If you're one of the seventy million or so critics and bloggers (or one of the nine Nielsen families) who are distraught about the hiatusizing of the sitcom Community, GOOD Magazine is here to help. And by help, I mean give you something to drink while we wait for some other NBC turd to get cancelled, so they can get the best sitcom since Arrested Development over the 88-episode threshold and into sweet, lucrative syndication.
You might want to cut back on portions for the Seven & 7, as their recipe is made to serve a few million people at a time. But the variation they call a Six Seasons And A Movie? Well, it might not be streets ahead, but it's certainly a nice Chang from the original. And the real cane sugar will make the drink really pop-POP!
Okay, I'm done. Apologies for the in-jokes, it's been a while.
We here at Cocktailians are as pleased as punch that one of our authors, one Tony Hightower, appeared on Jeopardy! this week, and downright surprised and tickled that he gave this li'l ole blog a shoutout in his chat with Alex. (Yours truly, the other co-author, was on the show some ten years ago, but didn't do nearly as well.)
There are many wonderful books on drinking, some of which truly reside in the canon of greatness. Gary Regan's The Joy of Mixology, David Embury's The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, Harry Craddock's The Savoy Cocktail Book...but the most entertaining one, for my money, is Charles H. Baker, Jr.'s The Gentleman's Companion, originally published in 1939. Baker was a writer for cruise ship newsletters and Town & Country magazine, and he basically ate and drank his way around the world, and wrote about it as enthusiastically and winningly as anyone else out there. Shortly after I picked up a copy (the two volumes have been reissued, separately and under new titles, by Derrydale Press; you want Jigger, Beaker, & Glass: Drinking Around the World), I found myself reading huge chunks of the book aloud to anyone who would listen, for his wonderfully breezy, engaging style. From the introduction:
[Per] hour of elapsed time, man and boy, we probably have been happier when mildly looking into the ruddy cup than at other times. Even granting our lethal morning-after disease we question if willingly we would exchange even our hunting, fishing, or blue water sailing experiences for those mellow and gorgeously spiffed hours!
. . .how about the time after the Art Students' League Ball on 57th Street, across from licit Carnegie Hall, and we went with a girl who unexpectedly turned out to be painted half in gold and half in silver under her evening wrap; later ending up in our Arab Sheikh's burnous and red turned-up-toe shoes doing telemark turns through the snow to lace a pink satin corset on the front of General Sherman's statue at the Plaza? Does anyone dream that raspberry vinegar could produce a triumph like that?
No, I guess not. This easy recipe comes from Baker, and I first was pointed to it by the estimable Chuck Taggart, who not only pointed me towards cocktails but pointed me towards good ones and reliable sources. For years now, I've pored over his recipes, and was always intrigued by Tequila por Mi Amante, or "tequila for my beloved." Why'd it take me so long to try it?
The titular beverage is a simple infusion of strawberries in tequila...but oh, it's so much more. One fine day in early June, when the berries at the farmer's market were at their peak, I washed, hulled, and halved a couple quarts of strawberries, covered them in a large jar with a bottle of reposado tequila (use the 100% agave stuff, and definitely go for the reposado -- you want something with a little age and character), and tucked them into the refrigerator for three weeks. Every day or two, I'd take the jar out of the fridge and gently shake it. Strain out and discard the berries, and you're done, though Chuck suggests letting it age in the fridge for another three weeks or so.
Baker says "This berry process extracts some of the raw taste, adds a rosy dawn touch. Our Mexican drinks it straight always. We opine that handled in the same way as sloe gin, discoveries would be made..." and what do you know, he's right. The finished product is a gorgeous red in color, "like a beautiful, brilliant ruby", and the tequila's acrid bite has been softened by the berries' fruitiness. It's good -- really, really good -- on its own with maybe a splash of lime, but Paul Clarke had an even better idea: use it to make Palomas.
The Paloma is already a fantastic warm-weather cocktail and, to my palate, even more refreshing than the usual Margarita. Here's David Wondrich's take on La Paloma:
[grapefruit soda is] sweet, but not very, refreshingly tart, and a little bitter. What it isn't, however, is alcoholic. . .So to make it Mexican, just pitch in a little tequila, right? Not quite. You know that business with the tequila, the salt, and the lime wedge? Pitch the whole thing in. Then you've got La Paloma, perhaps the most refreshing triple-H remedy ever created. Sweet, sour, bitter (a little), and salty, it's got all four taste groups, plus ice, bubbles, and hooch; what's not to like? We don't know who first assembled it or named it. . . But in the summer, in New York. . .we regard this unnamed genius as a benefactor of humanity up there with Albert Schweitzer and the guy who invented the deep fryer.
But if you sub out the regular tequila with the Tequila por Mi Amante? It sends your taste buds straight into orbit. This recipe looks simple and a bit obvious, I know, but damn if it isn't utterly perfect, especially on one of those triple-H (hundred-degree-heat, hundred-degree-humidity) kind of days.
Strawberry tequila; lime juice; salt; grapefruit soda. I feel like I’m in one of those old Warner Brothers cartoons, in which I take a sip and then my eyes should start spinning like the dials on a slot machine until they come up “JACKPOT!” as bells start to ring, my hat flies off — not that I wear a hat, but stay with me for a moment — and steam blows out of my ears accompanied by a loud, “A-OOOH-GAH! A-OOOH-GAH!”
Yes, it’s that good.
It really is. Try it yourself. You can still get halfway decent strawberries, and six weeks later your tastebuds will thank you.
Tequila por Mi Amante
one 750ml bottle reposado tequila (I used the very good -- and inexpensive -- Camarena.)
1 1/2 to 2 quarts fresh strawberries. (The more organic and in season, the better.)
Wash, hull, and halve the strawberries. Place them inside a large jar and cover with the tequila. (For me, the hardest part about the recipe is finding a jar big enough to let the full bottle of tequila cover the strawberries but that will still fit in my fridge.) Let the berries macerate for three weeks, and gently agitate the jar each day or so. After three weeks, strain out the berries and squeeze the remaining liquid out of them through cheesecloth. Discard the berries and strain the resulting liquid again to remove sediment. Let the infused tequila age for three more weeks or so in the fridge. Serve on the rocks, up, with a splash of lime, or in...
Paloma por Mi Amante
2 oz. Tequila por Mi Amante
juice of 1/2 lime
pinch kosher salt
grapefruit soda (the Mexican-made Jarritos Toronja soda is the way to go here if you can find it, but otherwise try Squirt or Ting. Or make your own with grapefruit juice and simple syrup.)
Build in a Collins glass over plenty of ice, and top up with the grapefruit soda. Give it a quick stir, and stand back.
(Many thanks to Joanna Scutts for the use of her fine photo of the Palomas.)
Tequila por Mi Amante
one 750ml bottle reposado tequila (I used the very good -- and inexpensive -- Camarena.)
I recently hopped a bus up to Providence to check out an exhibition at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. "Cocktail Culture: Ritual and Invention in American Fashion, 1920-1980" opened in mid-April and runs through the end of this month and is well worth a visit, especially if you're interested in fashion. But even if you're not -- no one who knows me or even sees me on the street would peg me as a snappy dresser -- there's enough here to warrant a trip. (I mentioned the exhibition in this space back in April, but wasn't able to get up to Rhode Island till now, and am glad I made the not-arduous-at-all trek)
The first thing you see on arriving at the exhibition's entrance is a well-edited montage of clips involving drinking in various movies. Lots of them were familiar to me, including scenes from "Auntie Mame" (passing along the old "bruise the gin" canard), "Casablanca", "The Thin Man", "Notorious", and others. But I discovered a lot more that I hadn't previously encountered, including this marvelous scene involving a jilted husband and his reactions, from Charlie Chaplin's "The Idle Class":
The clips set the scene nicely before one passes into the exhibition proper, which is arranged into nine themed sections and spans more than 220 objects drawn from the museum's own holdings and items borrowed from other museums and private collections. Cocktail attire, barware, glassware, furniture, and photographs all figure prominently, making for a nicely-balanced selection of artifacts that gives you a good sense of the culture surrounding the cocktail and how it changed over time. The museum refers to it as "the first multi-disciplinary exhibition to explore the social ritual of the cocktail hour through the lens of fashion and design", and delivers on this aim. (The exhibition's catalogue is worth picking up as well, with five meaty, detailed essays on how various factors -- from Hollywood to hats, Harlem, and postwar barware -- shaped cocktail culture and its visual expression.)
The first thing you see is the "Icons" section, which is meant to give the viewer some grounding in the basic look of the cocktail hour: glassware and shakers are presented, as is the truly iconic little black cocktail dress. (As I'd noted, I'm no fashion guy, but the 1954 Dior dress shown here is amazing in its alluring elegance; it highlights the shape of its wearer to arresting advantage, as it carves out three-dimensional space around the figure. All while remaining relatively demure!)
The elegance continues with Norman Bel Geddes' stunning Manhattan cocktail service, all sleek verticals and boxy forms: the bibulous equivalent of the RCA Building (completed a year or two before this was designed) in chrome-plated brass. This was what I coveted more than anything else in the exhibit, with its cool, unfussy Art Deco sophistication and clean lines.
Other sections covered Prohibition's pervasive influence: how it forced men and women together, did away with drinking as an all-male pastime, and mixed company as well as spirits. Prohibition also gave birth to the speakeasy, of course, which was different from pre-Prohibition saloons. The time was known as the Jazz Age, and the exhibition features several flapper dresses with their beaded fringes. (And it's neat to see actual flapper dresses and cloche hats from the Twenties, rather than inferior costume knockoffs.) Harlem's influence on cocktail culture is covered, as is the anti-Prohibition movement as shown by scarves and even needlepoint samplers -- apparently prominent members of the W.O.N.P.R. would make these to show their support for the law's repeal.
Prohibition also forced drinkers and bartenders to travel: steamship lines would advertise drinks such as the "Three Miler" or the "Twelve Mile Limit" (referencing how far offshore boozing would become legal), and bartenders such as the great Harry Craddock fled the dry shores of the United States for wetter foreign climes, resulting in the sublime (and beautiful) Savoy Cocktail Book. This section of the exhibition features lots of more casual, flowing cocktail attire, some gorgeous molded-glass Tiki stemware designed by "Trader Vic" Bergeron himself, a custom-made Japanese bar, sophisticated posters for French ocean liners, and more.
Other sections address wartime austerity, with its rationing of materials, and postwar prosperity, which set the style for how we experience the culture of drinking. As the exhibition materials point out, "cocktail culture as we have come to understand or visually interpret it today originated during this postwar period; the cocktail dress, combining the elegance of evening wear with the informality of the day dress, is the iconic look of this period and continues to define style to the present day." The exhibition continues tracing the history of cocktail fashion from the Fifties to the late Seventies, looking at crazy accessories, casual backyard get-togethers with their Modernist tone, and even clubwear.
I especially enjoyed the Eclipse glassware shown above, designed by industrial designer Russel Wright in 1957. They're fun, yet classy, and emblematic of the "New Casual" approach to the cocktail hour that emerged in the Fifties. By 1951, 70 percent of alcohol bought was consumed at home, according to a contemporary account by Walter Browden in Crockery and Glass Journal. The suburban cocktail party, scene of most drinking, emphasized the pursuit of leisure and fun (as seen in these1950sexhibits at the Museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans, and see also the profusion of cocktail shakers bearing drink recipes, which emphasized to the suburban crowd how easy it could be to make a quality drink.) Russel Wright, together with his wife Mary, even wrote a book about casual living and home entertaining during the increasingly mechanized times. 1950's Guide to Easier Living (here's a nice article about it in the Times from last year), in the words of "Cocktail Culture" catalogue contributor Kristina Wilson, was "modeled on the decorating and etiquette manuals that had proliferated in the interwar years, [and] argued for a new approach to home life. . .an emphatic modernist respect for systems and efficiencies dominated the Guide to Easier Living. . .Not only was the atmosphere of the Wrights' efficient household more casual than previous generations might have aspired to, but it emphasized to the hostess and host the possibility of well-deserved relaxation." The exhibition even includes Hawaiian and other casual sport shirts -- one emblazoned with grills and other barbecue implements -- to underline this theme.
In short, this exhibition is well worth checking out, especially if you're interested in the clothing and fashion angle of the story of cocktails. (I understand that this was a fashion-focused event, and the non-clothing artifacts were very well-chosen indeed. However, I'd have liked to have seen even more items showing changing product design and marketing over the years. Perhaps bottle designs, advertising graphic design and other commercial art, and more glassware and barware would have fit in well.) The catalogue will serve as a useful reference and is a worthy addition to my cocktail library. And I even picked up some cocktail-themed encaustic pieces by Dorothy Imagire at the museum gift shop. (I also fell in love with this painting by Gregory Poulin, but couldn't quite afford it.) They'll go nicely over my home bar.
(Photos, except for the first one showing the exhibition's name, are all courtesy of the Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. Thanks to the RISD Museum's Lani Stack for her assistance.)
I should clarify, though: A few days ago, I attended Speed Rack, a fundraiser for breast-cancer research organized by LUPEC NYC's Ivy Mix and Lynnette Marrero and emceed by USBG's James Menite. It was interesting, because it paired a speed-bartending competition with an appreciation of a quality cocktail. Here's how it worked: Four judges (Dale DeGroff, Audrey Saunders, Julie Reiner, and Time Out NY's Jordana Rothman) would each pick a cocktail:
Then, two bartenders would set about furiously making all four drinks simultaneously (Ivy Mix told Inside F&B's Francine Cohen that "Speed Rack started as a joke I had with a bartender in San Francisco about getting women to double shake on camera") and, when finished, slap a buzzer which recorded their time. The drinks were delivered to the judges, and the judges then evaluated the finished cocktails for temperature, balance, adherence to the recipe, garnish, correct glassware, and all sorts of things, and their demerits would add to the bartenders' times.
The whole thing was a blast, with good music pumping, lots of cheering and energetic and light-hearted trash talk, and a convivial, friendly atmosphere. It was definitely an industry event, but lots of people who weren't in the industry were there and felt welcomed. A $10 donation got you in the door and as much punch (threedifferentones!) or gin & tonic as you wanted, and T-shirts, beer, and food (from Mayahuel, including a fantastic carnitas taco) were available for purchase as well.
Another note: I think we've all been to poorly-organized events (fundraisers often seem to be the worst for this), where food and beverage run out, where there are ponderous delays in the entertainment, where sponsors weren't wrangled well, where decision-making was muddled and no one knew what came next. This event didn't suffer from any of that, and speaks to the organizational abilities of Mix and Marrero.
Yael Vengroff of Painkiller (ahem, PKNY) took top honors in the New York competition, and she'll face off against other regional winners at next year's Tales of the Cocktail.
Wanna see more? Here's a gallery of some pictures from the event:
