Home-made crème de cassis, part two

Back in July I put a jar of blackcurrants and grain alcohol. Yesterday, I got the jar out of the cupboard to do the last steps to make it crème de cassis, with the help of my devoted assistant, Aldara.

This summer, Jessica made some jelly from the other currants we harvested—redcurrants and gooseberry. She ordered a jelly strainer on-line so I set it up to strain the currant-infused grain alcohol into a pot:



Assistant Aldara enthusiastically spooned out the first few scoops of currants, dropping only a small handful into the pot. I then poured the rest of the mixture into the strainer and we waited a half hour or so for it to strain out all the alcohol:



I ended up with a little over 2 cups. Most of the recipes I found on-line call for an equal amount of water and an enormous amount of sugar: over a pound for 4 cups of liquid. I decided to underdo both other quantities so I added a cup and a half of water and started with 8 oz. of sugar. I brought it to a boil and cooked the mixture for 2 minutes (I don't know how rigorous a timing that is in terms of sterilization, but after all there's a hell of a lot of booze in there!). I let it cool and after tasting it, decided it was a little too bitter. Not bad, but the crème's role is partly as sweetener after all. I added another 4 oz. or so of sugar and heated the pot enough to melt it.

I poured it (once more through a strainer (and funnel, of course)) into this pretty bottle I have that used to contain Los Danzantes mezcal (there's also some in a less pretty bottle):




Since our household is awaiting a second baby there's not a lot of drinking going on these days, but I think I'll hazard a little kir for me and th'wife at lunch today.

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Home-made crème de cassis

A couple of weeks ago I put up my annual batch of crème de cassis using the bounty from this year's garden. Here's the black currant bush, already denuded:

And here's a colander full of fresh black currants:

The first time I made this, a few years ago, I found just one recipe on line (in French) after a considerable amount of searching. I tried to search again and now, of course, there are tons of different recipes (still almost all in French) on a variety of websites and message boards. The most interesting departure from what I did before was on where you macerate the currants in burgundy wine. Mm, I think I'll try that next year! Another interesting detail a lot of recipes featured was to put in a few leaves from the plant as well. To me they had a spice, slightly anisey taste:


The recipe is straightforward. Measurements vary but basically you clean the currants and cover them with grain alcohol (I'm all out, good thing it's legal in NY, now—at least that's what I've heard).


Now the currants need to macerate. The biggest change to my method this time around is that whereas previously I have steeped the currants for three days, I found that most recipes recommend something more like three months, so I'm giving it a try.


The jar is sitting in a cupboard and come September I'll strain out the alcohol, boil it, and add some water and sugar—a bit less of both than is called for with the aim of getting a less-sweet and more "currant-forward" liqueur. I'll post photos when the time comes. Read more!

Some Favorite Cocktails: The Sidecar

I made some new friends recently and had them over for drinks for the first time. I didn't know much about them but I knew exactly which cocktail to make for them: the Sidecar. It's the perfect cocktail when you want to make something fancy but you're not sure what kind of drinkers your friends are (of course you're assuming you're friends are drinkers; if not I guess you can have a double for yourself). The Sidecar is sweet (but not too sweet) and lemony enough to appeal to most palates but the the cognac (or cheap brandy...) makes it sharp and complex enough to keep it interesting. In this sense it's actually quite similar to a well-made Margarita.

When I was living in Chicago briefly, in the fall of 1997, Jessica and I went to the opening of a new bar (name and location since forgotten) that was one of my first encounters with the classic cocktail revival. In celebration of the new establishment they were serving free Sidecars and their own very tasty take on a Gimlet (which maybe I'll describe in a later post). Both were made with fresh citrus and served in cocktail glasses laced with confectioner's sugar. That's more sweet than I tend to like things these days but at the time it was a revelation and the evening as a while was one of the key events that set me on the path to being the cocktail-obsessive I am today.

Making a Sidecar is easy. My version is something like:

2 oz cognac (or decent but cheaper brandy... I use Raynal's sometimes)
1 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1/2-3/4 oz Cointreau

Shake with ice, strain into cocktail glass and garnish with a lemon twist. (Confectioner sugar rim optional but fun once in a while.)
Incidentally this is the same ratio I use for a Margarita, obviously replacing cognac with tequila blanco.

If I haven't already written it elsewhere, I think the key to good "sweet" cocktails is to underdo it a bit with the sugary liqueurs like Cointreau. Read more!

Manly drinks with Rachel Maddow

From Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (who by the way does a fantastic Barry Gibb (I'm sure everyone else in the world already knows this but I'm catching up on my SNL skits on hulu.com (Justin Timberlake is my new favorite celebrity))), Rachel Maddow (with whom I predict I shall someday make cocktails) shows how to make a Bijou. Read more!

back in the white

After reading about Blackle and the ecological savings of white text on black screen, I made this blog with a black background template. However, the problem is I HATE reading white text on black, it's very headache-inducing. So until someone comes up with a better solution to the energy usage of the glaring-yet-legible white screen, I'm switching to the same basic template I use on my other blog. Read more!

some favorite cocktails: The Preview

From the cocktail I drink the most to perhaps the favorite cocktail I drink the least. You have to be in the right mood for the slightly odd Preview and it requires a delicate ratio of ingredients not to make it too sweet. (I find this is always the case with cocktails that involve Cointreau.) It shares with my martini recipe that classic proportion of main ingredient plus small amount of secondary ingredient plus accent.



I read about this in Terry Sullivan's "Mixology" column in GQ, which I liked a lot the occasional times I would find myself reading that magazine (on airplanes primarily). Sullivan claims this cocktail was a favorite of "that other guy in the Rat Pack", Peter Lawford. This link appears to be an unattributed copy of the recipe (and anecdote) as it appeared in Sullivan's column.

Two unusual things about this cocktail are that it features Cointreau without its usual citrus juice accompaniment and that it is accented with a splash of anise liqueur. What made me want to try this one out—aside from the gin, of course—is that I had enjoyed the combination of orange juice (Cointreau's underlying flavor) and anise liqueur in the embarassingly-named Monkey Gland.

When I get this one right—and I confess I often put in too much Cointreau—this is a rather exotic-tasting drink, the sweetness of triple sec countered by the anisey herbiness of the liqueur. The louching of the anise also creates a beautiful pearlescent glow, like a martini with some plutonium in it.

Here's how I make it:
about 3oz. gin
scant 1/2 oz. cointreau
a few drops of absinthe or pastis

You can lace the inside of the cocktail glass with the anise liqueur but I usually just dump it all in the cocktail shaker, shake it not-too-hard (it's nice to keep this one as clear as possible), and pour. I'll sometimes garnish it with orange peel if I have some handy. Read more!

some favorite cocktails: The Martini

With this post I'm starting a new feature where I'll talk a bit about some of my favorite cocktails and give my recipes for them.

I might as well kick it off with the classic gin Martini. It's a perennial and it never disappoints. The word "bracing" seems to have been invented for that thrilling shock to the system of the first sip of a very cold Martini. I never get tired of its icy, herbaceous, astringent effect—it really is as much of an "effect" as a taste.

An advantage of the Martini is that despite its mystique it is actually quite easy to make--it's like a soufflé in that sense. There's no real trick, just choice of gin (I like Bombay Sapphire and Plymouth the best, Junipero's also good...), the ratio of vermouth (I like mine relatively wet; I've never measured but I don't use a mister or "glance at the bottle", I give a generous pour), and making it good and cold. Since it's made of stuff-in-a-bottle it's actually a much safer thing to order at a bar than a sidecar or margarita, where you never know (even if you ask, sometimes) if you're going to end up with sour mix.

I'm agnostic on the shaken versus stirred debate. The best argument for stirring I've seen is that it gives you a limpid transparency; at the same time, I actually like the little floes of ice chips that float in the slightly clouded liquid of a cocktail than's been shaken very hard.

All that said, the one thing that is never discussed in Martini-making is the role of the vermouth. If you've ever tasted two dry vermouths together you'll find that they differ quite radically in taste. Noilly-Pratt tastes to me (I find I'm terrible at describing flavors--whenever I describe something as sweet everyone else in the room will insist it's sour) dry and tangy while Martini & Rossi is sweeter and more floral. It makes a difference in how the Martini turns out. I'm currently leaning towards the Martini & Rossi.

Over time I've made a more-or-less permanent conversion to adding bitters to my Martinis, to the point where if I don't it's because I'm looking for a change of pace—something exotic! Apparently many traditional "Martinis" from the evolutionary miasma that led to the current reigning recipe featured bitters. To me the essential, almost irreducible formula for a great cocktail is something like three parts primary ingredient, one part secondary ingredient, plus accent, and a Martini with bitters may be its finest expression.

So here's my typical Martini:

a goodly amount (3oz?) of gin
a generous splash of dry vermouth
several dashes of whatever bitters strikes my fancy: most often Angostura but also orange, grapefruit (from Fee Bros.), or my 5 Spice bitters.

Shake hard and strain into a cocktail glass.

I always garnish it with a lemon twist—or nothing at all (particularly if I'm using bitters, which after all plays a similar accentual role). Read more!