Ok guys. I might have been panicking last week but today I’ve made peace with the fact that 1. I only got Christmas cards out of my immediate family this year (sorry friends, maybe I’ll get ambitious and send out New Years ones. Maybe.) 2. I just am not going to get all those to-dos on my list done. This is ok. Save a life was not one of them so I can take a deep breath and just add them to next years holiday list. So let’s just talk about some cocktails.
Like I mentioned in the Sangria post, I have some drink recipes going up on the Serious Drinks site. This one you may have seen earlier in the week and I figured it was time to post over here just so we can all be kept up to date in the Stir and Strain universe. It’s a nice addition to your holiday table, and super easy to make. Also: it tastes like a Christmas tree. Seriously Clear Creek Distillery, you guys wowed the pants off me with this eau de vie. Yes, it’s getting some notice on this blog; remember that Pear cocktail? Here I’ve taken the French 75 and Portlandified it. No, I didn’t put a bird on it; I stuck a fir tree in it. Totally better in my opinion.
Also, I wanted to send a big thank you and shout out to Bar and Garden in Culver City, CA who have been helping steer me in the right direction of choosing sparkling wines for drinks. The ladies there are awesome, knowledgeable and have yet to pick out something I wouldn’t want to crack open and slug down on the spot. Please give them a visit if you’re in West Los Angeles.
And stay tuned here for a few more holiday posts and irreverent boozy Gift Guides this week.
*This bottle from Heritage Distilling was generously given gratis and appears here because I like drinking it. For more info on sponsored products, affiliate links, and gifted booze, please visit the About page.
Confession time. Or maybe rather, here’s some facts about me you didn’t know. One: I could have gone to college, full ride, on a Chemistry scholarship. Instead I chose art and am still paying off the TWO bachelor degrees that I am barely using right now. Two: I’m a giant nerd for the original Dark Shadows television program. I don’t go to the fan shows because I hate crowds, but I was overcome with sadness when Jonathan Frid, aka Barnabus Collins, passed away last year and I never got to geek out on him and tell him how much I enjoyed his melodramatic, line forgetting, over-the-top acting on the show. I am always going to regret that.
Why am I making you read that above paragraph? Because for this month’s Mixology Monday the Muse of Doom, writer of the blog Feu de Vie, decided that this month’s theme was FIRE. Immediately I started humming the chorus to Arthur Brown’s FIRE, and then while watching an episode of Dark Shadows decided that I wanted to name it after the lady always staring into the fire and being a badass, Angelique. I am, for the fourth time in my life, rewatching the series in its entirety, so, you know, it’s on the brain lately.
My thinking, after listening to the interview, was that I could create a fire-like mound upon on the drink using this chemical. Maybe add some extra oomph with edible red dust. And I did just that, sort of.
I’m not one to shy away from heat in my drink. I love it. Have you seen my Satan’s Breath or the Tres Palmas? If it makes me tear up, the better. I’m sure this sheds some kind of light onto my character, but this is a cocktail site, not a therapy session so we’ll leave that for my late-night marathon tweeting. I opted not to add heat in the form of peppers this time and instead made a spicy combo using a barrel-aged gin and ginger shrub. And topping it all off was a fiery cayenne laced Campari and Pineapple foam.Â
The lecithin was tricky. This was the first time using it and have learned a couple things I will try next time. One is that make sure you get the powdered form, the liquid does not work with juices/alcohol, it’s more for chocolates and food usage. Two is that you need a container with tall sides as using a hand blender will make this splatter all over the place if it’s a small sided vessel. You better believe my workspace is a sticky mess right now. I’ll clean it later.
2 oz. Barrel Aged Rusty Blade Gin
1 oz. Shrub & Co. Ginger Shrub
1/2 oz. Rose Water
1/2 oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice
In a shaker 2/3 filled with ice, add all of the above ingredients. Stir and strain into a chilled champagne saucer.
For the Bubbles:
2 oz. Pineapple Juice
2 oz. Campari
1/2 tsp cayenne (1/4 tsp if you’re not wanting too much fire)
1/2 tsp Lecithin
Edible red glitter for garnish
Combine ingredients in a flat bottomed container with tall sides. Gently stir to dissolve lecithin. Using a hand blender, whip contents until a foam begins. You will have to do several batches depending on the surface area of your container. Gently spoon foam on top of drink. Garnish with fiery red edible glitter.
Fire is up there when describing this cocktail. I may not have been able to create the fiery mound for the drink but that cayenne laced foam added a secondary punch after the first hit of the ginger shrub creating dynamic layers. Sweet, sharp and spicy all sing out beautifully here. Shrub & Co’s Ginger shrub and the Rusty Blade gin give the drink a lot of spice and heat, while the sweetness of the foam is just enough to balance out the tart notes. The rose water has a subtle layer of floral sweetness that is there in the background. Careful, the fire of the cayenne builds as you drink, settling down also at the bottom of the glass, making that last gulp a mouth of fire.
Recently a friend of mine was up in Napa visiting family and was gracious enough to bring back a case of Gloria Ferrer sparkling wine with her. After downing a couple of the bottles, I decided that maybe I could use them in other (cocktail) ways.
This week I picked up a small container of hibiscus flowers in syrup. I’ve seen some really gorgeous drinks with these and hoped they actually tasted as good as they looked. I am a believer that your drink garnish should 1. make sense with your drink 2. taste good. And these did both. On it’s own, the hibiscus flowers are a bit chewy like a fruit leather, and taste somewhat like rhubarb.
I wanted this drink to be an easy cocktail that could be whipped up quick as necessary, but also look lovely. Need a Mother’s Day cocktail, something for a brunch for people who *gasp* don’t like Bloody Marys, or are bored by Mimosas? Here you go.
Be careful with the mint. More than half a bar spoon will overpower the drink. I learned that the first time around on this. Together, the mint and hibiscus provided a sweet backdrop to the sharpness of the sparkling wine. And that flower is a nice little treat at the end.
1/2 bar spoon of mint simple syrup
1 hibiscus flower in syrup
4 oz sparkling wine (I used Gloria Ferrer’s Blanc de Blancs, or use a good dry sparkling wine or prosecco)
Pour the mint syrup in the bottom of a champagne flute. Pick out a hibiscus flower, shake off a bit of the syrup, but having some of the liquid still on the flower is fine and will add some extra hibiscus flavor. Place the flower gently in the bottom of the flute and pour the sparkling wine down into the center of the flower. The flower should stay at the bottom of the glass and open up slightly as it sits.
Recently my husband and I took a trip to Vegas for a couple of days. Unfortunately the morning of I had come down with a horrible bout of food poisoning. We ended up canceling all of our dinner plans, but kept the cocktail tastings since that was about all I could take. We visited the bar at Postrio at the Venetian, had a beautiful drink with Hendrick’s Gin and Grapefruit juice (I wish I could tell you all the ingredients; hell, I wish I remembered them so I could make this at home). The garnish was this large section of grapefruit. It really looked… beautiful. But it was pretty clumsy to drink. I love a garnish that adds to the drink, but if you’re concerned with it falling off, or on your face, while you’re trying to drink, then what’s the point? We ran into a similar problem at a Champagne bar at the Palazzo. The lemon twist was HUGE. I had to take it off to drink out of the flute… otherwise it might have come tumbling out. Not to make this a downer post, but the champagne cocktail itself was a one note drink. Which made me think about what I’d want in one. And hence a post about drinks with Champagne (or, Prosecco since that’s all that I have on hand).
Well. Damn, I still have that container of orange simple syrup lurking in my fridge. And well, I’d love to riff on the French 75 I had at that champagne bar. How could a drink made with lemon juice and gin.. have no flavor?
I have a tiny bit of Citadelle Gin that I should use up. Do you ever have a bottle that has been hanging around for awhile, and not because you don’t like it.. you just have a tiny bit left and cannot throw it out? Welcome to my world. I cannot waste things, like food. I cry if I find a half dead head of lettuce in the fridge and I have to throw it out. And I also have on hand is some brand X prosecco(it’s really not that great of a prosecco here and you would laugh at how much I bought it for. So really, any dry bubbly will work here) that is going into a risotto recipe after this. But on to the drink recipe…
2 oz Citadelle Gin (this boasts 19 different ingredients and since it had both orange and lemon peel on this list I figured this would work fine)
1-1/2 ounce Meyer lemon juice
1 oz orange simple syrup
prosecco to top it off with
Shake the gin, lemon juice and simple syrup in a shaker filled with ice. Strain into a highball glass. Top it off with prosecco. I would suggest not filling the glass all the way to the top with prosecco as you will drown out the other flavors (and possibly have it fizz all over you and the floor).
I upped the lemon juice by a here for some more zing in the drink and to balance out the very dry prosecco. The orange simple syrup added just a hint of sweet orange flavor. The gin is a bit buried in this drink. And honestly, for all its boasting of ingredients I couldn’t really distinguish them all when tasting it by itself, so mixing it in here just added one more level of flavor. Oh, and due to some camera difficulties and white balance, the full glass is not shown here due to it looking like a big ol’ glass of pee. It was starting to go flat and I wasn’t about to waste it.
So, comparing this drink with the French 75 I had in Vegas… well, for starters you can taste the citrus, and there is not a hint of bitterness. It is sweet and sour and light. And I think I’ll have another.