Stir & Strain

orange bitters

Grapefruit’s Last Hoorah

by Leave a Comment

Why are there grapefruits still around at the farmer’s market? That’s what I’d like to know. Wasn’t I told by a reliable source that citrus is a winter fruit? Something to do with a long, drawn-out rainy season. And the unseasonable cold temperatures we had in California. But here they are, grapefruits.

On occasion I’m requested to mix the odd Greyhound here at the house. But ugh. So boring sometimes. One needs a little something extra. Some oomph. Oh, yeah- and something not vodka.

I have a couple of recipes using grapefruit, but I want to keep them to the side for other specific recipes. So going on the hunch that Noilly Prat French Dry Vermouth is good in everything (obviously not everything, but was really quite tasty in some baked ziti dish I made the other day- very unexpected), I added some in here.

2oz Broker’s Gin
1-1/2oz Grapefruit Juice
1/2oz of Noilly Prat Dry French Vermouth
2-3 dashes of Miracle Mile Orange Bitters

In a shaker filled 2/3 with ice, add all of the ingredients. Shake well to mix and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

It just works. The bitters give a nice spicy quality, and overall it’s a touch sweet and fragrant. And more exciting then a greyhound. However, with one last note. I did make a version with vodka. It’s a little less exciting. The gin adds that little oomph.

The Yale Special

by Leave a Comment

Recently a copy of The Savoy Cocktail book arrived in the mail. It was a belated Valentine’s Day gift from my husband. Belated not because of him, but because Amazon couldn’t decide if they wanted to ship it to us or not. Emails kept popping up in the inbox saying things like, click this link if you’re really certain you want us to send this to you whenever it comes in stock; the outlook was grim that this would ever arrive. But then it did.

I’ve been trying to find drink recipes to use up the bitters I bought and I thought the earlier cocktail recipe books could help in that category since they were dropping them in to all sorts of drinks back then. Scanning the book I came across the Yale Cocktail. However, I realized that I would immediately have to make a couple changes as I have still not bought any Angostura bitters (I know… I know…). Also, the recipes are coming directly from the original book and the measurements are kind of all over the place. Sometimes there are just fractions and other times it just says to put in a wine glass full of something or in this recipe, a glass of Gin. Now, my idea of a glass of gin and Harry Craddock’s idea could be on opposite sides of the room. I’m sure out there somewhere someone has compiled the measurement translations… but why make it easy on myself?

Well, all I had in the house was Hendrick’s and for this cocktail, it just wasn’t working. So then I remembered that I had a 2oz bottle of Finlandia Tangerine Fusion (it came with a much larger bottle of regular Finlandia) and thought maybe that I would use it here. It worked! I had to up the amount of orange bitters to really give it the extra flavor I was looking for, and I went with 1/2 the juice of a tangelo instead of a squeeze of lemon. The end result: spicy and then fruity, which was the right combination for me. Next I need to work on proportioning glasses to the drinks.. I always seem to come up with too much room in the glass.

2 oz Finlandia Tangerine Fusion
6-8 dashes of Fee Brother’s West Indian Orange Bitters (original recipe called for 3 but the flavor was just not there)
2 dashes of Peychaud’s Bitters
1/2 juice of a tangelo
club soda to top

In a mixing glass with ice combine all the ingredients except for the club soda. Stir to combine, and strain into a small chilled cocktail glass. Top with club soda.