Archive for the ‘Cocktails’ Category
November 16th, 2007
A while ago, in a post called Forgotten Boston cocktails, I promised to compile a list of cocktails that either originated in Boston or had ‘Boston’ in their name. I’m making good on that promise and adding two more pages to drinkboston.com: ‘Boston cocktails – old‘ and ‘Boston cocktails – new.’ I have been inspired to take on this task lately because of the recent proliferation of new Boston cocktails. Bartenders all over the city are flexing their mixology muscles and coming up with new recipes inspired by classics. So, even though the Ward Eight is still Boston’s most famous cocktail, who knows if that’ll be the case 20 years from now, when recipes for the Jaguar and the Shiver take the country by storm?
The Shiver is a brand new drink invented by Rob Kraemer, bartender at Chez Henri. Here’s how he describes the origins of his mixture of Campari, Eau de Vie of Douglas Fir and fresh grapefruit juice garnished with an orange twist:
“Called it that ’cause there was a few-week spell this summer where I would make it, or some variation of it, for the chef [Paul O’Connell] and me at the end of a night. Real hot few weeks. He’d been standing next to the fire of the grill all night, and the AC was barely winning the war in the bar, and we both wanted something super cold and clean to finish the night. Did them over crushed ice — which I think I should start asking people if they want it that way — hence the name Shiver.”
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November 8th, 2007
In case you missed it, Christine Liu of the Weekly Dig penned a neat profile of Brother Cleve last week. She aptly observes, “You’d be hard-pressed to deny the influence on the nightlife scene by this music obsessive and cocktail connoisseur.” And for the benefit of rum connoisseurs everywhere, she prints the recipe for Cleve’s tasty creation the Maharaja’s Revenge (see below. Also note that in the Dig’s photo, Cleve happens to be reading the Savoy Cocktail Book, which has been popping up in conversation lately).
In his latest marriage of exotic cocktails and exotica, Cleve joins with tiki drink historian Beach Bum Berry and the band Waitiki to host a full-on tiki fest at Pho Republique in the South End on Sunday, November 18. Admission is free, but you have to RSVP at sippinsafari “at” waitiki “dot” com. See Beach Bum’s slideshow of lost tiki artifacts, including once-upon-a-time tiki bars around Boston. And shake your lei to Waitiki‘s “Exotic Tiki Entertainment from Polynesia and Beyond.” Most important, find out what a real tiki cocktail — with fresh-squeezed juices and aged rums — tastes like. You’ll no longer dismiss these as syrupy “umbrella drinks.” Cash bar opens at 6:00 p.m. See ya there.
Maharaja’s Revenge
2 oz Old Monk rum
1 oz apricot brandy
3/4 oz fresh lime juice
Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Note: Old Monk is an Indian rum with a unique, smoky flavor, so no substitutes. According to the Dig, you can find it at Martignetti’s in Brighton, Marty’s in Allston, Jerry’s in Union Sq, Libby’s in Central Sq and Liquor Land in Roxbury.
I can’t resist adding another rum cocktail that Cleve told me about recently. Here’s the recipe, in the words of the DJ himself.
Jet Pilot
1/4 oz honey*
1/4 oz passion fruit syrup
1/4 oz Lemon Hart 151 rum
1/2 oz lime juice
1/2 oz club soda
1/2 oz dark Puerto Rican rum**
3/4 oz Lemon Hart Demerara rum
3/4 oz dark Jamaican rum ***
1 dash Angostura bitters
Combine everything but the club soda into a shaker with crushed ice. Stir vigorously first to mix honey in, then shake and pour into an Old Fashioned tumbler with a lime shell on the bottom. Add club soda and stir gently. Garnish with speared maraschino cherry. Refill at 30,000 ft cruising altitude.
* honey can be heated first to soften.
** St. Croix Cruzan Dark can be substituted for Bacardi Dark
*** Appleton Extra is recommended
Posted in Cocktails, Events, Rum | 2 Comments »
October 10th, 2007
The LUPEC Boston Tea Party, which took place on Sunday night, was such a blast that I’m guessing attendees are still cursing the Boston chapter of the Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails. Well, I can only say to them: thanks for helping us preserve those endangered cocktails — and supporting Jane Doe Inc. in the process. Don’t worry, your liver will bounce back in time for our next event. Promise.
Prohibition-era and other vintage cocktails included the Scoff Law, the Mother-in-Law and the Bronx. The ladies also created a new cocktail just for the party called the Flapper Jane (recipe below). They circulated through the crowd with silver pourers, topping up people’s teacups (you know, so the fuzz didn’t know we were drinking hooch). Miss Tess had the boat swinging with her modern-vintage singing, guitar playing and trombone blowing, accompanied by a standup bass.
Yes, I said “boat.” The shindig took place on the Merrimac Queen, a permanently docked riverboat in the North End’s Lewis Wharf. The Boston Sailing Center graciously lent it to us for the cause. In fact, many people in the spirits and food biz, plus several local businesses and friends, donated the goods and labor that made the whole thing possible. Read about them on the LUPEC Boston blog.
The Flapper Jane
1.75 oz Plymouth Gin
.5 oz fresh lemon juice
.75 oz Wu Wei tea-infused simple syrup
dash of Peychaud’s Bitters
Shake in a cocktail shaker, strain into a cocktail glass.
Posted in Cocktails, Events | 3 Comments »
September 30th, 2007
I want to like the bar/lounge that is part of the nouveau steak house KO Prime and used to be part of the restaurant Spire, in the posh Nine Zero Hotel (90 Tremont St.). KO Prime is in a great, history-saturated part of Boston — near the Common, the State House, the Athenaeum, the Parker House, Locke-Ober and the Old Granary Burying Ground, where Paul Revere and Samuel Adams are buried. Not bad company. My first visit was promising. I ordered the rum-based Tea Party Cocktail, which was smartly served in a plain white chilled teacup. The rum, spice and citrus flavors evoked a really good colonial-style rum punch. I also sampled the One Hot Minute, a mixture of tequila, agave nectar, lime juice and Lillet Blanc with a few drops of jalapeno Tabasco sauce, served on the rocks in a short glass. Sounds odd, but all the ingredients balanced one another out and constituted a nicely layered, zesty drink.
Unfortunately, the sleek, characterless look of the bar isn’t much changed from the Spire days — though the cowhide covering the low lounge chairs is a colorfully kitschy new touch. In the restaurant itself, the recessed ovals in the ceiling display — inexplicably, but what the hell — details of Grant Wood’s famous painting American Gothic.
Admittedly, KO Prime is about the food. We’re talking about Mr. KO, or Ken Oringer, of Clio fame, and rising young chef Jamie Bissonette, formerly of Eastern Standard. But … the bar happens to come with the place. Some time and effort were obviously put into the list of newly created cocktails. I revisited the Tea Party Cocktail and the One Hot Minute on my second pass through KO Prime. They weren’t as good as previously. The rum came through too bluntly in the Tea Party, and the One Hot Minute was served in a bigger glass. This helped throw the balance of ingredients off so that the drink tasted a little too tequila-y and a little too sweet. I mentioned to the bartender that the drink had been served in a rocks glass previously, and he said he put it in a highball glass because, basically, ‘more is better.’ With a gin and tonic, maybe, but not with a more complicated mixture.
I’m guessing Oringer and Bissonette wouldn’t be so cavalier about changing the proportion of ingredients in one of their dishes. Is it being too nitpicky to ask for consistency in the quality of the cocktails? This would make the bar at KO Prime worthy of its owner’s culinary reputation and its location’s luster.
Posted in Boston bars, Cocktails | No Comments »
September 26th, 2007
A friend of mine recently asked me to create a cocktail for her wedding. I was honored. I immediately began imagining cognac and champagne mixtures with fresh citrus and exotic liqueurs. Then my friend forwarded me the contract from the bartenders she had hired for the occasion. That brought me back to reality. How do you create a festive, wedding-worthy cocktail out of the raw materials found in the standard Marital-Industrial Complex bar setup (a phenomenon that persists no matter how fancy or distinctive the wedding)? You break out the bitters, that’s how.
You know the kinds of booze I’m talking about: Canadian Club, Seagram’s VO, a couple types of vodka, and liqueurs that were big in the ’80s, i.e. Peachtree Schnapps. No bourbon, no cognac and, obviously, no fresh citrus juice. There’d be gin and champagne, though, so I decided to work around those. My friend loves French 75s, after all.
I realized that the cocktail would have to be very simple, given that I would need to batch up the spirits beforehand and transport them to the wedding myself in my Executair 101; there was no prayer that the speed-pouring M.I.C. bartenders would follow a recipe, even if I supplied the called-for ingredients. I could only rely on them to chill the spirit mixture and top it with champagne. Since I love the combination of bitters that make another champagne cocktail, the Seelbach, so distinctive, I thought I’d use two kinds of bitters to bring my gin-champagne mixture to life. After a few experiments, I settled on a 2:1 proportion of Regan’s orange bitters and Peychaud’s bitters.
The bride-to-be sampled my creation and proclaimed it worthy of toasting her union with a man named Jones. I think it’s pretty tasty. See for yourself:
The Mrs. Jones Cocktail
makes 2 drinks
1 oz gin
1 tsp simple syrup
4 dashes Regan’s orange bitters
2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
Champagne
Shake first four ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and strain into 2 champagne flutes. Top with enough champagne or sparkling wine to make the cocktail light pink. Drop a very thin slice of lemon into each glass.
Endnote: I went to cocktaildb.com, and the only other drink I could find that combines orange and Peychaud’s bitters is:
The Metropole Cocktail
1 1/4 oz cognac
1 1/4 oz dry vermouth
1 dash Peychaud’s bitters
1 dash orange bitters
Add cherry
Stir in mixing glass with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.
Posted in Bitters, Champagne, Cocktails, Gin | 1 Comment »
