A perfect heat wave cocktail: the Remsen Cooler

I was trying to think of a good, cold, wet cocktail that wasn't a mojito and I remembered the Remsen Cooler, in particular, David Wondrich's version I read about in Esquire magazine on an airplane years ago. I even managed to find a link to it, with the photo, here (don't we live in marvelous times).

This is basically a glorified scotch and soda but what I like about it is that it's a rare instance where a flashy presentation—peeling an entire lemon in a single coil—really transforms the flavor of the drink. It's more lemon oil than lemon juice. And it looks really elegant, don't you think?

Remsen Cooler (based on David Wondrich's recipe)

• .5tsp powdered sugar (I often skip it)
• soda (I use seltzer—one of these days I need to figure out if club soda is really good for something)
• 2 oz scotch
• long lemon spiral

Dissolve sugar in some soda, add spiral, add rocks and liquor, top with soda.

***

PS The wife had a Do Be Careful, which solved the conundrum of the peeled-yet-unjuiced lemon. I also read somewhere that it's good for breastfeeding. Isn't it?

• 1 1/2 oz. Gin
• 1/2 oz. Cointreau
  1/2 oz. Lemon Juice (or to taste)
• splash of Grenadine

Shake with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a maraschino cherry. Read more!

Two Excellent Tequila Cocktails

Long time no post. And even less frequent posting to come, I'm afraid. But I haven't given up yet! The other day I had a bunch of bitter oranges (above) lying around so I I made a tequila invention of mine I'd forgotten how good it is. In fact I have two tequila cocktail recipes to share after the jump, both mexicanizaciones of classic cocktails.



Bitter Orange Margarita
Some of you faithful readers may know that I am a fan of bitters and have made my own on occasion, leading to a certain small yet nonetheless outsized fame (I'll be featured in the summer 2010 issue of Edible Brooklyn, by the way—will post here when it's out.). One by-product of gathering bitter orange peel for making orange bitters is a lot of juice. Bitter orange juice is used for marinading meat in the Carribean, for example the simple and tasty Mayan pork chop preparation, poc chuc (pork chops or steaks marinaded with bitter orange juice, salt and pepper and not much more--unlike the recipes I'm finding online. It's also mixed with recado de achiote to make the marinade for the sublime cochinita pibil.
I've also found that it makes an excellent substitution for lime in a margarita. In fact, I'll make a stand and say that I like it as much if not more. Give it a try.


3 oz of tequila blanco (silver)
2 oz bitter orange juice
1 oz Cointreau
dash of orange bitters (optional)

Shake with ice and serve up or on the rocks, salted rim optional. I hadn't thought of a good garnish to go with this--bitter orange peel is pretty ruddy-looking--but I grabbed a spearmint sprig from our front stoop just so the photo wouldn't look too dull. Turns out it's a good choice, the little hint of mint complements the margarita nicely.

(BTW I suppose you can't mexicanize a Mexican cocktail. What this is is a yucatanización, ¡sí señor!)

Manjatitlán
This is a straight adaptation of a Manhattan, hence the name (I also like Manjatan). It's a simple switcheroo of tequila for rye but the result is a completely different drink. The quality and kind of tequila makes a big difference here. A reposado (gold) will be very good but I find it works even with a cheap white tequila like Viuda de Romero.


3 oz. tequila blanco
1 oz. sweet vermouth
2 dashes orange or angostura bitters

Shake with ice and serve up.
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!

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!