort has descended from or married with German ancestry. Thus, it is no surprise that the doppelfassbecher made its appearance in Britain, in the late 1700s, particularly in London. Many examples made in Sheffield, a city renowned for its metalwork, can be found. And it was in Britain that the doppelfassbecher met the cocktail and became the cobbler mixer.

By the mid-1800s, cobbler mixers were purveyed by Farrow & Jackson Limited of London—wine and spirits merchants who also billed themselves as engineers of all sorts of bar and cellar fittings. Unlike the doppelfassbecher, this bar tool did not have a pattern of barrel staves etched into it. However, it still retained the horizontal bands around it that represented barrel hoops. These early cobbler mixers are the obvious missing link between modern all-metal two-part shakers and the sixteenth-century originals.

An 1856 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle gives an early glimpse of the cobbler mixer’s place behind the bar: “The barkeeper and his assistants possess the agility of acrobats and the prestidigitative skill of magicians. They are all bottle conjurors.—They toss the drinks about; they throw brimful glasses over their heads; they shake the saccharine, glacial and alcoholic ingredients in their long tin tubes…”

The earliest references to cocktail shakers that we have found appeared, in 1868, in two British publications. The first, from Meliora: A Quarterly Review of Social Science, notes that: “This endeavour to get up a system of stimulation has given rise in America to the manufacture of ‘cocktail’ (a compound of whiskey, brandy, or champagne, bitters, and ice), dexterously mixed in tall silver mugs made for the purpose, called ‘cocktail shakers.’”

In the British periodical Notes and Queries, from that same year, we found the earliest description of cocktail shaker’s use: ‘“What is a cocktail-shaker?” I never possessed a pair of ‘cocktail-shakers’ myself, but a young officer in the Blues [the Union army during the American Civil War] a fellow-passenger in a Cunard steamer in which I crossed the Atlantic in 1865, did possess, and was very proud of, a brace of tall silver mugs in which the ingredients of the beverage known as a ‘cocktail’ (whiskey, brandy or champagne, bitters and ice) are mixed, shaken together, and then scientifically discharged—the ‘shakers’ being held at arm’s length, and sometimes above the operator’s head—from goblet to goblet, backwards and forwards, over and over again, till the requisite perfection of homogeneousness has been attained. These are the ‘cocktail shakers’ and our friend in the Blues was so great a proficient in the difficult art of goblet-throwing, and the compounds he made were so delicious, that ladies on board, who in the earlier stages of the voyage had been dreadfully sea-sick, were often heard to inquire, towards two p.m., whether Captain --------- was going to make any ‘cocktails’ that day.”

From the description, the young officer combined the ingredients, shook them in the shaker, then separated the cups and used them as throwing glasses to give the mixture a series of finishing throws. This is particularly interesting since most bartenders at that time were masters of throwing, but none was noted for shaking drinks.

German immigration hit American shores in the 1680s, settling primarily in New York and Pennsylvania. During the 1800s, eight million Germans sought a new life in the “land of the free”. More than just about any other ethnicity, Germans dominated nineteenth-century American bar operations. Think of it. Willie Schmidt, Harry Johnson, and George Kappeler were not the only Germans who plied their craft in New York’s famous watering holes. Between 1860 and 1900, the number of bartenders and saloon owners west of the Mississippi rose from under 4,000 to nearly 50,000. Forty percent were recent German immigrants, and twenty-five percent of those were of German descent. Thirty percent of saloon proprietors in Colorado were German and no doubt knew the proper use of a doppelfassbecher as well as the joys of quaffing vermut. And if they didn’t, according to the San Antonio Express in 1886, there were a number of bartending manuals printed in English and German for them such as Harry Johnson’s Bartenders Manual.

Around the turn of the century, there was a brief dip in the shaker’s popularity as the art of throwing faded away into obscurity. Seasoned imbibers were heard to lament that bartenders had forgotten the old arts and were content to stir their drinks. Mixing glasses appeared in many consumer advertisements as well. Fortunately, this lapse was not long-lived.

Perhaps the largest boom in cocktail shaker sales occurred in the United States just before, during, and after Prohibition as more people entertained at home. Teapot-shaped shakers rose in popularity, not to hide cocktail implements from the police, but to avoid scorn from temperant aunts and mother-in-laws.

It should now be clear how the doppelfassbecher evolved into the Boston shaker. What is less clear is how the two-part shaker (read: cobbler mixer), became the Boston shaker while the three-part shaker took on the moniker of cobbler shaker. The three-part cobbler shaker, as we know it today, was named in 2003 by Dale DeGroff, based on the illustration of a three-part shaker that was captioned “cobbler mixer” on page 21 of Farrow & Jackson’s 1902 book Recipes of American and Other Iced Drinks. While this is a new application of the name, it is far more helpful than the book he took the name from, which also had a two-part “cobbler mixer” and a one-part mixing cup presumably made to be used with a mixing glass. But that’s tale to be uncovered at another time.

—Anistatia Miller & Jared Brown

[This article was originally published in German in 2010 in Mixology Magazine.]

Tools of the Trade: Bitters Bottles

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2011-12-05T10:50:46Z

Bitters is rightfully one of the hottest subjects in cocktails today. After all, the difference between the poorly made drinks of yesterday and today’s flawless creations can be as simple as reintroducing the bitters to the recipe. To quote Robert “Drink Boy” Hess, bitters are to cocktails as salt is to soup.

A dash? More than a drop. Less than a splash.

Bitter medicinals have been produced for at least the past 5,000 years, appearing in traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic healing practices. Bitters were produced by western physicians for nearly 500 years, before they were replaced by modern potions and relegated to the hokey world of the snake oil salesman, obscurity, or the dusty back corners of the liquor cabinet.

While bitters have been rediscovered and celebrated widely, no one seems to notice the bottles that contain them. Such a simple design: It is a vessel with a small opening at the top that dispenses a tiny measure of liquid. Containers of this sort have existed in one form or another for thousands of years.

The term “to dash”, which a 1600s dictionary defined as “to wet”, entered into common language about this time. However, the concept pre-dates the definition. Primarily the bitters bottle is such a simple mechanism to limit the amount poured. Before the Industrial Revolution gave birth to mass production, many products were dearly cherished and thus only used sparingly. The dash made sense when it took weeks or months to cook up a small batch of bitters, or vinegar, or oil, or perfume.

A number of different shapes cropped up for dasher bottles over the centuries. But all were remarkably similar in form and function: a vessel with a small hole.

It has been said that one of the original designs for the bitters dasher—and the one on which modern dasher decanters are based—was the shaft of a feather inserted through a cork. This made a secure seal on the bottle and an accurate dasher spout from the extended feather shaft. Others were even more rudimentary. Liquid was dispensed through a hole in the cork.

One such bottle sold at an American Bottle Auctions sale on 1 June 2010 for $64,960 USD. It was a Powell & Stutenroth “Favorite Bitters” bottle—patented in 28 July 1868—and rated 9.7 out for quality. There was one noted flaw that should make sense to any bartender: The original cork was intact, but there was a small hole through it. Well, of course there was. (What were the ingredients in Favorite Bitters? It contained “sasparilla, dandelion, wild cherry, buchu, cubeba, orange peel, gentian, columbo, and sassafras.)

Much cheaper and far more useful behind the bar are vintage Hazel Atlas bitters bottles with classic metal and cork dasher tops. These frosted glass bottles can be found online for as little as 20 euros. Slightly more expensive, but perhaps the most ornate bitters bottle ever made are the glass Angostura bottles from the 1920s which were overlaid with silver leaf and vine patterns.

Although we now have plastic disks built into bottles and metal and cork facsimiles of early feather-and-cork dashers—and we may soon have a tenth of the number of bitters available a century and a half ago—there is still no standardization in the quantity of a dash.

Depending on the bottle, the amount can range from a few drops to more than double that amount. And dashers are not the only way we get dashes behind the bar. Many a modern-day bartender has been taught to cover the large hole on the speed pourer spout to create a dash—or to cover the small hole to dispense a splash. Occasionally, bars have resorted to making inexpensive dashers from condiment containers such as hot sauce bottles with metal screw tops by tapping a nail hole through the lid and screwing it back on the bottle.

While the inaccuracy of these various dashes will leave the precision mixers measuring their bitters with pipettes and eyedroppers until an acceptable solution is reached, the rest of us can enjoy one point of imprecision for the sake of tradition. And if a drink tastes better one day than it did the day before? It’s likely that the bitters dasher favored you with a little extra.

—Anistatia Miller and Jared Brown

[This article was originally published in German in 2010 in Mixology Magazine.]

Tools of the Trade: Cocktail Strainers

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2011-12-05T10:45:56Z

For a bar tool with such an ancient lineage—descended from ancient Chinese tea strainers—the cocktail strainer has surprisingly modern origins. Yes, today there are two types of strainers. And if you’re reading this magazine, you already know they are the julep strainer and the Hawthorne strainer. Is there anything new to know about strainers? Even we were surprised when we found that one has only had its name in common use since the 1970s.

The julep strainer was born first. It is a simple design: a large perforated spoon with a short handle that emerged in the mid-1800s. Though its design was unique, it bore a distinct resemblance to a number of specialized seventeenth and eighteenth century spoons. The French soupoudrer, with a slightly smaller bowl and longer handle was used to sprinkle sugar or other powders onto food. The British mote spoon used to remove motes (specks) from soup and later tea. And even more like the julep strainer, the tea caddy from the same era is occasionally so similar it could be mistaken for a julep strainer in miniature.

So, if the mint julep has been around since the mid-1800s, when was the julep strainer popularized? Certainly not in time for Harry Johnson to use one in that legendary 1869 New Orleans competition where he simply held the mouths of two mixing glasses together and let the drink flow from the crack between them.

An elegant julep strainer appeared in Louis Fouquet’s 1896 book Bariana. However, this strainer continues to add to the confusion about its origins. Occasionally, one of these beauties appears on eBay, usually listed as “vintage 1847”. However, as silver expert Nancy Gluck of Silver Season (www.silverseason.com) explains, the manufacturer’s name “1847 Rogers Bros”is not a production date, but a tribute to their invention of the style of electroplating used on their wares in 1847.

Gluck—whose website focuses on 1847 Rogers Bros products—said that the strainer seen in Bariana is referred to as the “star strainer” because of the star-shaped hole in the handle. She also indicated that this was the most common of three strainers produced by 1847 Rogers Brothers. The other patterns were Clover with a clover-shaped hole punched through the handle, and the Floral that had no hole and a thicker handle twisted with a floral pattern. Gluck also pointed out that none of these were part of a silverware or bartending set, but were each unique and elegant julep strainers.

There has long been debate as to the proper use of a julep strainer, especially since the best-known julep, the American mint julep, does not require a strainer. One theory is that the strainer was meant to be inverted on top of the mint julep to keep the ice away from the drinker’s teeth. Dental care was not as good back then as it is today. And certainly people suffered greatly from sensitive teeth. Another theory is that it was inverted atop the drink to keep the drinker’s mustache from soaking up the drink. Yet another theory hearkens back to an early medical definition, from before the advent of iced drinks, of a julep as a mixture containing no solids. In this instance, a strainer would have served a valuable purpose.

And the julep strainer itself was not only sold as a strainer. In Bariana it was a cuillere passoire, a strainer spoon. In Farrow & Jackson’s 1898 catalogue, it was an ice spoon. Then in their 1902 cocktail book, Recipes of American and Other Iced Drinks, it became an ice spoon and strainer.

The Hawthorne strainer appears to have been born in the United States, evolved from its predecessor. The earliest record of a strainer with the spring that now characterizes the Hawthorne is an 1889 patent for a “julep strainer”. In addition to the spring, there were holes in the middle, but they did not spell out “hawthorne”. The first to carry that name appears to be the one made by Bonzer, a British company.

The Bonzer strainer was first sold in the 1930s. The company itself was born in 1927. We have tried to reach them as to why they stamped their strainers with the word “Hawthorne” but as of press time we have been unable to reach Ron Cooper of Bonzer’s parent company Mitchell-Cooper. However, as far as we know, this was the first use of the word Hawthorne connected to this type of strainer.

However, this strainer was simply called a cocktail strainer. The first use we have discovered of the term hawthorn strainer appeared in John Doxat’s 1972 book The World of Drinks and Drinking. It quickly appeared in other cocktail books, but it was not until 1980 that it was written Hawthorne strainer. Even then, the term really did not catch on until the late 1990s, at the advent of the new cocktail Renaissance.

There is a practical point to looking at the origins of the strainers. Next time you can’t find your ice scoop, remember that is a task the julep strainer was originally made for. But not everything is old. Surprisingly, a new use for the Hawthorne strainer is emerging. The spring, separated from the strainer and placed in a cocktail shaker without ice creates an effective agitator for drinks made with egg whites. May new inventions and bartenders’ inventiveness never cease.

—Anistatia Miller & Jared Brown

[This article was originally published in German in 2010 in Mixology Magazine.]

Tools of the Trade: Bar Spoons

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2011-12-05T10:41:28Z

Do you know the traditional names of the three common styles of bar spoon? Bar spoon, mazagran, and sucket? All were born before the advent of the modern bar, but this is not surprising since the spoon is the oldest of humankind's dedicated eating utensils.

The spoon is an ancient invention, used since Paleolithic times. It's likely that early man used shells or bits of wood then began improving on nature’s designs hand crafting and perfecting his implements. In fact, the ancient Greek and Latin words for spoon comes from the word "cochlea", a spiral shaped snail shell. Ancient Egyptian spoons have been unearthed in the tombs of the Pharaohs. Some of the earliest examples are made of painted wood. Later finds are made from a variety of materials including stone and ivory. Similarly, the spoon appears in the early Asian historical records spanning from China to India to Turkey.

Spoons were only embraced by the masses throughout Europe as recently as the Dark Ages. The earliest British mention of spoons appeared in a will dated 1279. It's around this time that one style of bar spoon emerged in Germany. Now commonly known as a sucket spoon, this particular style of the bar spoon sports a fork on the opposite end (thus it is also sometimes called a sucket fork). It began its career as an efficient multi-purpose dining tool, often fashioned with a swirl in the shaft just like a modern bar spoon. In those days, it was not uncommon for people to own and carry a personal set of tableware for daily use. A multi-purpose tool was very convenient, just as it is for camping—and bartending—today.

After it arrived in England with the Saxons, the sucket spoon took its name from a British dessert. Sucket is made of preserved fruits and served either wet or dry. Dry sucket is similar to marmalade, cooked until it can be served in chunks. Wet sucket is simply fruit cooked and served in syrup. This favourite dish of Queen Elizabeth I is politely eaten with the sucket spoon so that the morsels of fruit can be forked out of the syrup.

By the mid- to late-1800s, the sucket spoon was sold to and used in American bars, placed in mixed drinks containing fruit. This allowed patrons to stir their drinks with the spoon and eat the fruit with the fork.

The familiar bar spoon with a muddler on one end can be traced to the French apothecary spoon—the cuillière medicament—which was popularised during the 18th century. (However, there are spoons with heavy ornaments that might have served the same purpose date back to ancient Greece. But there is no historical record as to their purpose.)

The muddler on the French apothecary spoons was used to break up crystallised and coarsely powdered medicines so they could be dissolved in liquids. The bowl of the spoon was also carefully designed to hold a precise amount of liquid. Its shape allowed the pharmacist to use a flat knife to scrape across the top of the spoon and measure a level spoonful of powder.

This spoon appears in catalogues printed by London wine and spirits merchants Farrow & Jackson. Shown next to a plain long spoon with a twisted handle labelled a “bar spoon” in their 1898 catalogue, they sold it as a French mazagran spoon. These two styles appeared again in Charlie Paul’s 1902 Recipes of American and Other Iced Drinks published by the same company. By then the apothecary spoon had indeed already become popular in France for social use as evidenced in Louis Fouquet's book from the same period Bariana: Receuil Pratique de Toutes Boissons Américaines et Anglaises.

A coffee drink called mazagran is said to be named for an 1840 French military victory near the Algerian town of Mazagran on the outskirts of Mostaghanem. Although it was little more than a skirmish, when it appeared in the French press the number of enemy combatants had risen twenty-fold to over 20,000. A model of the fort defended by the French was built in the Champs Elysées. Many souvenirs were sold. A Parisian street was named after the event. The captain who led the battle received the coveted Legion of Honour. Funds that were raised for the battle's widows and orphans were returned when it was eventually revealed there were no French casualties. And the eponymously-named drink became a fashion trend nationwide: espresso in a tall glass, two or three lumps of French beet sugar crushed with a muddling spoon, topped with cold water (because the troops in the battle had no milk or brandy). By the First World War, American troops discovered it as a muddled drink fortified with a pony of Cognac.

Today, the mazagran spoon is the most common of the bar spoons found behind the bar, though the proper name was lost a century ago. No layered drink, no pousse café can be made easily without its twisted shafted and muddler end.

The sucket spoon is also making a revival as bartenders find new uses for its shape. However, its original purpose, allowing customers to fish the fruit from their drinks, seems to be lost at the moment.

The plain bar spoon, simply a long slender spoon, often with a twisted stem to facilitate stirring, was once the most common of implements. However, with no fork or muddler to add a second purpose and a touch of flourish to its existence, it seems to be fading away.

—Anistatia Miller & Jared Brown

[This article was originally published in German in 2010 in Mixology Magazine.]

Tools of the Trade: At Loggerheads with Toddy Sticks and Swizzle Sticks

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2011-12-05T10:38:10Z

The toddy stick. The loggerhead. The swizzle stick. These three very useful tools employed by early mixers nearly disappeared from behind bars in modern times. However they disappeared for three entirely different reasons. The swizzle stick was replaced by the blender, the bar spoon, and the shaker. The loggerhead was a fire hazard. So it went out because of health and safety regulations. And the toddy stick? It disappeared in name only. Today we call it a muddler.

Loggerheads

A 19th century book on the history of a small Massachusetts town contained this excellent description of a loggerhead:

“Now this loggerhead, or Flip-Dog, as it was sometimes called, consisted of a piece of iron about two feet long, one end being quite thick, while the other dwindled down to a handle; such an article being a main spoke in the furniture of every such place in those days. It was used in making flip, which was a mixture of beer, spirit and sugar, into which the loggerhead, hot from the fire, was thrust, heating the compound and causing a froth on top which usually ran over the sides of the mug.”

The loggerhead was also very useful for melting tar: a less than desirable additive to the next rum flip! This tool was also used for an assortment of other tavern keeper activities such as cauterizing wounds and even igniting cannons.

The advantage of heating a drink with a loggerhead—also called a “flip dog”—is that the drink would be heated instantly. Think of it as a predecessor to the microwave.

The loggerhead was such a common, convenient device that its name gave birth to a number of other British terms. A loggerhead was a person of low intelligence: Someone who might as well have a lump of iron rising above their neck. The British expression “at loggerheads” meant reaching an impasse in a dispute. It later took on the more heated meaning of arguing to the point of physical violence.

Among the drinks most commonly heated with a loggerhead were punch, toddy and flip. In those days before central heating, tavern keepers served a lot of hot drinks.

A 1796 British dictionary defines the term “swizzle” as a “drink, or any brisk or windy liquor. In North America, a mixture of spruce beer, rum, and sugar, was so called.” But the swizzle itself was Caribbean, not American. The quararibea turbinata or swizzlestick tree grows almost exclusively on the southern islands of Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Trinidad, and Martinique. The three to five branches that form the head are not roots but actual branches of the shrub that grow naturally from the main stalk.

In the Caribbean, swizzle sticks are not reserved for making swizzles. They are used as hand blenders in soups, creams, and many other mixing tasks.

Unfortunately, swizzle sticks are not a large export commodity. So with the exception of a very few sources, the easiest way to get one—or more, since they are hard to come by—is to travel to the Caribbean or ask someone who is heading to the islands.

If you can’t get your hands on a genuine swizzle stick, there is a traditional alternative: the eggnog stick.

To make one: Split the end of a 25 to 30 cm balsawood stick. Insert a cross piece of wood approximately 6 cm by 1 cm by a few millimetres thick. This works almost as well as the swizzle and was a very common alternative that was produced in northern climates.

Both the swizzle stick and eggnog stick are used by placing it in the glass. Then holding the shaft between the palms of your hands, move your hands back and forth to whirl the stick in the glass. Today, a skilled bartender swizzling a drink or whipping an eggnog creates a timeless theatre of drink production with the inviting sight and sound of the whirling stick.

Isn’t it a shame that the same term is used for the frequently-branded, plastic stirring stick? No one precisely when this stirring device was invented. But we do know that Cartier introduced a line of personalised, silver-plated swizzle sticks, in the 1920s, that was promoted to eliminate the bubbles in a glass of champagne! Noél Coward, George Gershwin, and other posh swells of the day all toted their on silver sticks around to cocktail parties and hotel bars.

The birth of tiki triggered the production of myriads of plastic “swizzle sticks” topped with tiki heads, hula girls, and blatant branding: Trader Vic and Don the Beachcomber swizzle sticks are collector’s items today.

Toddy Sticks

The toddy stick was also immortalized in drinking lore. One writer from ages part described the humble toddy stick as beloved for “the welcome ringing music it made on the sides of glass tumblers...” It was also excellent for crushing sugar in the bottom of a glass or mug. More than one bartender also used it to defend himself when accosted by a belligerent drunk. Sounds like a muddler, doesn’t it?

According to one early description, the toddy stick was six or eight inches long with a knob at one end or flattened out at one end. It was shorter than modern muddlers. But remember the dimensions of the doppelfassbecher. The glasses were smaller and so were the drinks.

Mixing glasses and mixing sticks, in hand, how do we pour the sumptuous contents we have made into a serving glass? That’s the subject of our next story.

—Anistatia Miller & Jared Brown

[This article was originally published in German in 2010 in Mixology Magazine.]

Recipes from our "Cocktails with Sparkle" session at IMBIBE Live! 2011

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2011-11-21T08:02:19Z

FRENCH KISS

adapted from Oliver's at the Mayflower Park Hotel, Seattle, WA, USA

30 ml Belvedere vodka

1 TB Lillet Blanc

90 ml Pol Roger Champagne

Shake vodka and apéritif wine over ice. Strain into a champagne coupe. Slowly add champagne.

Garnish: orange twist

THE COLONEL’S BIG OPU

adapted from Trader Vic's Book of Food & Drink

30 ml Sipsmith Gin

30 ml Cointreau

Juice of half a lime

180 ml Freixenet Cava

Shake gin, liqueur, and juice over ice. Strain into a champagne coupe. Slowly add champagne.

Garnish: none

SHRUB ROYALE

adapted from Tony Abou-Ganim, Las Vegas, NV, USA

1 splash fresh raspberry shrub

1 splash homemade crème de cassis

120 ml Martini & Rossi Prosecco

Build in a champagne flute.

Garnish: 3 fresh raspberries

STRAWBERRY BELLE

by Jared Brown & Anistatia Miller

25 ml Babicka Wormwood Vodka

1 splash homemade strawberry liqueur

90 ml Pol Roger Champagne

Build in a champagne flute.

Garnish: a fresh strawberry half

STRAWBERRIES AND SAGE

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2011-11-21T07:48:56Z

FIRST THE STRAWBERRIES

It's our first year in the new garden so we've planted Cambridge Favourites. Born and bred in the UK, this varietal are great for making purées, garnishes, shrubs, ratafias, and punch jellies (read: 19th century jelly shots).

GROWING THEM

Don't bother starting strawberries from seed unless you are a masochist! There are plenty of places to buy healthy young plants from including the Burford Garden Company . We also bought young crowns with no blossoms from Unwins .

Cambridge Faves are a summer fruiting strawberry, so we carefully planted our new arrivals in early April, using plenty of rich compost in the holes. because our area of the Cotswolds has a late frost end date, we nurtured our plants under Victorian bell cloches until mid-May.

Whether you transplant them into a patio container or outdoors in a garden or an allotment, choose a sunny spot that's sheltered from the wind. The trick to planting strawberries (yes, there is one) is to leave the growing crown above the soil level. Don't let any roots show, just the crown portion. If you purchased your plants in pots, plant them to the same depth as they were in the pot.

You plants will need lots of water to establish their roots. That should take about a month. Then they should be OK on their own until fruiting time. When those lovely white blossoms turn into little green swelling fruits, make sure you start watering them again.

This is also a good time to protect your berries from touching the ground. Cover the soil around each plant with straw or a mulching mat to prevent this. If you don't you'll have rotten fruit instead of a bumper crop.

Now you've got one more thing to worry about: birds! BIRDS LOVE BERRIES. So if you want to feed the local population, by all means go right ahead. But if you want to eat those berries yourself, protect them with light plastic netting.

HARVESTING THEM

Strawberries are not as easy to harvest as you may think. Pick them when there’s still a bit of white on the fruit and you’ll never experience their full flavour. Pick them a little later and you might end up with mushy fruit when you freeze them. Harvest your berries daily or at least every other day in the early morning whilst the berries are cool. Never pull or pick the berries from their stems, simply pinch the stem between your thumb and forefinger so that you only take a short piece of the stem along with your fruit. Place the berries in shallow containers and don't keep them in direct sunlight for more than 10 to 15 minutes.

NEXT THE SAGE

Common sage is our favourite herb to use in Pineapple & Sage Margaritas, a few shrubs, and we won't discuss how valuable this herb is for cooking. (Our favourite sage dish involves thin calve's liver and plenty of frizzled sage.)

Again, unless you like to watch paint dry, don't bother starting your sage from seed. Buy a healthy young plant and transplant it out when the danger from frost is over. (We stuck ours in our mini greenhouse until late May just to be on the safe side.)

What's really nice about sage is that the plant will keep providing you with fragrant leaves for about 3 years before it looses its potency. So be kind to your sage. Don't over water it. It's a Mediterranean plant. Read: prefers dry conditions.

That's why now, there’s another plant that’s ready to harvest—sage. Those silvery-green, woolly leaves are best harvested before the plant’s purple flowers bloom. You can cut the stalks off of half of the plant without harming it and save the rest for picking a few leaves here and there during the rest of the season. After you’ve picked strawberries, prune your sage during mid-morning, after the dew dries off but before the afternoon sun wilts the leaves.

WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR HARVEST

Head straight into the kitchen and make a summer shrub that’s ideal for swizzles and fizzes. Don’t forget to save a few berries and sage leaves for garnish!

STRAWBERRY AND SAGE SHRUB
8 parts fresh, ripe strawberries
4 parts white wine vinegar
2 parts caster sugar
2 parts water
1 part fresh sage leaves, crushed
In a medium pot, combine sugar and water. Stir to dissolve and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for a few minutes. Add berries and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add vinegar and bring to a boil for 2 minutes. Remove from heat, add sage, and let it rest for about an hour. Strain mixture through a fine sieve. Bottle and refrigerate for future use.

Shrub has been part of the British drinking vocabulary since the days of Queen Anne (1615-1714). It was a fine way to preserve the fruity goodness of hard-to-find citrus in the centuries before rapid transit. Rum or brandy was mixed with sugar and citrus peel plus juice and allowed to age in bottles for a few months. Before long the recipe repertoire spanned further than citrus to include local fruits, especially soft fruits such as blackcurrant and bramble. Even into Dickens’ day, shrubs were a delightful and affordable treat. Modern mixologists such as Nick Strangeway, Toby Cecchini, and Jamie Boudreau have been resurrecting shrub recipes such as the colonial-era one we’ve detailed here, mixing it with rum, tequila, bourbon, and other spirits in both long and short drink concoctions.

Don’t stop there. Ratafia is another treat that you can cook up with any and all of your soft fruits.

STRAWBERRY RATAFIA
1 kilogram of fresh strawberries
0.5 litre water
2 kilograms caster sugar
3 litres water
1 litre brandy
Combine berries and half litre of water in a large kettle. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool. Strain into another pot and add sugar, dissolved with 3 litres of water. Stir until clear and then add brandy. Bottle.

© 2010 Mixellany Limited

THERE'S MORE TO BORAGE THAN ITS BLOSSOMS

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2011-11-21T07:48:55Z

We do have a rather unhealthy hankering for borage (borago officinalis). Not just the blossoms. For the whole plant! Besides freezing individual, brilliant blue blossoms into ice cubes for your summer Pimm's Cup, you can craft up a Borage Punch. There's one recipe floating about the internet that is called a Charles Dickens Punch that seems to have a bit of a kick to it:

Charles Dickens Punch

120 ml caster sugar
2 tbs lemon zest
a handful of borage flowers
1 litre medium dry cider
500 ml sherry
250 ml brandy

Steep sugar, lemon zest, and borage flowers in 500 ml boiling water for about 15 minutes. Strain into a jug and add cider, sherry, and
brandy. Serve.

What we did find more to the point was a series of "cold cup" recipes that the great author scribbled down for his host's daughter during
his second tour of the US in 1867-1868.

Champagne Cup
"Put into a large jug, 4 good lumps of sugar, and the thin rind of a lemon. Cover up [leave it two stand for ten minutes] and stir... Add a
bottle of champagne, and a good tumbler and a half of sherry. Stir well. Then fill up with ice. [If there be any borage, put in a good
handful, as you would put a nosegay into water.] Stir up well, before serving."

Claret Cup
"4 or 6 lumps of sugar,as before; give the preference to 6. The thin rind of a lemon, as above Cover up and stir, as above. Add a wine
glass of brandy, then a bottle of claret, then a half bottle of soda water. Then stir well and grate in nutmeg. Then add the ice If borage
be used for this cup, half the [champagne cup] quantity will be found quite sufficient. Stir well, before serving."

Thing is, just about anywhere that calls for cucumber can be better made with borage. And if it's a Victorian or pre-Victorian mixed drink
recipe that you're messing with, the cucumber was originally a call for borage.

HOW TO GROW IT

We got seeds from both The Green Chronicle and Seeds of Italy. We propagated ours in February from seeds that we planted in our handy-dandy heat propagator.

When the seedlings are about 5-7 cm tall, they can be sown outdoors in a sunny spot in March or April. During the summer harvest time, save the seed from flowers allowed to remain on the plant and turn brown to be grown next year.

Now you do have to be careful how much borage you grow because they do tend to reproduce like weeds if not kept under control. But if you have space, please let them grow. They are a great source of food for honeybees and makes a good green manure. (Before the borage flowers, you can dug them back into the ground to release nutrients back into the topsoil.)

WHAT ELSE TO DO WITH IT

The leaves may look like candidates for the compost heap. But don't you dare! Make Ricotta and Borage Stuffed Cannelloni...

Ricotta and Borage Stuffed Cannelloni

12 precooked cannelloni pasta, or 12 sheets flat lasagna pasta
800 ml bechamel sauce, diluted with 240 ml whole milk
400 gr fresh ricotta
100 gr fresh borage leaves
3 tb grated Parmigiano Reggiano
1 egg yolk
1 tb butter, cued
grated nutmeg
salt and pepper

Preheat the over to 200° C

Prepare the bechamel sauce and add the extra milk.

In a pot of boiling water, blanch the borage, drain and squeeze; mince. Sieve the ricotta into a bowl. Add the borage, half of the
Parmigiano Teggiano, the egg yolk, salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste.

Fill the cannelloni with the filling, or if you are using the pasta sheets, place some filling on each sheet and roll up to form the
cannelloni. Butter a rectangular baking pan. Pour in a third of the bechamel sauce. Delicately add the stuffed cannelloni and finish with
the remaining besciamella. Sprinkle with the remaining Parmigiano and the butter. Cover with aluminum foil. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

[Photos: © 2010, Jared Brown]

© 2010 Mixellany Limited

NEVER THOUGHT BEECH LEAVES COULD TASTE SO GOOD

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2011-11-21T07:48:55Z

A walk through the woods is a peaceful past time even when you're foraging. Foraging for what you ask? Beech leaves. We have a stand of beautiful beeches by our house. And armed with a book that Jared bought for my birthday we were on the hunt for delight, young, waxy beech leaves.

See back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when money wasn't so plentiful and our consciences were raised to all things natural, self-sufficient, and meant that you were "getting back to the land", you owned books like Diet for a Small Planet, Back to Eden, and Richard Mabey's 1972 tome Food for Free. Never mind the fact we also got into knitting, weaving, beadwork, camping, fishing, foraging, mending clothes instead of buying new ones, making gifts, cooking and eating healthy foods inside of instant and over-processed ones, and generally living a down-sized, simple life. Ah those were the days of recessions gone by. (But wait. Are those the latest trends today? You have to love it when certain lifestyles return every other generation or so.)

One thing that Jared and I both learnt back in those days was that we don't like dandelions. Don't like dandelion wine. Cooked dandelions are the best way to waste perfectly good garlic and lardons. And dandelion roots were the bane of readying our garden for veg and fruit planting. Well, burdock root took the number one slot. Dandelions came second.

The other thing we learnt was that some foods should only be consumed when the need to survive is greater than the desire to appreciate certain tastes and flavours. Caution flags went up when we scanned Mabey's book and found a recipe for Beech Leaf Noyau.

Noyau. Yes, as in crème de noyau. Hard to find outside of France. Actually, hard to find in France. Créme de noyau appears in a slew of recipes in Louis Fouquet's 1896 cocktail book Bariana: Recueil Pratique De Toutes Boissons Americaines Et Anglaises. But Beech Leaf Noyau. This could be just as bad as dandelion wine. But we thought: "Maybe we should do a test batch just to see what it tastes like."

Armed with a few fistfuls of young, waxy beech leaves, we headed into the kitchen.

We packed the leaves into a jam jar and topped it up with Sipsmith Gin. We placed the jar in a cool, dark place for a fortnight and patiently awaited the result.

Gob smacked! After we strained the liquid into a stopped bottle we poured a splash into a tasting glass and sipped. Gob smacked! Complex, herby, and nutty on both the nose and the palate. We didn't bother to add sugar and brandy as Mabey suggested. We've decided to leave the Beech Leaf Noyau as is. Why? Because it may not be a replacement for crème de noyau and all of its apricot kernel nuttiness, but it is a fine alternative to yellow Charteuse. Want the sweetness in your drink? Add gomme syrup to taste.

We tried it in a variation on Harry Johnon's Bijou Cocktail:

BEECH BIJOU COCKTAIL.
1 part Martini & Rossi Italian vermouth
1 part Plymouth gin
3-4 dashes beech leaf noyau
1 dash of Regan's Orange Bitters
Stir ingredients over ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Add a Luxardo cherry and a lemon peel.

If you want to try Mabey's version, add 350 gr of caster sugar dissolved in 250 ml of boiling water to every 500 ml of beech-infused gin. Then add a dash of brandy.

Glad there is a full stand of beeches behind the house. Come next spring, we'll be at the ready to forage for a full basketful of beech leaves.

© 2010 Mixellany Limited

LET'S HEAR IT FOR WILD BLACKBERRIES AND COCKTAIL CHERRIES

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2011-11-21T07:48:55Z

Sorry we haven't been saying much for the past couple of months. Travel is not the greatest thing to do in July when you're seriously growing your winter feasts. Yet nothing can be done when work comes a callin'. Then family arrived from the US for a 3.5 week visit. Back to almost normal.

Now that September is upon us and the first signs of cooler nights and dewier mornings is signaling the onset of autumn, we've been a bit busy gathering and storing our leeks, beetroot, tomatoes, shiso and other tempting delights that will make this winter so much more fun.

Down to business. One of the major harvests has actually come from our hedgerow--BLACKBERRIES---kilos upon kilos of wild blackberries. Every other morning we've been heading up the hill to gather a few more precious sacks of blackberries. Since it would be tough to process so much fruit all at one go and still write for a living, we've had to freeze sacks of them so we can work on them over the free evenings and weekends.

TIP FOR FREEZING BERRIES: Lay them out on a freezer tray or baking pan lined with cling film. Spread the berries out so each one has space to freeze. Once they are freeze, it's easy to load them into airtight containers and store them until you are ready to play. We've done this successfully with our bumper crop of June strawberries, July blackcurrants, and now August/September blackberries.

RIPE FOR THE PICKING & PRESERVING: BLACKBERRIES

Now we know you've all read recipes for creme de mures [blackberry liqueur] that simply tell you to toss the blackberries into spirit and
let them macerate for months. Well, you'll never achieve the rich taste that you really desire until you've tried the recipe we've now used for both blackberries and blackcurrants [creme de cassis]

Here goes:

Combine 750 gr blackcurrants or blackberries and 750 ml good Bordeaux wine in a glass bowl. (We used a St Emilion this time.) Steep for 2 days. Puree the mixture in a blender and strain through a jelly bag into a large pot. Add 200 gr caster sugar for every 250 ml of liquid. Have patience. It takes time for the thick mixture to ooze through the muslin. Heat gently in a saucepan until the sugar is dissolved and then lower heat further until the liquid reduces slightly. Stir occasionally. Cool and then add 1 part Jerez-style brandy to 3 parts liquid. Bottle in sterile stopper bottles and age for at least 1 month.

A tip we picked up from River Cottage's High Fearnley-Whittingstall. Turn your sealed stopper bottles upside down while they are still hot. It helps to seal the contents even better.

LUSCIOUS CHERRIES

The same goes for making cocktail cherries. Don't bother with the recipes that add chemicals to make your cocktail cherries more like marbles than succulent garnishes. We just put up a dozen jars of cocktail cherries that will age just in time for winter Manhattans. We got ours from the local farmers market because our cherry tree doesn't have a mate. (Yes, every boy cherry tree needs a neighbouring girl cherry tree if you want to have a tree full of cherries.)

Ready?

Wash and pit 1 kilo Morello or Griot cherries. In a pot, combine 200 gr caster sugar, 250 ml water, 4 tsp lemon juice, 1 cinnamon stick, 2 tsp vanilla extract, and a healthy pinch of grated nutmeg. Bring to a boil and then lower heat to medium. Add cherries and simmer for 7 minutes. Remove from heat and add 500 ml Luxardo maraschino liqueur. Cool. Place cherries in Kilner jars and pour liquid near to the top. Pour a thin layer of gin or vodka on top, seal. We put our sealed jars in a hot water bath for about 10 minutes to ensure a secure seal.

OXO makes a great olive pitter with a protective shield that is perfect for pitting cherries.

Back to processing the harvest. Our neighbours foraged up a few kilos of bullace plums. And they want a batch of creme de bullace. The question is: What wine or spirit should we use to macerate these little wild plums before we put them through their cooking paces? Stay tuned.

© 2010 Mixellany Limited

THE RUNNING OF THE BULLACES

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2011-11-21T07:48:55Z

A neighbour of ours knocked at the door the other day bearing a pleasant surprise—5 sacks of frozen bullaces that she had foraged! What a lovely sight it was. But because bullaces are very small and have pits that cling to the meat like a moray on a white shark, we soon realised that we couldn't split the thawed bullaces and remove the pits as easy as if they had been fresh. So much for making bullace chutney with the remaining pulp.

But that didn't deter us.

More was the challenge of not following recipes like the one Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall demonstrated on one of his River Cottage programmes. We weren't about to wait 6 months let alone 2 years for plum and vodka to marry in a jar. (We usually scan his books and episodes for tips and tricks. They make a great starting point for developing cordials, elderflower champagne, and other delights. You should get a copy and keep it by your bedside as inspirational reading. We do.)

With the success of our creme de mures and creme de cassis projects last week, we thought: "Why not try a similar approach to making bullace liqueur?"

Here goes:

BULLACE LIQUEUR

750 gr fresh bullaces, split and pitted (or frozen and kept whole)
1 tsp ground allspice
200 gr caster sugar
750 ml British dry white wine (try a Sharpham Barrel or Three Choirs dry white wine)
500 ml Sipsmith Gin

Bring to a boil the plums, allspice, sugar, and wine in a large saucepan. Remove from the hear and add the gin. Strain through a jelly bag, gently pressing any whole fruit against the cloth.

Pour into airtight containers and rest for 24 hours to allow the sediment to settle. Test the mixture for its pectin level and sweetness. (Bullaces have a very high pectin content and acidity.) Reheat the mixture and adjust with additional sugar and gin if necessary.

Bottle in sterile stopper bottles and age for at least a month.

So what the heck is a bullace, you may ask. It's a type of wild plum that grows along hedgerows throughout Britain: a cross between a Blackthorn and a cherry plum. Their skin colour ranges from yellow to wine red to deep purple and the flesh is pale green. Unlike other plums, these wild plums are very acidic and require plenty of additional sugar to consume.

There are hedgerows of them found from the Cotswolds to northern Wales. If you can't find them on your foraging walks, you can buy its cultivated, sweeter cousin--damson plums.

If you're luckily enough to get fresh bullaces, then by all means, take the time to split them open and pit them so you can make luscious chutney or preserves with the remaining flesh.

BULLACE CHUTNEY

700 gr bullace plums, pitted
200 gr brown sugar
200 gr caster sugar
200 ml cider vinegar
150 gr sultanas
2 tsp salt
50 gr chopped onion
1 garlic clove, minced
2 tsp mustard seeds
3 tbs chopped ginger
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Combine the sugars and vinegar in a large saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring util the sugars dissolve. Add remaining ingredients, mix well and bring to a boil. Reduce to a gentle simmer and cook for about 45 minutes. Stir frequently as the mixture thickens. Pour into sterilized jars, seal, and process in a hot water bath for about 10 minutes.

We wonder what else is ready out in the hedgerow? Have to wait until tomorrow. the clouds are showing signs of rain. Rats!

© 2010 Mixellany Limited

SUCH A BUNCH OF SHISO

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2011-11-21T07:48:55Z

How did Jared ever convince me to grow red shiso (aka: perilla) last spring? I wasn't planning to hand make any pickled ume plums. Jared is the Japanese cuisine master in this house, not me. And anything that takes 30 days to germinate from seed and looks like stinging nettle is not high on my list of growing priorities. But love does lead one to do things that make little sense, at first.

We germinated both green and purple shiso in late May, transplanting them when we thought it would be too late for them to grow happy and healthy. OK. I was wrong. By early July green and purple were having a race to grow taller.

By late August I was looking up recipes for what turned out to be a bumper crop of the stuff. Over a kilo of purple shiso! (Still leaving the green shiso out there until this weekend. It's almost a metre tall.)

Let's see: the flavour is reminiscent of creamy beet, cumin, ginger, and cinnamon. What confounded me was why did I have to wash the leaves, drain them, sprinkle them with salt, rub them lightly, wash them and drain them again? That's what all the Japanese experts told me had to be done with them. We did it.

Shiso syrup seemed the best way to go. You can freeze it for future use. After the syrup recipe, I'll explain why.

RED SHISO SYRUP

1 kilo red shiso leaves, washed, drained, salted, washed and drained again
750 gr caster sugar
250 ml runny honey
1 tb fresh lemon juice
1800 ml water

Heat water to a boil in a large saucepan.Add the leaves and simmer for 2-3 minutes. Remove the leaves and add sugar, honey, and juice. Strain through a jelly bag to remove any sediment. Bottle in sterile stopper bottles. The syrup will keep for 2-3 days in the fridge and up to a year in the freezer.

A few days later, Jared was conducting a Sipsmith Gin and caviar tasting dinner at Hix @ Selfridge's. He brought a bottle of my new creation with us along with a few carefully snipped green shiso leaves. A 3 parts gin to 1 part red shiso syrup cocktail garnished with a green shiso leaf was the result. This lovely, spicy concoction was served against a duck egg and caviar treat.

Now which window sill should I use to propagate another crop of red shiso for next year?

© 2010 Mixellany Limited

Gearing up and getting it right

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2011-11-21T07:48:16Z

What's the most important element in cooking? Timing. (Well, at least that's one of the important elements.) Same holds true for growing and foraging for ingredients to go into mixed drinks and our dining table. There's always a certain level of impatience that occurs when the weather threatens to switch into spring mode. It did a few times the past two weeks. But then we'd wake up to a thick coating of morning frost.

Still. There are things we have managed to put in place and new economies to set into motion that we didn't have time to research last year when we started our project.

The most important new addition to our garden are the raised beds. Jard managed to find a company that delivers packs of garden boards with a steel reinforcement band on one end. Each 8-foot by 5-foot bed cost £36 including delivery. Usually beds of this size cost around £70 without delivery and don't include corner reinforcement.

Why are we obsessing on raised beds this year? Last spring, we discovered that the soil in that particular portion of our garden was not only clay-ridden, but loaded with ash. The previous people had done more than one burn on the spot and not a clean burn at that. Plastic bits, glass bits, and the like gave us the impression the soil was not going to be great for edibles.

So raised beds set in place, a "cover" of flat shipping cardboard (we had tons left over from a shipment of art canvas that we stored in the garage for an occasion like this), and a load of fresh organic topsoil delivered in a metre-square bulk bag plus the same amount of spent mushroom compost from a local supplier got us set up in a single afternoon. The supplier even has a calculator on its site so we didn't have to pray that we ordered enough compost and soil. And the overall cost was yonks cheaper than buying bag after bag of commercially packaged compost with chemical additives. It's was about half the price even with the delivery charge. (We still have to add a couple more nails to each corner and apply the copper snail tape to the edges. Maybe even a coat of non-toxic stain to seal the exteriors.)

We were so busy during the winter that we didn't have time to do essential tool cleaning after the late autumn harvest and winter tidy. Hey! A lot of the energy that would have gone into cleaning equipment went into shoveling 20 inches of snow out of the drive that leads to the main road. The little red sledges we bought for playing on the hills out back worked better than snow shovels.

Tool cleaning and conditioning only took an afternoon. Scrub off the old dirt and muck off the metal AND the wooden handles with a sturdy scrub brush and plenty of warm water. Rinse thoroughly. Scrub off any rust with steel wool. Rinse thoroughly. Let dry. Then apply a coat of boiled linseed oil to the handles with a soft cloth. Let dry. Apply one more coat to fill in any hairline cracks that could become splits in the handle. Let dry.

Wasn't that easy? It also gave us a great excuse to take breaks to admire all of the flower bulbs that we had planted during early winter now that they've woken up from hibernation and note the progress of others that will bloom in April and May.

There's one other thing we accomplished while we were snow bound. We got online and renewed our subscription to growveg.com. This site is amazing! We drafted our first and second plans for the garden, including how many plants to propagate and where to place them. The site also has growing guides and the option to add more plant types. The blogs from both US and UK growers are helpful, too. You can print out your plan, run out to the garden, and visualise everything before you start digging.

Next time, we'll talk about propagating and seed varietals. But I have to get out in the garden to see what's up with Kitten.

Let us know what you are doing to rev up for a year of gardening!

Cheers
Anistatia

Musing on the Classics: The Mojito

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2010-01-06T11:17:00Z

Cuban rum, mint, lime, ice, soda. The Mojito is such a simple drink. It was born in Cuba, and it still one of the most popular drinks in Cuba. In fact, it is the national cocktail of Cuba. However, it is nearly impossible to find a Mojito made in the classic Cuban style outside of Cuba.

Is it the high cost of ice that prompted Cuban bartenders to add only a few cubes to each drink? British pub landlords are notorious for using only three or four small cubes in their gin and tonics for just this reason. Yet, if you order a Mojito in some of London’s best bars today, the bartender will pack a tall glass with crushed ice.

But the ice is not the primary difference of Cuban Mojitos. There are dozens of varieties of mint. The dominant type for Cuban Mojitos is a variety known locally as hierba buena: a red-stemmed mint with the scientific name mentha suaveolens, which is commonly known as apple mint, woolly mint, or Cuban mint. More vegetal than peppermint or spearmint in flavour, Cuban mint has a refreshing less pungent taste and aroma profile.

Another ingredient that seems to be limited to Cuba is Angostura bitters floated on top of the drink. Bitters were born in tropical heat, to keep people healthy in tropical heat. Perhaps the flavour is only appropriate when the heat and humidity are strong enough to drive everyone to seek shade and rum drinks.

The Mojito is a truly Cuban drink, mingling African and European cultures into a spellbinding, invigorating concoction. In West Africa, a mojo is a cloth bag filled with magic spices and articles crafted to cast a spell. The word “mojito” is the diminutive of this loan-word and means “little spell.” Mojitos have cast a spell on the world for centuries in one liquid form or another. There are a few other theories about the origin of the drinks name. One holds that the name comes from a Cuban seasoning mix called mojo. However, this sauce originated in the Canary Islands and was traditionally made in Cuba with sour oranges, not limes. Another theory is that the name is a contraction of a diminuation of the word mojado meaning “wet”, which would have become mojadito, and then mojito. This is also rather unlikely, though it is broadly accepted.

The Mojito is the direct descendant of a libation favoured by pirates and privateers, especially one in particular. Legend has it that one of the earliest concoctions in cocktail history was invented in honor of a sixteenth-century British privateer, known best for his exploits along the Spanish Main. A hero in the eyes of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Drake was the scourge of the Spanish Crown, who dubbed him “El Draque” [the Dragon]. During the 1570s and 1580s, Drake and his crew, which included French sailors and cimarrones (sometimes also known as Maroons, African slaves who escaped from sugar plantations) took up privateering as a profession. This was a “legitimized” form of piracy sanctioned by the Queen herself. From the Caribbean and the South American coast up to western Canada, Drake plundered Spanish galleons laden with Peruvian gold and claimed portions of the North American coastline in the name of Britain.

Some stories claim that pirate Richard Drake invented a drink, which he named after his boss El Draque. The basic concoction included readily available ingredients from a pirate’s point of view: sugar, key limes (Citrus aurantifolia, a highly acid, highly aromatic Caribbean variety), aguardiente de caña and hierba buena.

In his landmark history of Cuban rum, author Fernando Campoamor detailed that El Draque was given this potion as a medicinal to settle his stomach, affected by the tropical climate and diet. Even after El Draque’s death in 1596, Drakes or Draquecitos were taken as a refreshing break to the day. Cuban author Rámon de Palma wrote in his 1838 story El Cólera en Habana: “I take every day at eleven o’clock a Draquecito and it does me perfectly.”

When did the Draquecito evolve into the Mojito? According to author Ciro Bianchi Ross and Cuban historian Miguel Bonera, the Mojito Batido first appeared in print around 1910 and was served at La Concha in Havana. By that time, commercial ice had been imported and then produced in the city for nearly a hundred years. Havana’s cantineros relished serving icy cold drinks. Muddling the fragrant mint, adding crystal clear ice and topping it with soda water transformed the El Draque into a refreshment deserving a name of special merit.

Many of Havana’s finest hotels and bars embraced the Mojito in the first decades of the twentieth century. But it was the hands of Angel Martinez at La Bodeguita del Medio and celebrity promotion by novelist Ernest Hemingway shaped the drink into an international legend.

It is important to remember that the Mojito is an aromatized Rum Collins or Rickey. Many bartenders try to rusticate the recipe by muddling lime in the drink rather than using fresh lime juice or try to substitute brown sugar for white. These create interesting drinks but not Mojitos. The best Cuban versions always use key lime juice and white castor sugar. The use of castor sugar is important as it acts as an abrasive on the mint releasing its fragrant oils without it being necessary to totally pulverize it as it so often the case. Also cracked rock ice is most appropriate not crushed ice, the dilution comes from the addition of soda. Crushed ice merely pulverizes the mint creating a green soup.

Mojito
50ml Havana Club Añejo 3 Años
25ml Fresh squeezed key lime juice
3 teaspoons Castor sugar
6-8 Cuban mint leaves and two complete stems of Cuban mint

Method
First add the mint leaves and the sugar to a highball glass. Then add the fresh lime juice and stir to dissolve and release the mint aromas. Then add the rum. At this point if possible leave the drink to infuse for a few minutes, perhaps while you make other drinks. Finally fill the glass with cracked rock ice and a splash of soda. Gently use a barspoon to mix the ingredients. Garnish with 2 stems of freshly cut mint, thus allowing the
mints juice to run into the drink. Slap the mint to release its fragrance and serve with straws cut to the height of the garnish.

[This article was originally published in German in 2009 in Mixology Magazine.]

Musing on the Classics: The Old-Fashioned

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2010-01-06T11:15:00Z

Cocktail. A horse of mixed breeding functioning in the role of the thoroughbred. According to a 1769 British definition, cocktailing was used to mark these mixed horses.

The Old Fashioned Cocktail was not always called the Old Fashioned. When it was born it was simply the Cocktail: A word that has completely lost its original meaning as applied to beverages. It has become a generic term to cover just about any mixed drink, especially those served in a cocktail glass. But the term “cocktail” never referred to a single drink. Even as it was defined in The Balance & Columbian Repository (Hudson, NY) in 1806, it was a family of libations, defined as spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters. “Spirits of any kind” left the door open for Gin Cocktails, Whiskey Cocktails, Brandy Cocktails, even Vermouth Cocktails.

You could say it was this flexibility that made the Cocktail so universally popular. Shipping still depended upon wind and wooden boats, on wagons and cobbled streets, on people walking forested paths. So people mostly drank whatever was produced nearby. The most likely cocktail ingredient to be imported, because of its exotic ingredients and easy portability, was bitters. Yet, even this ingredient could be produced locally. The great flexibility of that first recipe was quickly proven as many variations were quickly invented in America, Europe, and the Caribbean.

The earliest European definition of the drink appeared in James Edward Alexander’s 1833 book Transatlantic Sketches: “For the receipt-book let the following be copied:—First, Cocktail is composed of water, with the addition of rum, gin, or brandy, as one chooses—a third of the spirit to two-thirds of the water; add bitters and enrich with sugar and nutmeg: in sling, the bitters are omitted.”

Although Antoine Amedée Peychaud has long been discounted as inventor of the Cocktail (as he was born around the same time as the drink), there can be no question that it caught on quickly in his adopted city of New Orleans:

“Ah! I see; not acquainted with the mixture! Boy, bring up four glasses of brandy-cocktail immediately!”
The slave returned with four partially-filled tumblers upon a waiter, a spoon in each.
“Ah, this is it!” exclaimed the narrator, his eyes glistening with animation: “help yourselves, gentlemen; touch*—very fine. Now the difference between a brandy cocktail and a brandy toddy is this: a toddy is made by adding together a little water, a little sugar, and a great deal of brandy—mix well and drink. A Brandy cocktail is composed of the same ingredients, with the addition of a shade of Stoughton’s bitters; so that the bitters draw the demarcation. Boy, bring up four brandy toddies; you shall taste the difference.”
I declined the favor of a second glass.
“You are new to the city, sir? We all drink; must do it. Nothing like keeping up a heat within, to counteract the heat without…”

[* NOTE: A late distinguished representative in the national councils from the state of Mississippi nearly lost his life in complying with this Southern custom; his glass broke in his hand, and he swallowed one of the fragments. -- New Orleans as I Found It by Edward Henry Durell, mayor of New Orleans, 1845]

By 1842, even Charles Dickens had noted this drink in his American Notes for General Circulation with a footnote to the word cocktail that read: “Cocktail—spirits, bitters, sugar, etc.”

Another Londoner had more to say about it. William Terrington’s 1869 book Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks. Cups, Punches, Smashes, Slings, Daisies, and many other drinks would eventually be grouped under the heading of “Cocktails”, but this had not yet occurred. At the time, Terrington said, "Cocktails are compounds very much used by 'early birds' to fortify the inner man, and by those like their consolations hot and strong. 'Cocktail' is not so ancient an institution as Juleps, &c., but, with its next of kin, 'Crusta', promises to maintain its ground."

So many other drinks had emerged by this time that the original was a bit out of date. It had reached the status that would immortalize it. It was old fashioned.

Albert Stevens Crockett wrote in his 1931 book Old Waldorf Bar Days, that the Old Fashioned was invented (or presumably at least named) in the 1880s at the Pendennis Club in Louisville, Kentucky. The great southern writer Irvin S. Cobb said the same in his 1934 recipe book. Granted, there were a few uses of the name prior to the opening of the Pendennis Club, but it is still likely that it was popularized there. The most famous Pendennis Club bartender, Tom Bullock, included the following recipe in his 1917 book, The Ideal Bartender:

OLD FASHION [sic] COCKTAIL
Use a toddy glass.
1 lump of Ice.
1 lump of sugar and dissolve in Water.
1-1/2 jiggers of Bourbon Whiskey.
Twist piece of Lemon Skin over the drink and drop it in. Stir well and serve.

Sadly, the drink was over-garnished during the mid-twentieth century. The muddling of a cherry and an orange slice with the sugar seemed to be the final blow for the original Cocktail. Then, in the 1980s in London, bartender Dick Bradsell created a flamboyant serving method for the Old Fashioned, which he based on a recipe found in David Embury’s Fine Art of Mixing Drinks.

He begins with gum syrup and whiskey, plus an ice cube or two. He stirs. He adds a bit more whiskey. He stirs fervently. He adds more whiskey. He stirs yet again to reach the desired dilution. His Old Fashioned has flavour. It has drama. It has no cherry.

[This article was originally published in German in 2009 in Mixology Magazine.]

Musing on the Classics: The Daiquiri

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2010-01-06T11:08:00Z

The Daiquirí has very close associations with Cuba’s fight for independence, from its birth through its evolution into the world’s most beloved Cuban cocktail. The first cry for freedom, in 1868, was sounded at Yara, near Santiago de Cuba and echoed through the nearby mining village of Daiquirí.

In their bid for autonomy, the Mambises fortified themselves with the Daiquirí’s parent, Canchánchara. It was simple blend of rum, lime juice, and “honey” (a term frequently used in Cuba to describe molasses). The drink was made in batches and poured into bottles. Strapped to their saddles, the bottled Canchánchara was not only a welcomed thirst-quencher for the freedom fighters during the long, arduous campaigns against the Spanish colonial army. It was also an effective painkiller for the wounded.

But even this was not the original. A 1754 French-Spanish dictionary defines "Ponche" or "Ponche a Bebida Inglesa" as the combination of aguardiente de caña (rum), lime, sugar, and water. Introduced to western Europe by English sailors who encountered it in India with the addition of tea, Punch was esteemed ancestor that first arrived, in the 1660s, when the British fleet captured Santiago de Cuba.

Canchánchara was certainly present during 1898 Spanish-American War when the town of Daiquirí was the focal point of an offensive that saw Spanish troops attacked from the land by General Calixto García’s Cuban Liberation Army and from the sea by Admiral William T Sampson’s American naval forces led by General William Shafter, who landed 17,000 troops on the shipping docks owned by the Spanish-American Iron Company on Daiquirí Bay.

Some legends say that when the 300-pound, 63-year-old Shafter first tasted the Canchánchara, he declared that, “the only missing ingredient is ice.”

It is just prior to this epic moment, in 1896, that many authorities believe that the Daiquirí was "born". New York mining engineer Jennings S. Cox, Jr. was the general manager of the Spanish-American Iron Company and a member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers. So was colleague F.D. Pagliuchi, who besides being a war correspondent for Harper's Monthly was actively involved in the Cuban liberation movement.

At the end of one day, Pagliuchi suggested it was cocktail time. Cox was out of gin and vermouth, the ingredients for a Martini. So Cox shook up rum, lime and sugar, possibly inspired by the locals’ consumption of Canchánchara.

Upon tasting it, Pagliuchi inquired, “What is this cocktail called?”

“It doesn’t have a name, so it must be a Rum Sour,” Cox replied.

“That’s no name for such a fine, exquisite cocktail! We’ll call it a Daiquirí!” Pagliuchi exclaimed.

There is also a story that a few nights later, Pagliuchi and Cox visited the American Club in Santiago de Cuba and ordered a Daiquirí, knowing the bartender would not know the drink by that name. Thus, when they explained it to him, the barman became the first to make the drink called by that name in a bar. Unfortunately, the bartender’s name was not recorded. (In The Gentleman’s Companion, Charles H. Baker added a friend of his to this cast of characters: Harry E. Stout, whom he said was another mining engineer based with Cox and present for the drink's creation.)

After independence was won, the Daiquirí became a fashionable drink for the engineers who frequented the Venus Hotel in Santiago de Cuba just to partake in this refreshment. It then made an appearance in Havana at the Plaza Hotel, introduced by its famed bartender Emilio González, who was more familiarly known as Maragato.

But it was in the hands of Constantino Ribalaigua Vert, who took over La Florida in 1918, that the Daiquirí’s more familiar children were born and thrived. Enthused by this simple sour concoction, Constante tested six versions.

That's right. Six versions.

To 60 ml of Cuban rum, the Daiquirí No. 1 used one teaspoon of sugar to 12.5 ml of fresh lime juice. Daiquirí No. 2 (Version A) added 10 ml of fresh orange juice and 5 ml of curaçao to the base recipe. Daiquirí No. 2 (Version B for B Obon) mixed 20 ml of fresh Seville orange juice and 10 ml of curaçao with 2 teaspoons of sugar. Daiquirí No. 3 combined 10 ml of lime juice, 5 ml of grapefruit juice, and 5 ml of marashcino with 1 teaspoon of sugar. Daiquirí No. 5 was a rosy version of No. 4 thanks to the addition of 5 ml of grenadine.

But it was Constante' s frappéed Daiquirí No. 4 that became best known as the Floridita Daiquirí. Before the late 1930s, United Press journalist Jack Cuddy noted in the 1937 book Cocktails: Bar la Florida that Constante blended his concoction with ice in an electric mixer ("one of those malted milk stirrers in American Drug stores"). That was before he ordered a Flak Mak ice-crushing machine from the United States. And when the Waring blender was launched, in 1938, El Floridita was one of the first establishments to adopt its use.

It was around this time that the Daiquirí's famed offspring, the Hemingway Special was also born.

Returning from the horrors of the Spanish Civil War in 1938, Ernest Hemingway settled into the Hotel Ambos Mundos and began to write his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story goes that Hemingway took a break one day and stopped into El Floridita at the other end of the street near Parque Central, where he ordered a Daiquirí from Constante.

In spite of the opinions of his doctor friends, Hemingway was convinced that he had diabetes. Consequently, he excluded all sugar from his diet, though he was never concerned about his alcohol consumption. Constante offered him a sugar-free Daiquirí with a double dose of Cuban rum. This Daiquirí Del Salvaje, soon became the Daiquirí a la Papa, then Daiquirí Como Papa.

Enamored with his new discovery, Hemingway returned every day at 11 am. He always sat on the same bar stool and downed a couple of his special Daiquirís. Sometimes he would return at 5 pm to consume a dozen more.

A few years later, Floridita cantinero Antonio Meilan modified the recipe using 15 ml of grapefruit juice, 5 ml of lime juice, 10 ml of maraschino, and no sugar with 120 ml of Cuban rum, immortalizing it under the appellation “Hemingway Special” or “Papa Doble”.

After Hemingway moved out of the hotel and into his home La Finca Vigía, he continued his frequent visits. Floridita’s Daiquirís became such a source of inspiration for him that sometimes he brought in a thermos bottle to have it carefully filled with his favorite refreshment. Hemingway called this his viaticum [Latin for “provisions for a journey”], his trago del camino [gulp for the road], which helped him prolong the happy reverie begun in the Floridita during the ride back to home.

As tasting-tempting as the potent Hemingway Special is, the classic Flordita Daiquirí still wins hands down. And although key limes are hard to find outside of the Caribbean and the Americas, Nick Strangeway of Hix in London has determined the optimal balance, using conventional limes and authentic Cuban rum:

Ingredients
60ml Havana Club Añejo 3 Años
12.5ml Fresh squeezed lime juice
5ml Maraschino liqueur
1 teaspoon Granulated sugar

Method
Shake the ingredients on a combination of crushed and rock ice and strain into a pre-chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a wedge of lime and a cocktail cherry. If blending, double the amount of sugar and maraschino before blending with approximately 10oz of crushed ice.

[This article was originally published in German in 2009 in Mixology Magazine.]

Musing on the Classics: The Manhattan

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2010-01-06T10:22:00Z

Where do you find the soul of the Manhattan? Is it in the American whiskey that is mandatory in this classic? Is it the healthy dash of bitters without which the drink is lost in the hands of a feeble bartender? Is it the oft-mistreated vermouth that adds unfathomable depths of complexity? There can be little doubt that these ingredients met in nineteenth-century New York. Maybe the events that led up to the final meeting of this symbiotic trio in a glass will offer some answers.

Vermouth had a history long before the Italians and French dominated the market, starting as Greek alchemist Hippocrates' simple cure for intestinal worms as well as digestive and flatulence disorders. By the Renaissance, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria all claimed venerable vermut traditions, crafted in monasteries and appreciated by royalty. The great court of Wallenstein—now the Czech Republic—was impressed with a local 1630 vintage and bought up countless barrels. Britain's Queen Elizabeth I was said to take vermouth regularly before meals.

The masses embraced vermouth when it was popularized in café society. Rich, delectable modern sweet vermouth, invented in 1786 by Italian Antonio Carpano and floral, herbaceous dry vermouth,developed in 1813 by Frenchman Joseph Noilly began a tsunami of commercially-produced versions. Improved shipping methods offered Noilly the opportunity to export its vermouth, in 1844, along with its liqueurs and absinthe to New York. Cheaper transatlantic travel meant that Carpano, G&LCora, and the Dettone Brothers could display their Torino vermouths at the 1853New York Exhibition. It also meant that more German émigrés could introduce their homeland's tradition of vermouth consumption as bartenders in their new American home.

More than just about any other ethnicity,Germans dominated American bar operations during the late 1800s. Think of it.New York barmen Willie Schmidt and George Kappeler were not the only Germans who plied their craft in the city's famous watering holes. Between 1860 and1900, the number of bartenders and saloon owners west of the Mississippi rose from under 4,000 to nearly 50,000. Forty percent were recent immigrants, and twenty-five percent of those were of German descent. Thirty percent of saloon proprietors in Colorado at that time were German and no doubt knew the proper use of a doppelfassbecher as well as the joys of quaffing vermut. And if they didn’t, according to the San Antonio Express in 1886, there were a number of bartending manuals printed in English and German for them.

Aromatic bitters made landfall in the US long before vermouth: in fact, before the thirteen colonies became a nation.Richard Stoughton's aromatic bitters became, in 1712, the second compound medicine in the world to receive a patent. In less than two decades, his formula was being exported to the North American colonies. The next piece of the Manhattan equation, however, positioned itself when Dr Johann Gottlieb Benjamin Siegert's Amargo Aromatico bitters arrived, in 1876, from Angostura,Venezuela.

American whiskey had been produced inMassachusetts and Pennsylvania during colonial times. But the ryes and bourbonsthat the United States became famous for did not emerge until the 1790s, whenScots-Irish emigrants headed to the "wild west" of Kentucky andTennessee practice their distilling tradition, exporting their wares from coast to coast. Preserved cherries were another traditional colonial favourite, foundin cherry bounce, a cordial made by steeping cherries in rum and brown sugar for six months.

All of these Manhattan ingredients converged on the island with the same name in the late 1800s. But where andwhen?

It is possible, as William Mulhall said in his 1923 Valentine’s Manual that “The Manhattan cocktail was invented by a man named Black who kept a place ten doors below Houston on Broadway in the sixties…” Approximately ten doors below Houston Street at that time was the Metropolitan Hotel, built on the site of a popular watering hole called Niblo’s Garden, a grand Broadway theater which was immortalized by poet Walt Whitman.The site was also remembered as the 1860 home of the Japanese Embassy, in whose honour Jerry Thomas created the Japanese Cocktail. The Professor’s bar at the time was also nearby.

What were these bars like? They were true spectacles: shrines to drink and art. To attract customers, the better places lined their walls with art that now hangs in some of the world's top museums. Bouguereau's Nymphs and Satyrs once hung among many other paintings in the Hoffman House. Its proprietor Edward Stokes paid $10,010 for it at the time, or roughly $250,000 in today's currency: a fraction of the painting's current value. But we digress.

What is really more important: where a drink was first mixed, or where it secured its place in history? The Manhattan Club opened in 1865. The club's archives remember that the drink was invented there. However, it was certain that another drink born there was the one destined for immortality: the Sam Ward (yellow chartreuse over crushed ice in a cocktail glass, rimmed with a long thin lemon twist).

What about the whole Samuel Tilden story?There are too many questionable elements for this tale—that young socialite Jennie Jerome created the drink to salute him—to be true. On the evening of 29December 1874, a party was held at the club for Samuel Tilden and William Wickham, then governor of New York State and mayor of New York City,respectively, as well as Democrats' great hopefuls. Tilden was a longtime member.

The Club's food and drink was said to rise above the finest New York restaurant of its time, Delmonico's: save for the ice cream, which they bought directly from Delmonico's. The wine cellar was renowned. So, it would be likely that their bar was of the same caliber.

The night of the Tilden event, one Republican reporter raved about the food and drink. Although his exact words are lost, it is very possible he mentioned the Manhattan Cocktail. However,neither he nor anyone else who recorded the evening's events mentioned any member of the Jerome family, or for that matter any woman let along JennyJerome Churchill, attending the event.

If it was born there, the Manhattan would have been created by the club's bartender. Drinks created by members were normally acknowledged such as the Manhattan a la Gilbert: whiskey, French vermouth, and Amer Picon). It could have made the list as early as 1865 whent he club opened, or any time prior to 1874.

However, if you recall the date of Angostura Bitters’ arrival in New York, it would be impossible for a Mahtattan made with Siegert’s bitters to have been created until later. The club's recipe? Whiskey, vermouth, orange bitters. No garnish is listed. It is interesting to note that at the turn of the century, there was a panic amongst California olive and cherry growers that garnishes were a fading fashion in NewYork. Bartenders were no longer automatically garnishing drinks, unless acustomer asked. And the fruit growers searched for ways to reverse the trend.

So what is the perfect recipe for this trueAmerican melting-pot potable? The best Manhattan we’ve had was made by Jake Burger at Portobello Star in London. Here it is:

50ml Sazerac Rye

15ml Carpano Antica

10ml Noily Prat vermouth

2 drops Angostura bitters

1 drop vintage Abbots bitters

Long stir, strain into a chilled coupette, garnish with a Griottines cherry.

The most memorable Manhattan in Manhattan was made for us by Michael Waterhouse, who has a unique style. He places lemon,lime and orange twists in a chilled cocktail glass, douses them with Angostura bitters and works them around the inside of the glass with a bar spoon. He then stirs 2 ounces of Maker’s Mark with one ounce of Carpano Antica vermouth.Before straining the mix into the glass he spills out the twists and excess bitters. Then he garnishes with three Luxardo cherries perched on the rim of the glass.

[This article originally appeared in German in 2009 in Mixology Magazine.]

Musing on the Classics: The Martini

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2010-01-06T10:18:00Z

Without question, the undisputed king of cocktails is the Martini. Clean, clear, and simple, the Martini has a life of its own. The story of its birth and its name, however, are probably the most convoluted of all drink origins.

Over a decade ago, we tried to pin down not only the Martini's creator but the truth of the drink's name. What we ended up with, at first, was a laundry list of contenders as well as competing tales of the provenance of its name.

One assertion is that the Silver Bullet was born in 1884 at the Turf Club in New York. The signature drink at this esteemed gentlemen's club has much in common with a Martinez: orange bitters, maraschino, absinthe,French vermouth, and Plymouth Gin.

The Martinez, the Martini's predecessor, is said by some to have been invented by Julio Richelieu in the 1870s, inspired by a prospector making his way from the Sierra Nevada gold deposits to San Francisco via the town of Martinez. While the good citizens of Martinez erected a plaque commemorating the Martini's birth on the northeast corner of Alhambra Avenue and Masonic Street, there is no corroborative evidence to support this claim. Jerry "The Professor" Thomas, the P.T. Barnum of mixology, proclaimed the Martinez was his invention, created when he was working in San Francisco. But wasn't the Martinez nothing more than a fancy name for a Gin Cocktail?

We were not convinced that the Martinez was the Martini's parent. It was more likely a sibling. The bitters, maraschino, French Vermouth, gomme syrup, and Old Tom Gin, a style of spirit distilled with macerated sweet spices are very close to the Gin Cocktail documented by William Terrington in his 1869 Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks, which used ginger syrup instead of gomme syrup. We think the Gin Cocktail was the Martini's mother. How could we say that?

Harry Johnson's 1882 Martini Cocktail (mislabeled Martine Cocktail on the accompanying illustration) follows the basic Gin Cocktail equation. So does his Marguerite Cocktail, which substitutes anisette for curacao.In this same book, however, the Martini also experiences a transformation.

Called the Bradford a la Martini, the drink called for Old Tom Gin, a few dashes of orange bitters, and vermouth. Not a speck of liqueur is to be found. Instead, the recipe calls for the peel of one lemon to be placedi n the mixing glass. Similarly, in George J Kappeler's 1895 Modern American Drinks, the Martini calls for orange bitters, lemon peel, and equal parts Old Tom Gin and Italian vermouth.

By the late 1800s, imbibers and mixologists alike seemed to find the Martini's real bones. Dashes of additional sweetness were unnecessary to achieve balance. Gin, vermouth, and citrus notes from the orange bitters and lemon peel seem to ring out with a clear voice. Orders became common for a Martini made with Italian vermouth, a Dry Martini made with French vermouth. Martini. Not Martinez.

But why call it a Martini or a Bradford a la Martini? Dwell on some historical facts. Although Noilly Fils & Cie exported French vermouth to New York as early as 1844, before the company changed its name to Noilly-Prat, no one thought to call the blending of gin and Noilly vermouth. However, the exportation of Martini vermouth by the Martini, Sola & Cia to New York beginning in 1867 seems to coincide with the emergence of the Martini. The company went nose-to-nose withNoilly-Prat to gain the American market, in 1900, when it introduced its Extra Dry Vermouth. It is very likely the Martini cocktail took its name from the brand of vermouth. This is not as romantic a story as the cocktail being born in Martinez (or created by Jerry Thomas, or being named after the Martini rifle, or created by Martini di Arma di Taggia at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York, or at the Savoy hotel in London to name a few of the contenders). However, it seems the most plausible of the potential origins of the Martini cocktail's name.

Demand for Dry Martinis soared as the world entered the Great War, while the Martini became known as a Gin and It or Gin and French in Great Britain. Who knows if it was a depressed economy, unavailability of ingredients, or bartenders streamlining their formulas that dropped the orange bitters from many cocktail recipe books between the wars. But the saddest evolution in the Martini's life was when the vermouth,French or Italian, began to dry up.

Post-war mixologists (both the first and second world wars) did not have the luxury of a proper bar education like their predecessors. Bartending knowledge was always transferred from master to apprentice. Many masters were lost in the wars, and their knowledge died with them. The wisdom of using fresh vermouth seemed to disappear at about this time.Vermouth is an aromatized wine, and consequently, subject to the same pitfalls as wine if left open in a warm room for days, weeks, and months. Vermouth sours to a scary point. Why ruin the perfect Silver Bullet with more than a whisper of sour vermouth? The ratio of gin to vermouth went from 3:1, to 6:1, to 12:1, in favour of gin. Want some spiciness? Add olives!

Due to diminished distillation standards and the scarcity of raw ingredients, gin also lost position to vodka between and immediately following the wars. Who wanted to savour the spicy, complex nature of a below-bottom-shelf gin? Allegedly tasteless, odorless, colourless vodka and even more olives were reasonable augmentations in an up-and-coming corporate world.

Lucky for the Martini, these faux pas were remedied during the current Great Cocktail Revival. Once again, sweet and/or dry vermouth meet fine-quality gin in a marriage made in heaven. The reintroduction of fine arts such as bitters-making have returned orange bitters to the drink as well. The result? A classic Martini with prominence and provenance, even though its name may have well been entirely marketing-driven. Here's the recipe:

MARTINI COCKTAIL

3 parts Beefeater 24 gin

1 part French vermouth or Lillet Blanc

2 dashes orange bitters

Shake all ingredients over ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a large slice of lemon peel. Olives? Serve them on the side, but preferably not in the cocktail.

[This article was originally published in German in 2009 in Mixology Magazine.]

Musing on the Classics: The Piña Coalda

jaredbrown1@mac.com (MIXELLANY LIMITED) — 2010-01-06T10:13:00Z

James Bond never ordered one. It is hard to picture Ernest Hemingway setting a frosty one down next to his typewriter. Yet the Pina Colada is the drink of choice for countless cruise ship passengers, sun burnt tourists sporting loud Hawaiian shirts, countless infrequent imbibers, and, in truth, the one of the most broadly influential cocktails ever created.

Of course, like many great flavor combinations, before the drink's history began, the Pina Colada had an extensive pre-history. Literally translated, Pina Colada means "strained pineapple". Minus the coconut,the combination of rum and pineapple dates back centuries. In his 1824An Essay on the Inventions and Customs of both Ancients and Moderns in the Use of Inebriating Liquors, Samuel Morewood wrote, "Time adds much to the mildness and value of rum, which the planters, it is said, often improve by the addition of pineapple juice."

By this time, rum infused with pineapple was also very popular in parts of Europe, where fresh pineapple was far too costly for all but the wealthy. In Charles Dickens' 1838 book The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club: "Mr. Stiggins was easily prevailed on to take another glass of the hot pineapple rum and water, and a second, and a third,and then to refresh himself with a slight supper previous to beginning again."

The recipe was simple, as given in Modern Domestic Cookery, and Useful Receipt Book By Elizabeth Hammond, circa 1817: "An excellent flavour may be given to it by putting into the cask some pineapple rinds. The longer rum is kept, the more valuable it becomes. If your rum wants a head,whisk some clarified honey with a little of the liquor, and pour the whole into the cask. Three pounds of honey is sufficient for sixty gallons."

The first record of Europeans encountering a pineapple points to the island of Guadeloupe--November 1493. Sailors on Columbus' second voyage named the curious fruit pina as it resembled a giant pine cone. The native Tainos were already drinking pineapple juice (which they called yayamaby) for refreshment and as a digestive aid, especially after consuming meat. Taino women were known to use it as an exfoliant and skin whitener. It was Columbus who brought the first pineapples to Spain. And this exotic fruit enchanted Europe.

It was not long before the pineapple became a symbol of wealth and hospitality throughout Europe and the colonies. Ship captains would mark a triumphant return from the tropics by placing a pineapple at their front gate: a gesture adopted from Caribbean tribes. Plus, thepineapple became the crowning glory on many upper-class European tables.

In the Caribbean, jugo de pina became pina fria in the early 1800s, after Cuban officials issued a plea for ice that was answered with shipments both from Spain and New England. By the turn of the twentieth century advances in transportation meant flocks of tourists could join the Caribbean planters enjoying frosty rum and pineapple libations. A US publication, Travel, recommended the drink in detail in 1922: "But best of all is a pina colada, the juice of a perfectly ripe pineapple--a delicious drink in itself--rapidly shaken up with ice, sugar, lime and Bacardi rum in delicate proportions. What could be more luscious, more mellow and more fragrant?"

No doubt people in cold climates were by now taking advantage of pineapple shipments from Jim Dole's newly founded Hawaiian Pineapple Company which strove to put the fruit in every American grocery store.

In Puerto Rico, the ingredients even played a pivotal role in local politics when, in 1917, Prohibition was voted on by local referendum.The ballots (designed to be easily understood by a rural populace with a low literacy rate) were printed with a bottle of rum on one side anda pineapple on the other. Surprisingly, the pineapple was the overwhelming favorite, and Puerto Rico became officially dry until 1934.

Cuban ever succumbed to the Noble Experiment. A National Geographic writer in 1933 reminisced: "I have sat at a sidewalk cafe table, surrounded by well-dressed, well-fed people, sipping a pina colada, and listening to an orchestra..." But what was he sipping at the time?

Harry La Tourette Foster, in his 1928 travel book The Caribbean Cruise,wrote: "For the tea-totaler, there are plenty of non-alcoholic drinks obtainable in most places. In Havana, for instance, a favorite iced drink is jugo de pina or pina colada..."

A Hartford Courant article published on 20 August 1922, reflects this ambiguity: "Down in Havana, Cuba, there is a soft drink that is verycaressing to the esophagus, known in Spanish as either pina fria colada or pina fria sin colada, which might be copied in the United States where soft drinks are now legion."

A1950 column in The New York Times titled "At The Bar" mentioned that"Cuba's Pina Colada (rum, pineapple and coconut milk)." Yet, the official 1948 book of Cuba's bartending guild, El Arte del Cantinero,contained only a non-alcoholic recipe for chilled and sweetened pineapple juice under the title "Pina Colada". It is likely that drink had been served for more than a century in at least one legendary Havana location. In 1820, a bodega called Pina de Plata (The Silver Pineapple) opened in Havana. It is said they sold fresh juices, andtheir beverage sales were so successful that in 1867 they became a bar,changing the name to La Florida, later to become El Floridita.

Farmore important than the first collision amongst rum, pineapple, and coconut in a blender is the drink's transition from ignominy to ubiquitous cabana libation. Who standardized the Pina Colada into the drink we all know today? The mass media and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico claim that the modern Pina Colada was introduced in San Juan, on15 August 1954 at the Caribe Hilton's Beachcomber Bar. Opened in 1949,with a prime beachfront location and modern amenities it drew an affluent, international clientele: John Wayne, Elizabeth Taylor, Jose Ferrar, Gloria Swanson and a host of others. Joan Crawford declared the Caribe Hilton's Pina Colada was "better than slapping Bette Davis in the face." These were the celebrities who made the drink glamorous and,for a short time, far more sophisticated than any frozen drink has aright to be.

One claim frequently ignored by most cocktail authorities is that Coco Lopez launched the Pina Colada out of obscurity. This appears to be true. Certainly, the modern Pina Colada would not exist, much less become widely adopted, if not for pre-made cream of coconut.

A common cooking ingredient throughout the tropics, but very labor intensive to prepare, cream of coconut was first packaged as Coco Lopez, in 1954, by Ramon Lopez Irizarry, an agricultural professor from the University of Puerto Rico who automated this arduous task. Irizarry personally approached bartenders and chefs around San Juan, encouraging them to experiment with his new creation. The Coco Lopez company then continued to spotlight the Pina Colada in its promotional literature for over thirty years, spreading the drink around the world. It finally found its way into the Mr. Boston Deluxe Official Bartenders Guide sometime between 1970 and 1972.

The Pina Colada has been described as sickly sweet, a dessert in a glass, a beginner's drink. But like many other classics, it has stood the test of time because in the right time and place, prepared properly, it can be the perfect drink for that moment. The time and place might be mid-afternoon in a South Beach hotel swimming pool, or on the in the shade of an ocean-side cabana flanked appropriately by coconut palms.

The ideal recipe is as follows:

PINA COLADA

A cup of shaved ice

120ml pineapple juice

45ml anejo blanco rum

60ml coconut cream

Combine all ingredients in a shaker. Shake well. Strain the mixture into a frozen collins glass. Then add the shaved ice directly from the shaker.Garnish with a chunk of fresh pineapple. Decorate it with an umbrella if you must. Optional: a few dashes of Angostura Bitters prior to blending produces a more complex and balanced drink.

[This article was originally published in German in 2009 in Mixology Magazine]