February 10th, 2009
One question I get a lot is how and where one can learn to mix cocktails (though not the kind pictured here). How about attending a cocktail class? A few places around town offer instruction for making serious drinks. While these classes won’t turn beginners into professionals, they’ll at least have you hobnobbing for an evening with the experts and picking up some good techniques and recipes.
I’ll probably have to start an ongoing list at some point, but here are the classes I know about so far.
Craigie on Main: They have already had two cocktail classes, which sold out very quickly. More are in the works. To get the latest announcements, sign up for the newsletter at the Craigie on Main website. (Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the link.) $45 per person.
Eastern Standard: I don’t know if any are coming up, or how much they cost, but I know ES has offered some in the past. Again, the newsletter will help here.
Sel de la Terre (State St.): I was pretty blown away to hear about a series of cocktail classes at the original Sel de la Terre (there are now three), which Frank McClelland and Geoff Gardner of L’Espalier fame opened in 2000. Head bartender Ted Kilpatrick is leading classes with titles like “Prohibition Era Cocktails — What the Cool People Were Drinking from 1920-1933” and “History of the Martini … and Why that Bright Green Apple Thing You are Holding is Not One.” Seriously. I don’t know Ted, and I’ve never had a cocktail at Sel de la Terre, but now I’m forced to investigate. $21 per person with a 21% discount if you stay for dinner.
Stir: It’s worth going to a cocktail class at Barbara Lynch’s teaching kitchen at least once, even if these classes are the most expensive in town. Stir fits no more than 10 or 12 people, so you get to spend some quality time with your instructor, who is likely to be John Gertsen, Ben Sandrof, Misty Kalkofen or — soon enough — any of the other talented bartenders at Lynch’s bar Drink. $95-$125 per person.
Permalink | 8 Comments | Filed under Books & resources, Cocktails | Tags: Boston bars, cocktail classes, Craigie on Main, eastern standard, Sel de la Terre, Stir
February 4th, 2009
I’m finally getting my ass in gear over what to do with those little items that are worth mentioning but don’t warrant an entire post: I’m filing them in series of posts called Nips, after those little bottles of booze you get on airplanes, in hotel minibars or at liquor-store checkout counters. (Fun fact: Until 2005, South Carolina liquor laws dictated that bartenders make drinks with nips instead of free-pouring or measuring into a jigger. Holy idiocracy.)
1. Do you remember those ads for Miller High Life in the late ’90s and early ’00s? They were understated little vignettes capturing the modern alterna-male’s winking appropriation of bygone “guy-ness,” from an era when men had bowling trophies and dedication to a particular brand of beer. The ads were unlike anything else you saw on TV. That’s because they were directed by Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, Standard Operating Procedure). Since documentary filmmaking — even Oscar-winning documentary filmmaking — doesn’t pay the bills, Morris, who lives in Cambridge, has done lots of ad work. I’d like to thank A Continuous Lean, Michael Williams’ terrific blog on American design, for reminding me of the Miller ads. You can watch all the spots here.
2. Here’s another homework assignment. Read these two recent articles on Slate:
Change We Can Taste: Bush’s White House served terrible wine. Obama should do better.
Obama Raises the Bar: In politics, as in life, a little alcohol can go a long way.
3. How about the recession-induced proposal to put a 5% tax on liquor purchased at package stores? If it’s approved, will it make you drive to NH to buy booze?
4. More recession news. A little while ago, the Globe published what I thought was a detailed and fair article on Locke-Ober’s historic decision to close for lunch and what that signified for anyone who thought the old-fashioned business lunch (you know, the one with Martinis) was still alive. Well, that story sparked a rumble in the comments section between those who hold Locke-Ober dear as a Boston institution even though its food and service have been eclipsed many times over by competing high-end restaurants, and those who are seriously bitter over their financial and employment circumstances and want to mow down anything in their path that smacks of aristocracy, including Locke-Ober. Yikes. Personally, I love the place despite its silly prices, because it is a Boston institution. But resting on your laurels is not a business strategy. I wish, at the very least, that Locke-Ober would hire a team of bartenders who could bring cocktail hour at L-O back to the glory of the Gilded Age.
Permalink | 16 Comments | Filed under Beer, Booze in the news, Boston bars, Nips | Tags: business lunch, liquor taxes, Locke-Ober, Miller High Life, TV commercials
January 31st, 2009
Something about the Boston bar scene really hit home for me recently: there’s a bunch of cute, young guys in this town creating spectacular drinks. Evan Harrison’s Nonantum, Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli’s Northern Lights and Casey Keenan’s Bohannon, to name a few. I’m besotted.
Take Harrison of the Independent — only a year or two out of college, and already he’s figured out how to use the herbal, day-glo-yellow Italian liqueur Strega (a.k.a. “witch”) in a cocktail. Check this out:
Nonantum
2 parts Old Overholt rye
1 part Punt e Mes
1 part Strega
1 dash each Angostura bitters and Regan’s orange bitters
Stir over ice until very cold and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
“It’s a pretty clear take off of the Green Point cocktail, just substituting Strega and bitters for the Yellow Chartreuse,” Harrison says.
“I came up with this in an attempt to find something to do with Strega apart from dust the bottle and answer questions about it. Strega is a cool little spirit with a cool history, but it’s too sweet to shoot or even sip on its own, and I’ve never seen it called for in any recipe. Surprisingly, it draws out the bitter orange flavors in the Punt e Mes while letting the rye do its work. And also to Strega’s credit, it gives the drink a cool, thick viscosity that kind of lingers in your mouth.”
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. The upshot is that this drink is worthy of distinction among its many rye-liqueur-vermouth brethren, including Drink’s Fort Point.
OK, but the Nonantum? “The name comes from that village in Newton, where I was once stranded after a bizarre Catholic festival. I mistook the name for being Latin and thought it had something to do with their odd form of civic organization. I was wrong, but I still like the name.” As Harrison later learned, Nonantum is in fact a Native American word meaning, appropriately, “rejoicing.”
Schlesinger-Guidelli has barely cracked the quarter-century mark, but he already has some stellar cocktails to his name, notably the Jaguar and the new Northern Lights. The NL is one of those drinks where each layer of flavor shines on its own but contributes to a greater whole, like dance sequences in a great MGM musical.
The story behind the drink? “I took a week off between starting at Craigie and ending at Eastern Standard. I went down to Westport, MA, to work on the upcoming venture. One night of mixing with some of my best friends, this drink just came together. The late-night mixing and watching the stars, in cold New England … it reminded me of the vibrant Northern Lights.”
Northern Lights
1 ½ oz William Grant & Sons Scotch
¾ oz. St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
½ oz. Fresh lemon juice
¼ oz. Clear Creek Douglas Fir Eau De Vie
¼ oz. Fresh orange juice
¼ oz. Demerara syrup (1:1 demerara sugar and water)
2 dashes Bittermens ‘Elemakule Tiki Bitters
Shake very well over ice, strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with a lemon twist. Notes: Find demerara sugar (or sugar in the raw) at specialty stores like Christina’s in Inman Square. Also, S-G is pretty insistent on the brand of scotch: “I think the honeyed nature of Grant & Sons is really beautiful here.”
I admit I have yet to try Casey Keenan’s Bohannon, but it came to my attention via a trusted source. When he’s not playing drums for the Major Stars, Pants Yell! and other outfits, Keenan can be found at Deep Ellum. Recently, he took the Swedish Punsch that Ellum bar czar Max Toste made and created a cocktail with it that enamored Imbibe magazine enough to appear in the January/February issue. If you know Keenan and his love for 1960s and ’70s music, you’ll be amused but not surprised by the fact that he named the drink after disco producer Hamilton Bohannon.
Bohannon
2 oz gin
½ oz Green Chartreuse
½ oz Swedish Punsch
Pinch of fresh black pepper
Shake very well over cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with black pepper.
Permalink | 8 Comments | Filed under Bartenders, Cocktails, Liqueur, Whiskey | Tags: Boston cocktails, Casey Keenan, Evan Harrison, Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli
January 29th, 2009
It’s one of the oddest drinks I’ve ever tasted. And I mean that in a good way. I first had milk punch (not to be confused with the simpler concoction of brandy, rum or bourbon, sugar, whole milk and nutmeg served over crushed ice) at a Stir class last winter. It was sweet, velvety, rich … and confusing. That’s because, though it’s made with milk, it’s somewhere between translucent and transparent. In other words, not at all “milky.” Leave it to the bartenders at Drink to reintroduce this punch, which takes two days to make, to the modern imbiber. I write a short introduction to one of their recipes, Rum-Hibiscus Milk Punch, in today’s online Globe.
There are many variations on the basic milk punch recipe. The drinkboston punch party at Eastern Standard in June featured Milk Punch No. 1 from the Savoy Cocktail Book. Aphra Behn, a 17th-century English dramatist and novelist and allegedly the first woman to make a living as a writer, is credited with inventing milk punch, or at least having the first widely publicized recipe for it. Whatever its origins, it became well known enough during the 18th century for Benjamin Franklin to share a recipe for milk punch with James Bowdoin during his 1763 stay in Boston.
“Franklin’s Milk Punch recipe shares characteristics of two types of beverages — possets and syllabubs,” according to the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Wow. I am so looking forward to walking into a Boston bar and ordering possets and syllabubs.
Permalink | 9 Comments | Filed under Brandy, Cocktails, drinkboston in the news, Punch, Rum | Tags: Boston Globe, milk punch
January 25th, 2009
Hey all, in case you missed it, mixmaster Jackson Cannon of Eastern Standard was profiled on Chronicle HD on January 14. (The segment appears after a short piece on chef’s knives, featuring chef David Punch of Ten Tables in JP.) Cannon demos a Frisco and ES’ own Harvest Cocktail while throwing out some historical tidbits and showing off his cocktail-shaking technique. My favorite moment: As the show’s host, Mary Richardson, gingerly gives the shaker a try, Cannon instructs, “A little harder, Mary.” Hoo-hoo!
Permalink | 4 Comments | Filed under Bartenders, Booze in the news, Video | Tags: Chronicle, eastern standard, Jackson Cannon, TV
