More Twitter Humor

I keep scanning all the Tweets that contain the word “Cocktail” that my search in TweetDeck can find.  On many days, this is a fruitless task.  The only good thing is that I have developed an ability to recognize and bypass a useless Tweet pretty quickly.  In the meantime, I’m working on a short list of summer cocktails to post in time for the Memorial Day week-end, with a longer list of my top ten favorite summer cocktails to follow.

By the way, have you heard about the Beer Tax?  Check it out here.

“Palm Springs. I have noticed in resort communities most of the adults travel to the restaurant with a to go cup of their favorite cocktail.” @FoodWineMarcy 4/18/9 (Obviously dementia is not a problem in Palm Springs. – UM)

“i need a cocktail like a donkey needs hay” @lainiemac 4/28/9 (Some days are like that. – UM)

“using your make-up brush to stir your cocktail... = PRICELESS” @KWittington 5/2/9 (Now that’s dedication… but what does it do to the taste? –  UM)

“Nicholas and Alexandra Cocktail - More than two and you see tsars” @Lellyjenn 5/3/9 (I liked this even if she only mentioned one tsar. – UM)

“Life handed me a lemon, so I said screw the lemonade and used it to garnish a big old cocktail instead. I am a fricking genius. Maybe.” @EmeraldAce 5/21/9 (I say: when life gives you lemons, make margaritas! – UM)

 

Just an old fashioned Old Fashioned

In my last post of humorous Tweets from the Twitterverse, I mentioned the Old Fashioned cocktail.  As I did so, I realized that it had been quite a while since I had had an Old Fashioned.  In fact, it had been so long that I couldn’t remember the last time (that happens when you get old…).  And so I set off on a quest for the perfect Old Fashioned.  I always thought that an Old Fashioned is made with Bourbon, but it turns out it can also be made with Rye.  As a matter of fact, according to the Savoy Cocktail Book, you can make an Old Fashioned with Canadian Club, Brandy, Gin, or Rum.  Old Harry Craddock doesn’t even mention Bourbon, but it can probably be squeezed in under his “etc.”  In other words, you can make an Old Fashioned with just about any good sipping liquor you like.  You could even throw an Old Fashioned based cocktail party, where you serve a variety of Old Fashioneds as a signature cocktail made with each guest’s favorite liquor.  We’re having friends over next week-end, and I plan on doing just that.

In the recipe below, I went with the classic Bourbon Old Fashioned, paired with Angostura® Bitters; many of my favorite Bourbon cocktails use Angostura.  If you go with Rye, you might want to use Peychaud’s® Bitters, which are paired with Rye in another of my favorite cocktails, the Sazarac.  If you decide to go with a nice Rum, you should try orange bitters, perhaps Stirring’s® Blood Orange Bitters.   I would use either Angostura® or Peychaud’s® with Brandy, and either Stirring’s® Blood Orange or Angostura with Gin.  Have fun and experiment, especially if you have a good collection of bitters.  Be sure to use good quality liquor, since the liquor is the primary ingredient.  I highly recommend adding the optional orange wheel and cherry and eating them after you have finished the cocktail when they are infused with Bourbon.

 

Classic Old Fashioned

½  oz Simple syrup or 1 sugar cubes or ½ tsp. sugar (use brown sugar with rum)

2 ½ oz Jim Beam® Black Label Bourbon whiskey

2 dashes Angostura® Bitters

Put the simple syrup and bitters into a mixing glass.  Add the bourbon (if you’re using sugar, add ½ a teaspoon of water and stir until the sugar is dissolved).  Fill the mixing glass half full of ice, and stir until Carrie Prejean gets smart (or when you think it’s cold enough, whichever comes first).  Fill a chilled Old Fashioned glass ½ full of ice cubes.  Add a maraschino cherry and an orange wheel to the glass (optional).  Strain in the cocktail mixture.  Add more ice as necessary to fill the glass.  Garnish with a twist of lemon and serve.   

 

Savoy Hotel Special Cocktail (No. 1)

As part of my continuing adventure with the Savoy Cocktail Book, I discovered the Savoy Hotel Special Cocktail (No. 1) on page 142.   As the number implies, there is also a Special Cocktail (No. 2).  The primary ingredients in the two cocktails are the same; they vary only in what is dashed into them and the garnish.  To get the recipe for No. 2, however, you will have to buy the book.  This recipe is accompanied by a little footnote about how the ninth earl of Savoy brought 83 rich and beautiful French girls to England as his wards and married them to (one would hope) a similar number of nobles.  Perhaps we live in more cynical times, but this story just does not ring true.  The beautiful part sounds plausible, but I have trouble believing the number of girls and their wealth.  Had the story attested to their virtue, I might have doubted that, too.

When I read this recipe, I thought this cocktail might be too much like a “not-quite-dry” martini, but the absinthe really made a difference. Be careful with the absinthe, though, too much will overpower the gin. I suggest that the better the gin, the smaller the dash of absinthe.  Experiment until you get the right mix for the gin you’re using.

 

Savoy Hotel Special Cocktail (No. 1) (Savoy Cocktail Book)

2 oz Bombay Sapphire® Gin

1 oz Noilly Prat® dry vermouth

1 dash Absinthe

2 dashes grenadine

Combine ingredients with ice in a shaker.  Shake while humming a few bars of “Stomping at the Savoy” and trying to visualize a flapper with bobbed hair.  Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Twist a piece of lemon peel over the glass and drop it in.

Image detail from "Where there's smoke there's fire" by Russell Patterson, 192?, Library of Congress.

 

More Twitter Musings

I keep falling behind on my reports about the Twitterverse.  Today I thought I would present you a selection of some of the more humorous cocktail tweets I’ve come across in the last month or so.  They range from slightly unusual to very delusional, from poetic to frenetic, but all have some entertainment value.  And on a different type of cocktail related note, a surprising number of people appear to be getting screwed on the number of cherries they find in their fruit cocktail.

“lol join me for a cocktail, I am having a raz from bacardi never even knew that it had bats all over the bottle till i stared” @pepperjo68 3/29/9 (If you stare too long, the bats will flap their wings – UM)

“'God gave men brains larger than dogs so they wouldn't hump women's legs at cocktail parties.' - Ruth Libby.” @Krashenburn 4/25/9

“humpty dumpty sat on wall humpty dumpty had a great fall why did humpty have a great fall because humpty dumpty had a cocktail on that wall” @AlexdaKat 3/29/9 (This doesn’t scan well, but at least it demonstrates a good grasp of causality. – UM)

“@raincoaster I like matching panties to the cocktail for the evening haha” @erinmaher (You’ve got to like a woman that thinks this way… panties might be sandy if cocktail is Sex on the Beach, frumpy if cocktail is Old Fashioned, … OMG the possibilities – UM)

“Having leisurely lunch @ café claude. Gotta love a place that names a cocktail “zidane's coup de tête” ” @ivanski 4/15/9 (Had to include this for you football fans – UM) 

Margarita Olé! Festive Glass Rimming for Cinco de Mayo

Want to give your Margaritas a special flare for your Cinco de Mayo party this year?  This special glass rimming is just the thing you need to make your Margaritas memorable (well, some good tequila wouldn’t hurt either).  You will surprise and delight your guests when you rim your glasses in the colors of the Mexican flag: red, white, and green using this fairly simple technique. 

My wife is a great shopper, and she will often pick up rimming salts or sugars when she sees them on sale during her extensive shopping expeditions throughout the Salt Lake City area.  The result is that I have such a large collection that it can be hard to remember just what I have stuck away in the pantry (no room in the bar).  Last year I was looking at my white, green, and orange rimming salts when I realized that I almost had a match for the colors in the Mexican flag.  Hey, I thought, I can use all three at once to improve the presentation of my Margaritas.

There’s no need to buy three colors of rimming salt (I couldn’t find red salt, anyway); you can make your own.  Just take some regular white rimming salt (or other coarse salt) and put it in a small plastic container that has a lid.  Add a few drops of food coloring, put on the lid, and shake briskly.  Open the container and check the contents.  If there are clumps, you put in too much food coloring, add a little more salt and shake again.  If the color is too light, add another drop of food coloring and shake again.  Do this for any colors you need.

Once the colored salts are ready, take a rimming tray that’s large enough to fit your Margarita glasses (or you can use a saucer) and fill one third with green salt.  Moving clockwise, fill the next third with white salt and fill the final third with the red.  You don’t have to measure with geometric precision, just take a good guess and try not to mix the colors.  I usually spoon the salt in toward the middle of each third and carefully nudge it toward the boundaries.  I normally leave the salts in my rimming tray (covered with plastic wrap) between Margarita sessions and refill the salts as needed.

The best technique for actually rimming the glass is to rub a slice of lime around the rim to get it good and sticky.  Try to get more on the outside of the rim than on the inside so you don’t get too much salt in your Margarita.  Dip the glass into the salt, being careful not to twist it, and set it upright on your bar.  If any salt dislodges and falls into the glass, invert the glass to dump it out.  Garnish the glass with a lime wheel between the green and red salts, and your glass is ready for the Margarita. Have a great party.  Olé!

 

The Venerable Tom Collins

Wednesday night I attended a party to celebrate the 100^th episode of Lost.  Nick Johnson was there making Tom Collins for the guests.  You may consider the venerable Tom Collins to be too pedestrian for your tastes, but when made correctly it can be quite a treat.  Nick sets his off by adding lime juice and some Blue Curaçao, which make a subtle difference to the flavor and ramp his recipe up to include three kinds of citrus.  All this in addition to coloring this Collins blue.  Apologies to Nick, but I cut the lemon juice in half on this one.  I found that when I used the juice of a whole lemon (approx. 2 oz) like Nick did; I couldn’t really taste the gin, which was a waste with the Sapphire; so I halved the lemon juice.   As usual, you should experiment until you get the taste you want, especially if you’re using cheaper gin.

A Collins is normally built in the glass you serve it in, but I like to shake my Collins so the ice in the glass lasts longer; again it’s your choice.  On a more important note, do yourself a favor and avoid using purchased Sour mix or Collins mix in this or any cocktail you make.  If you don’t like Collins, these mixes may be why; I’m convinced that they are the reason that the Tom Collins has fallen into disrepute.  The difference that fresh lemons and limes make in your cocktails is well worth the effort it takes to keep some around the house to squeeze into your shaker.

 

Tom Collins

2 oz Bombay Sapphire® Gin

½ oz Blue Curaçao

freshly squeezed juice of ½ lemon (about 1 oz.)

freshly squeezed juice of ¼ lime (about ¼  oz.)

1 tsp fine sugar

3-4 oz club soda or soda water

Combine ingredients (except the club soda) in a shaker half full of ice and shake to the rhythm of a tom-tom.  Strain into a Collins glass half full of ice cubes and top off the glass with club soda.  Drop in a maraschino cherry.  Stir lightly (use the straw if you’re serving it with one).   Garnish with a slice of orange or a twist of lemon peel.