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.

©the wonderful Virgil Partch

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!

¡No Patxaran!

Patxaran or Pacharán is a Basque liqueur that I discovered in Spain a few years ago. I had it first in Gijón or maybe in La Coruña outside the País Vasco and later tried some in Bilbao and San Sebastián, where I also bought a bottle to bring home. The ingredients are simple: it's anise liqueur infused with "endrinas" which are apparently sloe berries. There's also a bit of coffee bean and, according to this pretty detailed Wikipedia article, vanilla. It's often home-made or at least regionally produced (the bottle I brought home was made by the store where I bought it). People drink it on the rocks and it's a wonderful lazy summer afternoon drink when you want to sit in an outdoor bar watching people go by.

I made my own bottle—after a fashion—this summer and it was a passable success, though I don't know that I would serve it to a Spaniard!

It came about because Jessica had a bunch of different currants from our garden. We'd already made some jelly, some very good crème de cassis and some pretty but fairly inedible spiked red currants and were trying to think of something new. Then I remembered a bottle of Cristal aguardiente from Colombia that someone had left after a party at our house. When I finally got around to sampling it I was surprised to find that it was anise-flavored (aguardiente is usually unflavored unless otherwise labeled; not so in Colombia it turns out). I dedided to make a variation on patxaran, replacing the "endrinas" with a mixture of black and red currants and gooseberries. I steeped the currants in the aguardiente for a few weeks and also threw in a a teaspoon of coffee grounds. That turned out to be a mistake as it was a bit too much and it was really hard to filter out effectively. Next time I'll just throw in a couple of whole coffee beans.


I filtered it a few times and bottled it in the unattractive Cristal bottle (it says something about how rushed and between-other-projects this was that I didin't even remove the label). As I said, I wouldn't enter it into a competition but it turned out all right, just a little tart and with the coffee undertone a little too pronounced. Since it's not made with sloe berries I decided to call it ¡No Patxaran!

I'm sorry about not having taken photos of process but this blog can't be a high priority project, and there's a limit to my wife's tolerance of this kind of time-frittering:
[cartoon by Virgil Partch, from Bottle Fatigue] Read more!

Five Spice Bitters Follow-Up Report

Here's a photo of a little eye-dropper bottle full of my finished Five Spice Bitters. I'm happy to say it turned out quite well. The anise flavor of the star anise definitely dominates. the first thing I did was to have about an ounce of the bitters on the rocks with some water and it tasted more or less like pastis--which is why I like it so much. If I make it again, however, I'll try to balance out the flavors some more. I'm particular curious about how far you can go with the szechuan pepper. A mildly spicy bitters sounds intriguing although a little iffy (I've never tried it, but I've heard that some bartenders add a dash of tabasco sauce to their martinis—I think it may be a fad that's come and gone in NYC).

I didn't end up adding any coloring. The natural color is a pale blonde, like tequila reposado, and it looks nice. In any case, I looked around for Jamaican burnt sugar, as I had seen in it local supermarkets here in Sunset Park, which has a big Carribean community. As it turns out, I seem to have missed the swan song of this particular minor ethnic food ingredient. I even asked the manager at Key Foods, a South Asian looking man who is probably from Trinidad or French Guyana and he scratched his had and said, "no, I don't think we've carried that for years." I could swear I'd seen it on the shelves--in fact, at least two different brands--in the last year or so. It's too bad because I was curious as to whether burnt sugar would truly add only color as promised or if it wouldn't sweeten the bitters just a bit as well. If I track some down in one of the smaller grocery stores I'll give it a try and report back.

As for recipes, I've tried adding my Five Spice Bitters as a replacement for angostura/orange bitters in martinis and manhattans with great success. I even made a sazerac and used Five Spice Bitters in place of absinthe and it was quite good. So what I've found is that you can use these bitters for an anise-y replacement of the usual bitters, or you can use it in place of absinthe/pastis when it's called for in very small amounts as in two favorites of mine, The Preview and the "New Standard" Manhattan (skip the "gum syrup" though). Read more!

Five Spice Bitters in progress

My five spice bitters have been steeping for a few weeks. Today I strained off the alcohol and put it back in a jar. I broke up the bigger spices and put them in a pan and simmered them in water for five minutes or so. (photo above) I put this water-spice mixture in a jar and will let it sit two days before straining it and combining it with the alcohol again. I'll decide at that point if I want to add burnt sugar for coloring or not. Read more!

Five Spice Bitters

I was thinking about Chinese food recently and noticed that the ingredients of the typical "five spice" powder used to flavor Chinese and other Asian cuisines have a relationship with the base spices of many bitters recipes—things like clove, cinnamon, and anise. So I've decided to attempt a batch of "five spice bitters". There are apparently various ways to interpret the five spices you use to make the mixture. I admit I only researched the internet so if anyone has more detailed information I'd be grateful. Wikipedia notes that the basic principle is to combine "sweet, sour, bitter, savory, and salty". I found an example of one recipe here. After comparing that recipe to the ingredients listed on the jar I have in my kitchen (as far as I can tell the same one pictured on the Wikipedia site) and reviewing the helpful assortment of vintage bitters recipes in the book Imbibe!, I settled on the following combination:

2 star anise
1 tsp roasted szechuan pepper
4 cloves
2 inch-long sticks cinnamon
1 slice fresh ginger

I put these in a jar (photo above) with one cup of Everclear (check out the label below) grain alcohol (which I bought in Connecticut but which a local merchant has told me is now legal again in NY) and it is currently steeping for a few weeks. I shake it every day.


After two weeks or so, I'll strain this and add a cup of water and maybe some burnt sugar for coloring (this is a typical step for adding color to bitters though I haven't tried it on my batches of orange bitters) and we'll see how it turns out. The wild card is the szechuan pepper: I have no idea if this will make the bitters spicy hot or not.
I'll report back in a few months after I've had a chance to experiment with it a bit. Read more!