Stir & Strain

Archives for November 2012

Sugar, Spice and Citrus Play Nice Cocktail

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Occasionally while I’m looking through cocktail books, I’ll make a list of liquors and ingredients I want to purchase to use in the future. Then I buy them. And they sit on my liquor shelf. For ever.

I picked up a bottle of Canton awhile back, but I wasn’t really head over heels in love with it when I tried it. I figured it was best mixed in to something, however I had some serious failures the first couple times until I hit upon this drink.

Remember those roasted oranges from last time? I put some brown sugar on a couple when I roasted them and decided to muddle them here.

1-1/2 oz. Broker’s Gin
3/4 oz. Domaine de Canton
3/4 oz. Aperol
3 slices of roasted brown sugar orange rounds (reserve the nicest for garnish)
3 dashes of Scrappy’s Aromatic Bitters

Muddle the orange slices with the Canton in the bottom of a mixing glass. Add ice to about half way up the glass, then add in the rest of the ingredients. Shake and strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with a twisted, brown sugar coated orange wheel.

The very syrupy Canton evens out here and the drink is quite light and refreshing. There is a nice bite from the ginger and aromatic bitters with subtle orange notes. The garnish also repeats the citrus nose with a wonderful sweetness and in the back somewhere a sharpness from the browned sugar.

Side note: I recently went nuts at Bar Keeper here in Los Angeles and picked up a bunch of bitters to play around with. It’s my goal to feature all of the bottles here in a recipe in the coming months. This bottle of Scrappy’s Aromatic Bitters I got in a sampler pack is quickly becoming an occasional substitute in Manhattans. It has a nice level of spice that works well if you are using Carpano Antica for sweet vermouth.

De Kers en De Oranje Cocktail

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I’m a bit behind posting some drinks what with the holidays this week and me too busy trying to get my Christmas shopping done online. Are the sales really better in the stores? Who can resist sitting at a computer and making stupid purchases while drinking, heavily, post family dinner? Not I. And now here’s a post.

Oranges are just coming into season here at the farmer’s market so I picked up a couple with an idea to roast them for garnishes. I had some orange based drinks in mind and thought I’d try doing something other than an orange slice on the rim.

Roasting oranges is easy. Pre-heat your oven to 400 F, slice the oranges at about 1/4″ or thinner if you can, stick them on a sheet pan with some parchment, and let them roast for about 25 minutes. I forgot about turning mine over, so only one side got nice and caramelized (flip them about half-way through). Want to make them even more caramelized and delicious? Sprinkle some brown sugar on some.

The 3 orange slices on the right have some sugar on them, in another drink I’m going to muddle those sugared slices. Stay tuned.

The drink I decided to garnish is one that came about because I bought a bottle of Bols Genever and had no idea what to do with it. I’ve had it in drinks around town, but noticed that most of the drink books I keep at home don’t make use of this spirit. I wasn’t that familiar with the flavor on its own, and found, upon drinking it, to be quite unique. So unique that I was still stumped and had to do some research online about what people tend to pair it with. Orange was a big one. After some failed first attempts, I hit upon this drink. I found the Genever here to be still a bit more pronounced for my palate, but the nice thing about having someone around with a very different palate than my own is that they will enjoy something I might not of. This is one of those times. My husband was a big fan of this.

1-1/2 oz. Bols Genever
3/4 oz. Noilly Prat French Dry Vermouth
3/4 oz. freshly squeezed orange juice
2 dashes of Miracle Mile Sour Cherry Bitters
2 dashes of Miracle Mile Orange Bitters

1 roasted orange slice for garnish

In a shaker 2/3 filled with ice, add all ingredients and shake. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with roasted orange slice.

The malty Bols Genever mixed with the warm orange nose hit first. The drink is clean with pronounced citrus flavors, while not being too heavy or sweet. And the bitters provide a subtle sweet and sharp bite in the finish.

Mixology Monday: The Apple Stack

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For this month’s Mixology Monday, “Garnish Grandiloquence” hosted by Joseph Tkach of Measure and Stir, I worked on a recipe I already had jotted down in my notebook for a seasonal cocktail. It read, “something about apple pie and cheddar cheese and maybe cider”. Baking a miniature pie and hovering it over a cocktail, while admirable, was not really an avenue I felt I would go down this time. Oh, also just to back this up a bit and explain. I’m originally from New England and there’s a tradition there of eating a piece of strong, sharp cheddar cheese (I prefer Vermont) with a piece of apple pie. Whether it’s on the side, or a sliver right on top of the crust is up to individual taste. This is a sentimental reminder of home for me this time of year and I thought I could do something with these flavors for a Fall cocktail.

I don’t know my way around a garnishing kit, and even sometimes a vegetable peeler scares me (and it would you too if you took off a piece of your nail once along with a potato peel). But I own a mandoline with a pretty heavy duty safety guard, so my mind went towards using some thin slices of apple, and a hunk of cheddar cheese. Now, one of the issues with taking photos of drinks is that it’s tough to want to start when there is a lot of light out, at say, 8am. So during the late Fall and Winter months, starting a drink requiring lots of photos late in the afternoon is just stupid. As most of your photos will need extra light, a tripod and will ultimately result in blurry photos if not done properly. Clearly this is a rant I am giving to myself. There are many steps to this garnish, requiring many photos. Most of which I am chucking because of light/sharpness issues so I’ll briefly explain here.

If you ever work with apple slices as a garnish do yourself a favor if you want them to stay pretty and white. Get a bowl, fill it with water, squeeze a lemon into it and dunk your apple slices in there. The lemon juice will slow down oxidation and instead of turning brown, your slices will stay fresher looking longer. For this garnish, I peeled one long ribbon of apple peel, and then cut an apple in half and from the center of the apple, sliced it on a mandoline at 1/4″. I cut those circles in half, trimmed the center so they were pretty much equal in size, and threw them in the lemon water to sit and wait.

For the cheese part, I chose a 1/2″ chunk of Carr Applewood Smoked Cheddar. Besides having the sharp flavor down, it has has a lovely smoky scent and taste that, if we’re feeling Fall here, adds to that ambiance. But mostly, it tastes pretty damn good. The peel was used as a ribbon garnish inside the glass, and the apple slices fanned out (pat them dry first), skewered and topped with the chunk of cheddar.

Initially I wanted to have two ribbons of apple peel wound around like a strand of DNA. I sketched it out even and it seemed possible, but real apple peel is not as pliable as one hopes so that idea was tossed. Another issue that was encountered was glass size to garnish ratio. When the first attempt at the garnish was completed, I realized that the drink size was just under 5 oz total, so a giant glass to hold the final garnish dwarfed the actual amount of liquid, so the garnish was cut down a bit to accommodate the actual drink.

And the drink here? That’s also important…

1-1/2 oz. High West Campfire Whiskey
1 oz. Laird’s Straight Bonded AppleJack Brandy
1/4 oz. St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram
2 oz. J.K’s Scrumpy Organic Hard Cider

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass 2/3 filled with ice. Stir and strain into a small chilled rock glass with apple ribbon. Garnish with apple and cheese fan.

This drink is wonderfully balanced, bordering on sweet and smoky. Usually the Campfire is the predominant flavor but here blends very well with the sharp kick of the Bonded AppleJack while the Allspice Dram adds that touch of ‘Fall’ with the clover and spice notes in the finish of the drink. The addition of the hard cider melds everything together and making the apple presence much more noticeable. The garnish provides one additional layer of smokiness in smell and flavor, while the apple slices provide visual appeal and lets you know what flavors you’re in for.

First go at the garnish before realizing it was too tall for the glass.

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Here’s the roundup post of this month’s MxMo!

Make It: Holiday Spice Syrups

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Make It: Holiday Spice Syrups // stirandstrain.comThe hard ciders and Glogg are starting to roll out. It’s Fall- hell, it’s almost Thanksgiving already. For me that means starting to plan for Christmas. My personality is such that I painfully start planning things much too far in advance, forget about them, and freak out at the last minute trying to get these plans into action.

A good chunk of gift giving is pretty easy actually when it comes to my friends. They all like booze. But really, putting a bow on a bottle of Jameson a couple years in a row starts to become too easy and predictable. Yes, you can step it up and maybe shell out for a bottle of Booker’s. However that becomes expensive when you multiply that by just 4 people.

When I started making my own infused syrups at home it occurred to me the potential these had for gift giving. One can make up a batch, pair it with a small bottle of something, and write up a little card with a drink recipe on it. For me, it’s a way of sharing an interest with my friends and getting them tipsy in the process. Win! Even better when you can open it together.

This year I’m expanding my usual arsenal of syrups to include some Fall spices that I want to try out. Adapting the clove syrup recipe from the PDT Cocktail Book, I’ve scaled that down and also worked up a cinnamon syrup too. Bottle these up and give away, or keep for yourself.

For this recipe, I made a master batch of simple syrup and then divided it to steep the cloves and cinnamon separately.

Master Simple Syrup

1 cup water
1 cup sugar

Combine water and sugar in a sauce pan. Swirl to combine and place over high heat until warmed through and transparent. Do not let it come to a boil. Once sugar is dissolved, remove from heat if using immediately for below or keep over a very low flame- you will need the syrup to be warm to infuse.

Clove Syrup

1/2 cup simple syrup
1/4 oz of cloves (I used a kitchen scale to weigh this out. It’s about 3 tablespoons if I were to eyeball it.)

Combine a half cup of the warm simple syrup with the cloves in a heat-proof container. Let sit for 15 minutes. Strain into a bottle through cheesecloth or a fine sieve. Let the mixture cool and store in the refrigerator.

Cinnamon Syrup

1 cup simple syrup
5 sticks of cinnamon, 2″ to 2-1/2″ in length

Combine a half cup of the warm simple syrup with the cinnamon sticks in a heat-proof container. Let sit for 15 minutes. Strain into a bottle. Let the mixture cool and store in the refrigerator.

Syrups will keep approximately 1 month in the refrigerator (or at least they do in my house).

Hawaiian Black Eye

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Sometimes I really want to mix up a tiki drink but realize that I’m missing a good deal of the ingredients to put into one. I usually have limes and lemons around the house, but rarely do I have oranges or grapefruit, or, seriously, passion fruit? Perhaps this means I’m missing variety in my diet? What I end up doing is just deciding to go out to my nearest tiki bar, which on my side of L.A. isn’t too difficult.

Today however I ended up with some very late in the season blackberries from the farmers market and was full determined to use them up. In a drink. A tiki drink.

Scrounging through the Beach Bum Berry Remixed book, throwing some Martin Denny on the turntable (trying to get into the mood, don’t laugh), I finally came across something I could adapt to what I had on hand- the Hawaiian Eye (created for the 1960’s show of the same name). I had some rum, falernum, limes… I just needed the “black eye” part, and those blackberries could fit in nicely.

Adapted from Beach Bum Berry Remixed

5 Blackberries (reserve one for garnish)*
1/2 oz freshly squeezed lime juice
1/2 oz Fee Brother’s Falernum
1/2 oz simple syrup (1:1)
1/2 oz Kraken Black Spiced Rum
1 oz Mount Gay Eclipse Rum
3 dashes of Miracle Mile Forbidden Bitters
8 oz ice (about a cup, I use my kitchen scale when it comes to ice)

To make the garnish, take your spent lime shell and cut small triangles around the edge. I attempted this with a paring knife first but found that kitchen shears worked much, much better. Pierce the center of the lime with a stainless or bamboo skewer. Thread a blackberry onto the skewer and then the lime shell. Set aside.

Blend all ingredients and pour into your favorite tiki mug, or a goblet if you have one on hand. Garnish with the blackberry hat.

*A note on blackberries. These guys have lots of SEEDS. First attempt at making this meant spitting out seeds with every sip. To avoid this, mash the blackberries through a fine mesh strainer catching the juice, but leaving the seeds behind. Pour into the blender and follow directions as above.

The drink becomes more of a ruby color than black. It’s not too sweet with a sharp tang from the lime and blackberries. The spice from the Kraken and the bitters is more in the finish than in the forward flavor. Oh, and careful, it goes down quick.

Smoky Manhattan

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I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Regan that the Manhattan is the “best cocktail on earth” (see Joy of Mixology). And while I thoroughly enjoy creating new, or (re)discovering old classics, sometimes I just want one. See today. I finally got to check out Bar Keeper in Los Angeles and as excited as I was to finally have the Mezcal from Del Maguey in my hands, I suddenly got a bit overwhelmed with what I wanted to make. Really, what I needed was a drink to have while perusing the PDT Cocktail Book I’d also just picked up. So my eyes went to the High West Campfire whiskey (a blend of rye, bourbon and a blended malt scotch whisky) and I thought to myself, why not a Manhattan with that?

On this gigantic shopping spree I went on in that tiny store, I also acquired a bottle of Carpano Antica. A lightly sweet and bitter Italian sweet vermouth that I see on just about every cocktail menu here in L.A. serving up a Manhattan. To balance out this drink I decided to stick with the Angostura bitters. I also upped the sweet vermouth since I found that the delicate nature of Carpano Antica was going to be competing with that Campfire whiskey. I’m thinking of trying this next time with a more assertive sweet vermouth so there would be less need to add extra.

2 oz. High West Campfire Whiskey
1-1/2 oz. Carpano Antica
3 dashes of Angostura bitters

1 Tillen Farms Bada Bing Cherry (or if you got them on hand, a Luxardo)

Drop the cherry into a chilled cocktail glass. In a mixing glass 2/3 filled with ice, add all the ingredients. Stir and strain into the glass.

The taste? A wonderful mouthful of smoke from the peated scotch whisky. The Carpano Antica rounds out the drink with its sweet and bitter notes, heightened with the spicy bitter of the Angostura.

It’s pretty powerful, and as such, not for everyone. The smokiness was too much for my husband at first (he’s not a scotch fan), although he’s coming around after another.