Cocktailians

The Filmograph Cocktail

As noted earlier, I was lucky enough to pick up a bottle of kola tonic a little while ago.  Dr. Cocktail's writeup of the Filmograph Cocktail in Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails (an excellent, excellent read that's worth picking up) caught my eye, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

Cola is a flavor I really like, but after what is probably too much diet soda consumption, regular colas tend to taste too sweet to me.  (Fentimans' Curiosity Cola is the standout, followed by Boylan's Cane Cola, not that you asked.)  I was very intrigued to try the taste of cola in a cocktail, rather than the usual soft drink form.

Getting back to the Filmograph, I took Doc's suggestion to switch out the sirop de citron (he writes "substitute fresh lemon juice unless you like to drink maple syrup out of the can"), but wound up with a pretty sour drink that wasn't too balanced.  I've noticed, though, that the lemons at my local supermarket seem to vary in acidity; perhaps it's something to do with the time of year, or maybe they source them from different places at different times?  (In the spirit of further research, I guess I'll just have to make myself some Filmographs year-round and compare.  Modern living is entirely about sacrifice for the common good.)

Dropping the lemon juice from 3/4 ounce to 1/2 ounce didn't seem to make much of a difference, so I abandoned that tack.  Instead, I upped the kola tonic from 1/2 ounce to a full ounce, and got a Filmograph that I enjoyed very much indeed.  The kola tonic is richer and more complex than straight cola syrup, and it blends well with the brandy and lemon, creating a very nicely-balanced drink.  (The only problem with them is that I don't want to drink them in the evening, as the caffeine will keep me up till all hours.)

Filmograph Cocktail

• 2 oz. brandy
• 3/4 oz. lemon juice
• 1 oz. kola tonic

Shake with ice, strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with a lemon wedge.

(Sorry to have been away so long, by the by:  a long, hectic week has intervened, with parental visits, much tour-guiding, and not enough cocktailian, um, "research."  This should be rectified, and soon.)

Bloody Marys at Home

In San Francisco, HOME Restaurant is famous as the place with the "Build Your Own Bloody Mary Bar" on Saturdays and Sundays.  What a neat concept - a buffet table set up with pitchers of virgin and nonvirgin bloody mary mix, various kinds of pepper (crushed, pickled, bottled, sauced), pickles of all kinds (pickled okra, pickled asparagus, pickled green beans), celery sticks, olives, lemons, celery salt, horseradish, Cajun spice, lemon pepper, garlic ... it's usually pretty busy, so I'd recommend going really early, or on a very lazy day when you are not in a rush to be anywhere.

Brunch is served Saturdays & Sundays from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

HOME Restaurant
2100 Market Street @ Church (next to Church St. MUNI)
San Francisco, CA 94114
415-503-0333

If you can't make it to HOME for their killer bloody mary bar, here's my own much-complimented recipe:

1 bottle (64 oz.) tomato juice
2 1/2 cups vodka
3/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
4 tbsp. prepared horseradish
2 1/2 tbsp. worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp. hot sauce
1 tbsp. celery salt
1 tsp. freshly ground back pepper
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
Celery sticks
Pickled things of your choice (okra, asparagus, green beans, carrots ...)
Green pimento-stuffed or jalapeño-stuffed olives

In a large pitcher add the horseradish, then add about 1/2 cup of the tomato juice on top.  With a wire whisk, blend well to make a smooth mixture.  (If you add the horseradish after you add the whole bottle of tomato juice to the pitcher, you'll have chunks floating around that won't blend.)

Now, pour in the whole bottle of tomato juice and add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.  Let chill in the refrigerator for a hour before serving.

Pour the mixture in wide-mouth glasses and garnish with celery sticks and choice of pickles/olives.  Sprinkle a little celery salt on top.  Enjoy!

Death in the Afternoon

I'm getting ready to attend the Edwardian Ball this evening, and I found myself in the mood for a cocktail.

But what?  What would be the perfect cocktail for a night like this?

My eyes scanned my liquor cabinet and I perused the contents of the fridge.  Hmm.  I had a bottle of Moët in the refrigerator.  I had a bottle of La Feé absinthe that I bought in Italy on my last trip there.  An idea materialized.

One of Ernest Hemingway's favorite cocktails: Death in the Afternoon.  Perfect.

1 oz. absinthe
5 oz. chilled champagne

The absinthe gave the champagne a beautiful pale green milky color, reminiscent of springtime.  On the nose, you smell the absinthe.  It overpowers the champagne taste, but the champagne bubbles deliver the absinthe flavor to your tongue.  It is quite delicious, and I feel like I should be sitting in a café in Paris wearing a corset and watching a cabaret while flirting with artists and poets.  But be warned; it's quite strong, so sip slowly.  Let the Green Fairy enchant you, but don't succumb to her completely.

Now, off to the Great American Music Hall for an enchanted evening of Edwardian costume, performances, and Gorey stylings!

MxMo Submission: Pêche de Resistance

Mixology Monday is a great idea, and it's something I'd been interested in participating in for a while.  And now, with this blog, I don't really have any excuse not to participate.  The topic this time around is brandy, which seems apropos for a winter month...and it's also a good spirit for my first MxMo, since (as I admitted) I don't really know a lot about it.

When I think of brandy, I think of snifters, of course, and evenings spent in front of the fire, rolling the snifter between one's fingers as one contemplates the vapors.  (Smoking jackets figure somewhat prominently in this reverie, too.)  However, my New York City apartment is equipped with neither fireplace nor snifters (nor smoking jackets), and so I decided I'd have to strike out on my own.

The quintessential brandy cocktail -- and one of my favorite cocktails ever -- would have to be the Sidecar, that heady, complex combination of Cognac, Cointreau, and lemon juice that manages to showcase each of its individual ingredients while simultaneously achieving greatness beyond the sum of its parts.  I've had some truly amazing Sidecars -- I single out the ones at Angel's Share and Pegu Club in particular -- so I was anxious to try my own take on the cocktail.

I didn't have any peach brandy in the house, but I did have a bottle of Védrenne "Les Royales de Nuits-Saint-Georges" Crème de Pêche de Vigne that my parents generously brought back from France a few years ago.  It's great stuff, with an intense peach flavor, and I thought it'd go nicely with the brandy.  And then I got to thinking (always a dangerous thing) about the poached peach with cinnamon that I'd had as a dessert in a restaurant somewhere, and I realized that the clove-cinnamon flavor of Angostura bitters might work well with the crème de pêche.  Some experimenting with the Sidecar proportions (as DrinkBoy notes, there are lots of different ways to approach it) and I came up with this:

Pêche de Resistance
(named by the inimitable Czeltic Girl)

• 2 oz. brandy
• 1 oz. crème de pêche
• 3/4 oz. lemon juice
• 2 healthy dashes Angostura bitters

Shake with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and serve with a twist.

Depending on things like the kinds of brandy (it'd be interesting to try this with a drier Cognac, such as Hennessy) and  crème de pêche (the Vedrenne is pretty sweet and is only 18% alcohol, far less than Cointreau's 40%) you use, not to mention the acidity of the lemon juice, you may have to tinker with the proportions a bit.
 

UPDATE: The MxMo roundup is now up at SLOSHED!  Many thanks to Marleigh for organizing and hosting it all.

The Twentieth Century Cocktail

I spent the early part of Christmas Eve at The Swizzle Stick Bar at Café Adelaide in New Orleans, being very well taken care of by the Queen of New Orleans Cocktails, Lu Brow, along with her excellent bartenders Mike, Kevin and Tommy. I began the evening with a most excellent Sazerac, continued with a superb Pegu Club (in which the teaspoon of lime juice came from two muddled lime half-wedges, which was a neat idea) and finally this one, which I was very pleasantly surprised to see on The Swizzle Stick's spectacular cocktail menu (even better than the last time I was in, unsurprisingly, given that Lu is the Queen and Ti and Lally, proprietors of the restaurant, are The Cocktail Chicks). It's a lovely, lovely drink, created in 1939 to commemorate Henry Dreyfus' gorgeously designed locomotive that pulled the 20th Century Limited between New York and Chicago.

The Twentieth Century Cocktail

1-1/2 ounces gin.
3/4 ounce Lillet blanc.
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1/2 ounce white crème de cacao.

Shake with cracked ice for 10-12 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a long lemon peel.

Is it too early to create a Twenty-First Century Cocktail?