This vacationing vandal special is, in a big way, a liquid shout out to pals Markie B and Andy S. See, these two fine gentleman (and their wives) came with us the last time we were in Italy (way back in April 2009), and during that trip we discovered the somewhat illusive Viparo. You can read my plea for this Italian amaro here, and learn more about our adventures on that trip. On this trip, I was excited to try and track down this evasive elixir, and then when walking into some big new market/grocery/superstore a couple weeks back there it was, staring down at me–a whole display of new bottles of Viparo. Naturally, I picked one up and now it, along with Italian stalwart Aperol, features big in the below drink. The others players are gin (which starts the story behind the name, as I was picturing the drinker as a British stagecoach robber on vacation) and clementine juice (I found a bunch of clementine’s recently)—everything together equals a fine escape:
Ice cubes
1-1/2 ounce gin
1 ounce freshly squeezed clementine juice
1/2 ounce Viparo
1/2 ounce Aperol
1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add the gin, juice, Viparo, and Aperol. Shake well.
2. Strain into a cocktail glass or little wine glass or flagon. Drink up.
A Note: Can’t find clementine’s? You could sub in orange juice instead. Call it Highwayman’s Parole.
A Second Note: You might want to strain this through a fine strainer to avoid citrus bits in teeth. But no real robber would care about that much.
I swear, this has to be a drink already, with another name. It’s very classically minded, and an obvious relative to drinks such as that which will not be named (but which ends in “tini”). It does use rose’ vermouth, which isn’t as readily available in the U.S. as one would hope (as you might expect, it’s neither as dry as French vermouth or as herbal as Italian vermouth, or dry and sweet vermouth respectively, and light on the tongue like its namesake wine), so it might not yet be named. However, rose’ vermouth has been available then and now, maybe moreso then, even, so some variation of this (maybe with a different bitters, since the Bitter Truth, even with their classical leanings, haven’t been around that long) seems like it has to have been around. I’d check the library, but the library is in Seattle and I’m in the Italy. Some bartender or bar writer out there will, I’m sure correct me. But until then, I’m going with Da Molto Tempo, and having it lots:
Cracked ice
1-1/2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce rose vermouth
1 dash Bitter Truth Aromatic bitters
Lemon twist, for garnish
1. Fill a cocktail shaker or mixing glass with cracked ice. Add the gin, vermouth, and bitters. Stir well.
2. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with the lemon twist.
PS: For those inquisitive ones: it means “a long time ago.”
When we moved to Italy (and, for the almost last time, if you haven’t yet, check my blog Six Months In Italy out to find information on that), we naturally had to make stopping by a grocery store one of the first things we did. Since we’ll be here awhile, we (and our bank accounts) can’t treat it like a vacation and go out to eat every night. And since wife Nat and I both dig being at the stove, it’d be silly not to cook at home, too. And, we couldn’t go without stocking up our liqueur supply either, to start to create a little home bar. I’m sure it’ll expand quickly, but for this starter trip, we solely picked up bottles of our two favorites: Aperol (Nat) and Strega (me). Of such bold beginnings will cocktail history be made. For now, though, what was made and is being made is a drink I call the “Stock-in-Trade.” Cause it uses what we have in stock, and it’s what we’ll make for the Italians to trade for cheese. That at least sounds fun.
One note: I forget to mention in the Six Bar Tools I Took to Italy post below that I also brought what will become (and has become already, really) essential for the Italian home bar, a little traveler’s set of The Bitter Truth bitters. Pal Debbi gave it to me before I left, and it contains little bottles of celery bitters, creole bitters, Bittermens mole bitters, old time aromatic bitters, and orange bitters, which are utilized in the below recipe. The Stock-In-Trade may shade a tad much on the sweet side for some, but it’s a solid sunshine-day recipe, with herbal hints coming at the end of each sip.
Ice cubes
1-1/2 ounces Aperol
1 ounce freshly squeezed orange juice
1/2 ounce Strega
1 dash Bitter Truth orange bitters
1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add the Aperol, orange juice, Strega, and bitters. Shake well.
2. Strain into a cocktails glass, or a pretty wine glass if that’s what’s handy.
I (along with wife Nat) got the nicest batch of ginger snaps recently from pal Jill M (her husband, pal Ed, has a book just out called Mister Skylight that you should buy, by the way). The snaps were a bit more cookie-y than many ginger snaps (so, not crisp like some traditional ginger biscuits, and nowhere near ginger nuts, or, for that matter ginger balls. And yes, I just said ginger balls. But now my traffic skyrockets), but with goodly ginger flavor and a little bit of chewiness. I liked them lots, and ate lots of them. But then I started thinking: there is a baker’s dozen of them, maybe I should make a drink using them as a garnish? This is the way my mind works. And, I was also thinking (I have up to three trains of thought at once: right now, they consist of writing this post, thinking about a post on the comics blog Progressive Ruin that combines Adam West Batman with Dark Night Batman, and musing about how the leaning tower of Pisa doesn’t fall over) that with the holiday season you might want to know about a drink that uses ginger snaps as a garnish. Cause the snaps tend to show up this time of year.
So, I wanted a ginger-y drink, but one also with some other funtastic flavors. Which led to me playing around with this VeeV Acai (it’s a super fruit!) Spirit I’d had sent to me recently and Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur. The Veev is pretty sprightly with some tropical hints, the DdeC is very gingery and touch sweet, and at first the playing around wasn’t coming out quite right–until I added ol’ reliable, sweet vermouth. Its bit of holy herbal-ness completely rounded out the edges of the other two, and all-of-sudden I was in ginger-island-holiday-paradise. I suggest you stock up on all of the ingredients so you can get to this paradise, too (and because you may just need a drink before the month’s out. The holidays aren’t all sunshine).
Ice cubes
1-1/2 ounces VeeV Acai spirit
1 ounce Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth
Ginger snap or cookie, for garnish
1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add everything except the cookie. Shake well.
2. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with that cookie (I had to notch it just a bit for proper rim balancing. But after that, I did a lot of dunking with it).
Hey, hey, happy Friday (if you’re actually reading this on Friday, as opposed to reading it some other day. If the latter is the case, pretend it’s Friday, or dream it’s Friday . . . you know, whatever makes you happiest). While I’m happy it’s Friday, too, and have the phonograph needle poised over the proper Loverboy song, I can’t but be a little wistful for last Friday, when prince o’ bartenders Andrew Bohrer was tending bar at Vessel (as opposed to Naga. See, he stepped in to help out because the other dandy Vessel bartenders were at Tales of the Cocktail, which we’re not gonna talk about since I didn’t get to go. And yeah, I’m bitter). Because of the occasion, and because Vessel’s just a few steps from the salt mine I spend my workdays at, co-miner and pal Andrea and I skipped over to said Vessel after work last Friday, leading to the wistfulness above. Wow, that’s was a long explanation. Anyway, Andrew made us some Captain Handsomes first, but the real hit was his special Sazerac:
Instead of just coating the inside first with absinthe, he went absinthe and Champagne (ou la la), and then had brought in some homemade bourbon simple syrup to use. Holy boozey, friends and neighbors, that was one swell drink. Maybe if I/we beg him, he’ll give us his exact recipe with bourbon syrup recipe tucked into it in the comments. We’ll see. He is a busy man. Check out how focused he is while I moon for the camera:
That’s a busy man. Hanging with Mr. Andrew and pal Andrea is definitely one swell way to while away a late Friday afternoon, and the perfect prescription for forgetting about the busy bee work week, as well as the right-on recipe for rolling into the weekend (and if you can mash more metaphors into a sentence, then more power to you). Just look how happy Andrea is sipping her medicine:
Now, go off and enjoy your evenings, mornings, and afternoons guys and gals (but as Sergeant Phil Esterhaus says, “Hey, let’s be careful out there.”)
I’m sure you’ve had a night like this: you get home, you know you should make dinner (to save money, and to use up what’s going bad in your fridge at this very moment, right now) but you’re having a hard time getting the energy going to get started, and so instead you make a deal with yourself (and maybe your wife or husband too): I/we will go out to dinner, but then I’ll/we’ll fold the unbelievably-large mountain of laundry when I/we get home from said dinner out. That happened to me (and Nat) last night, and the restaurant we ended up going to, to balance out that part of the “deal” was La Casa Azul. We’d never been before, but our pals, tattooed-Nicole and photographer-Josh, had recently A: told us about it, and B: told us it was darn tasty. Well, they’re believable folks, so we figured we’d give it a whirl, even though it’s in a strip mall kind-of a spot. It ended up being just what they said: darn tasty. And cute and cozy too, with both a Frieda Kahlo style and décor focus (and food, in a way) and super nice waiter and chef/waiter (these two guys do it all). If you live in Seattle, take my advice, and make the trip up or over to 14419 Greenwood Ave North. If you don’t live in Seattle, then move here for gawd’s sake. Sadly, our camera ran low on batteries, so I don’t have food pics, but this blog’s about booze anyway. And, luckily, I got some snaps of the lush sangrias before said batteries blew:
The sangria was a touch sweeter than my venerable family recipe (which you can find in about half of my books), but had a great clean and bright taste backed by some fruity but firm red wine, and a full array of fresh garnishes. Nat loved it, and I drank two, so I must have thought it fine as well. We also ate like hogs (or hog-like humans, ala the Island of Dr. Moreau, the book and not either of the movie versions), which is understandable, because the food was done so right, from the spicy salsa to the onion-and-pepper packed queso fundido (which they were nice enough to make for us veggies without chorizo) to the Tlayudes which I had (which was like a giant super thin tortilla–more a tortilla-Italian-style-pizza-combo–topped with black beans, cheese, cabbage, veggies), and the Plato Vegetarianos which Nat had (which was sautéed slabs of squash and nopales, sautéed mushrooms and spinach, and lots of smashed seasoned potatoes with an avocado-tomatillo sauce). Dang, now I’m hungry. Thanks Nicole and Josh for pointing us in the right direction (North, for us).
It being St. Patrick’s Day and all, I figured I’d better at least have a Guinness (and probably a Dublin 8, too, which is a fantastic drink created by bar-master Jeremy Sidener, containing Irish whiskey, orange juice, ginger ale, and a squeeze of lime juice), but then I saw this video from bartender John Blake (via the How2Heroes site), who’s from County Clare, Ireland, though currently working at the Druid in Cambridge, and thought, “why the heck not have a Black & Tan?” And so, I think I will. You should too, and you should watch the video to learn the proper method, and to hear a bit of an Irish accent as well. I mean, today’s not just about the drinking.
It being St. Patrick’s Day and all, I figured I’d better at least have a Guinness (and probably a Dublin 8, too, which is a fantastic drink created by bar-master Jeremy Sidener, containing Irish whiskey, orange juice, ginger ale, and a squeeze of lime juice), but then I saw this video from bartender John Blake (via the How2Heroes site), who’s from County Clare, Ireland, though currently working at the Druid in Cambridge, and thought, “why the heck not have a Black & Tan?” And so, I think I will. You should too, and you should watch the video to learn the proper method, and to hear a bit of an Irish accent as well. I mean, today’s not just about the drinking.
