You know, you can’t have desserts every day. Well, maybe you can! But for me, that’s a waistline-bursting situation. So, on those dessert skipping days, I try to just have a nice dessert drink (haha). Of course, my first choice is the king of the smooth, creamy, sweet cocktails drinks the Alexander, which people have been adoring since 1916 (not me, I’m old but not that old). Crafted of gin, crème de cacao, and cream, it’s of course a dream. But sometimes dreams can change! Today, my sweet-tooth sweeties, that change is coming via Dumante Verdenoce pistachio liqueur. As you might guess by the title accent, it’s crafted in Italy using Sicilian pistachios, and delivers a lush, nutty flavor, which subs in easily here for the crème de cacao, allowing us to keep the original’s smooth velvety-ness, with the gin accents and add some nuttiness nutty. Tasty. Enough that you could skip dessert.
Years and years ago I featured here on the Spiked Punch a quote we’ll call A Man’s Head Cocktail Part I, at least we will now, as today we are having A Man’s Head Part II! Both are from the George Simenon book of the same name, a book featuring his character par excellence, Inspector Maigret, the taciturn, sometimes slow-moving, relentless, irreplaceable Parisian policeman, and a book (you may have guessed this!), I recently re-read. It was as good this time as the first time, whisking you away in a bygone Paris through prose that is as unmistakable as our Inspector. This case circles around a man waiting to be hung for a double murder, but a double murder Maigret has come to believe the man didn’t commit – so he basically breaks him out of prison, and lets the chips fly. They come to fly around a bar for part of the time, the famous La Coupole, which is where the action, as it is, is taking place in the below. In that quote, a Rose cocktail is ordered, which if you don’t know (I had to double check), is a mix of London dry gin, Heering cheery liqueur, and dry vermouth, garnished with a cherry. My guess is there are about 137 Rose cocktails, but this is a classic number that you see referred to as “French style,” making me believe it’s the Rose below!
And William Kirby, pushing his way between two people, held out a hand across the mahogany bar.
“How are you, Bob?”
Mrs. Kirby went straight up to the yellow-haired Swedish girl, kissing her and talking volubly in English.
The newcomers had no need to order drinks. Bob promptly handed Kirst a whiskey and soda, and mixed a Rose for his young wife, asking:
“Back from Biarritz already?”
“Only stayed three days. It was raining worse than here.”
I’m realizing now, after a period of reflection, that I didn’t actually say inThe Five Bells and Bladebone Part I Cocktail Talk what the book was about, outside of a general overview into Martha Grimes books being named after pubs (or at least a fair portion of them and all the ones I’ve read). The non-description is a bit of an oversight, not that I’m here on the Spiked Punch to do book reviews. But I would be happy to try and entice you to read the books we Cocktail Talk from, if in a light manner that doesn’t interrupt your drinking. With that: a bit of a TW (twat-waffle) is found after being murdered and stuffed into a secretaire, which has been delivered to an antique dealer, who resides in the same town as wealthy ex-lord (he gave up the title, if you’re worried) Melrose Plant, bestie of the intrepid and dreamy (at least to some of the ladies) Inspector Jury (star solver in the Grimes pantheon). From there, there’s a confusing case of identity, some British village characters, a dip into Thames-adjacent London (where our titled pub is), and lots of gin. In the below quote for a start.
As she poured a small Niagara of gin into the pitcher, Jury said, “I’m sorry. Were you expecting a friend?”
“Only you, Superintendent.” She filled the cap of the vermouth bottle, poured half back in the bottle, and added this breath of vermouth to the pitcher.
“Olive? A twist? I prefer a bit of garlic rubbed round the glass myself. Or would you rather have vodka?”
“The search for the perfect Martini, is that it?”
“The perfect Martini, Superintendent, is a belt of gin from the bottle; one has to be slightly civilized, however.”
For our last stop (so far – they do a lot of drinking in this book, so there may be more in the future, which is funny in a way to say as the book takes place in the past) in the Chicago of Howard Browne’s well-worth-reading Pork City (a book based on a real event from the rollicking prohibition era), we step away from the bootleggers to get a view into the health care profession of the time – at least one tell-it-like-it-is doctor! Be sure to catch the Pork City Part I and Pork City Part II Cocktail Talks, too, or Alphonse Capone might have to have a word with you!
Dr. Gilchrist, not noted for his bedside manner, had made it clear six weeks earlier that he had no patience with idiots. “Any sonvabitch,” he roared at Jake, “who smokes fifteen cigars a day, swills bathtub gin, sleeps six hours a night, and spends the other eighteen stewing over the goddamn stock market is gonna end up with an ulcer. Duodenal. You hear what I’m sayin’, asshole?”
I believe there are people, industrious, good people, who garden well all year round, and have yards and gardens in much better shape than mine. For me, the gardening starts soon, usually late April/early May. And even then, to be honest (as we are here), I’m not a stupendous gardener, and find myself putting it off more than putting on the gloves to get everything in order. However! I have found that one of these here drinks helps make the gardening more palatable. Pull a weed, take a sip! You should try it. One warning: this here cocktail, when you look at it, sounds an odd pairing, like putting nightshade next to your pea patch. But the three ingredients actually go swell together! There’s gin, to start, and I’m using Copperworks stellar gin here. And then Sidetrack Distillery’s one-of-a-kind Shiso liqueur, made from the Asian herb it’s named after, and delivering an herby, botanical beauty one must taste to believe. Then, and this is the odd side, as you might thing the Shiso and this would go well, the third ingredient is the orange-y and teensy bitter-y aperitif, Aperol. It’s a magical match, honestly, and perfect planting of three different tasty items (planted into a shaker and then your mouth, that is), and makes even the most boring yard work a more palatable affair (no mechanized yard tools when drinking, please).
Pork City, how did I miss out on you for so long? I blame society (as a punk once said), or just myself for not knowing more about author Howard Browne. Not the English bishop (who I also know little about), but the editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures who also wrote mysteries and then for TV – including the ever-loving Rockford Files! One of his mysteries was the book Pork City, though calling it a mystery only alludes to where it’d be filed in a bookstore or library, as there’s no mystery to the murder that happens in it. But let me back up. Taking place in prohibition-era Chicago, Pork City is based on a true story, the murder of a Trib reporter, and has a host of real-life folks in it (including Alphonse Capone himself as a mainish character), and centers around real Chicago spots of the times. All of which makes it sound a little like a historical retelling, which it is, in a way, but with more pizzazz, more thrills, more snappy dialogue, and more booze, as well as real insight into the workings of police and the mobs of the time. It’s a hoot and a humdinger, and for one like myself whose interests intersect in booze and the bang from a gun, well, an ideal read. So ideal we’re gonna have a couple of Pork City Cocktail Talks, starting with the gin-y below number.
She angrily brushed away a tear, went to the bar, and refilled her glass with Gordon’s gin (or so the label claimed). After adding a minuscule amount of vermouth, she dropped in two ice cubes from the silver-trimmed bucket and crossed to one of the living room’s wide windows. The newly installed Lindbergh beacon, revolving from high atop the Palmolive building a few blocks to the south, put a slashing path of light against the night’s cloudless sky. Loop-bound traffic drifted soundlessly along Lake Shore Drive, past the Potter Palmer castle and the long stretch of beach at Oak Street and on into Michigan Avenue.
Well, I apologize – I really should have had this cocktail up on February 29, as that was leap day and this is a leap year and this drive, or drink, is leaping (with flavor! And in the name). It’s not the Leap Year, which is another drink, but somewhat related, and, well, just would have been good to have on or nearer to the actual leap day, though I suppose I’m still having this drink within a month of it, and darn it, the drink’s still good (and related in little ways to other drinks like the Sidecar and various other gin and Cointreau and vermouth and lemon drinks, so if you like that or those drinks, then you will be fond of this I’ll bet, maybe even leaping over things to have it), and sometimes that can weigh even more than an appropriate story, though as I’ve told you time and time again, good stories make good drinks even better. So, maybe pretend it’s still leap day? Having a couple of these tangy, botanical, citrusical, drinks might help with the leaping, or lead to both leaping and jumping. Maybe skipping too! Which would be fun.
The Leaping Drive
Ice cubes
2 ounces gin (I used Washington-made Kur gin, and it served me well)
3/4 ounces Blanc vermouth (I used Dolin, and it was a reliable delight)
Well, what can you say about Charlie Dickens that hasn’t already been said – much of it in the highly-regarded biography Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin, which I’ve been reading, and which is very well done, very researched, very well-written, and very in-depth. Reading biographies isn’t always my thing, I’d rather usually just read the work, but I’m a fairly decent Dickens-head (heck, read all the Charles Dickens Cocktail Talks to see), and had just visited the awesome Charles Dickens Museum in London, so thought I’d take the bio plunge. And I’m glad I did! But also a bit sad, because the more you learn, sometimes it’s too much. And though it’s a great bio book, she didn’t mention the greatest of all Dickens characters, Diogenes the dog, so that was a big black mark. But balanced by the below quote, where she’s talking about Dickens the party thrower, parties which certainly seem ones I would have enjoyed, and where Fortnum was involved (I’m a big Fortnum & Mason fan as well as a Dickens fan).
Accounts of his entertaining there, over which he sometimes presided in a velvet smoking coat, suggest that there was a high consumption of iced gin punch and hot brandy punch, much smoking of cigars, and delicious food brought in from Fortnum’s – pickled salmon, pigeon pie, cold meats, and hot asparagus – oysters from Maiden Lane and sometimes a baked leg of mutton stuffed with veal and oysters, a dish of his own invention.
