HAL 9000 Goes South for the Winter in a Pink Tutu

Hello Dave.

Hi.

*waits for the collective 72-car pile-up of whiplash to subside*

Yes, here I am with a new recipe and it's not Mixology Monday. I gots me energy back! Woohoo! (Remember kids, get your zinc. Cheeseburgers are good for you and rev your metabolism!)

There's no accounting for cravings. Late last winter/early spring (TwitPic of a later tester version) I had a rough day at work and all I knew was I wanted to throw an impromptu cocktail together that would function as a targeted aerial strike while not thinking too much and maybe getting to throw in a few leftover ingredients to help use them up.

I knew I wanted the rare bite of anise and caraway (and that's how you know something deeper was talking) of Krogstad, the only aquavit I've yet tried. Gin and juniper in this case would be far too mild.

To that -- and this is clearly the craving again -- well, remember the Hell Kitten way back when, with its strawberry and hibiscus ice cubes (each flavor in separate cubes)? A fridge defrost happened between then and previous then, leaving me with refrozen strawberry-hibiscus cubes: all the density and tart-sweetness of homemade strawberry juice with the astringent flavor-rich balancing quality of hibiscus tea.

I suppose (and please pardon the mixed metaphors, my mild synethesia makes me see flavors as colors), as the other ingredients reveal themselves here, you could say that I'm not a fan of easy straight-down-the-line pale-flavored ingredient cocktail recipes. By that I mean those recipes that don't take any chances: white spirits, paired with green tea, a little lemon, cucumber, light herbs, and so on and so forth. Those sorts of recipes just seem sedate, if not downright dour, and leave me cold - the exact opposite remedy for rough days. Ok, so I have a BIG white spirit ingredient and I end up layering that on golden ginger beer: let's make a painting. Potent brown-black down deep, a trickle of green between, all resting on an orange sun. And these soft red ice cubes, fluttering on high off to the right, that round the drink to which they're added? Warms me right up.

But but but...caraway and strawberry? I know, I know. And those do end up being predominant flavors. The rest of the cocktail ends up being a study in bridging elements, starting with the fact that there wasn't nearly enough savory spice in it yet. That led to the clove-heavy bottle of falernum in the fridge and much tinkering into an acceptable degree of drinkability and interest that night, but gee let's just get to the recipe already.

HAL 9000 Goes South for the Winter in a Pink Tutu

1 1/2 oz Krogstad aquavit

3/4 oz Plantation 5 Star rum

3/4 oz falernum*

1/2 oz Benedictine

2 dashes orange bitters (Angostura and Fee's are a good combo)

2 ounce-sized strawberry-hibiscus ice cubes** (plus 2 ounce-sized water ice cubes)

2 oz ginger beer

Ahead of time, add specified ice cubes to your serving glass and set in freezer to chill.

Shake first 5 ingredients on light ice.

Add ginger beer to your serving glass.

Strain shaken drink into your serving glass and stir to get the ingredients combined, the ice beginning to melt and color the cocktail.

Garnish ingrediently and Tiki-ly. For the above garnish: cut the nose off a strawberry and down-skewer it, attaching a thin curlicue of lime zest for arms beneath, then an upside-down hibiscus tutu. Stud strawberry robotically with cloves.


* if like me, you do a Kaiser Penguin-style juiceless falernum, remember to add 1 part fresh lime juice to every 2 parts falernum syrup (so, 1/4 oz lime juice to 1/2 oz falernum syrup for this recipe). Plus, when whipping up the falernum, make sure that your simple syrup is fully cooled before adding to your infusion, lest you nuke the clove notes. Demerara sugar syrup also makes for a great richness if you don't have access to Lemon Hart or similar.

**Strawberry-hibiscus ice cubes: juice a pint of strawberries (give an adequate chance to rest to let air content subside) and combine with an equal amount (liquid-wise) of strong hibiscus tea. Freeze in 1-ounce ice cube molds (Tovolo 1" cube molds work great here).

Give ol' Hal a swirlie to mix the ice. Whee!
(just use a more regular-shaped glass for evenness)

The star anise in the Krogstad facilitates a bridge to the baking spices of the falernum and the cinnamon in the Benedictine, while the caraway finds an unlikely ally in the particular bitter orange note of the Fee bitters (whose barrel-promoted fruity note makes fast friends with the strawberry) and hibiscus' astringency. Plantation 5 Star rum happens to be from Barbados, so it was a natural support element for the Bajan falernum while its big orange note linked up with Benedictine (the latter introduced some subtler spice to help round the profile); the two remain mostly in the background, but they add a smooth body that stops the seesawing between more intense elements and you can still pick up on the liqueur's bright holy note (have a Vieux Carre, see what I mean). The bitters further amplified these orange notes.

I'm not sure the cocktail is about "flavor" or "flavors" per se. It's bracing, biting, bitter, deeply fruity, fizzy-spicy, and refreshing to the bone. Could be that strawberry and ginger/spice is one of my favorite flavor pairings, a theme previously explored in Acrasia's Bower. (and similar recipes here, here, and here, for instance) You could probably break it down to nutritional details and geographical affinities to explain why your body is getting a 1-2-3 punch in a supremely envivening way. But when you have another rough day at work 5 months later and you're craving the exact same crazy recipe, you know there's something to it. (warning: you may get a buzz from this cocktail, but it might actually keep you up at night too. Mayhaps this calls for the right occasion and a lack of caffeine consumption prior to imbibing.) 

Mixology Monday, May 2013: Witches' Garden

*opens one eye from her coma* It's MxMo-time, again?!

Gee, I'd better do something about that..


The theme for the 73rd edition of the Greatest Cocktail Jamboree on the Planet, comes via our host Mark Holmes of Cardiff Cocktails -- home of delectable tipples, always-intriguing ingredient combinations and sepia-ambianced photography that aches comfort: Witches' Garden.

As far back as we can look, the use of fresh herbs have been prevalent in the world of mixed drinks. From the early days of the julep, through Williams Terrington’s 19th century Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks, to Don the Beachcomber’s ahead of their time Tiki drinks, fresh herbs have always been at the forefront of mixology. So lets take influence from the bartenders that once ruled the world of mixology, raid your herb garden that too often gets neglected, and start mixing. I don’t want to put too many limits on this theme so get as creative as you please, want to use roots, spices or beans as well? Sure thing. Want to make your own herbal infusions or tinctures? Sounds wonderful.

When active, this link will send you to the summary post of this month's festivities.

Let's get straight to the recipe:


Acrasia's Bower
2 oz grappa
1-2 strawberries
2-3 sprigs of mint
1/2 oz Tuaca
1 dash Boker's bitters
3 oz carbonated chai green tea
sprigs of mint for garnish

In a highball glass, muddle the strawberry with the Tuaca and bitters (more than a dash, depending on your palate).

Spank the mint and add, gently pressing in/stirring with the muddler.

Add the grappa and stir.

Add ice to fill the glass and top with carbonated chai green tea, giving all a stir.

Garnish with fresh mint sprigs.




Carbonated Chai Green Tea
Steep 1 tea bag of chai green tea in 2 cups near-boiling water until cool. Carbonate per your device's instructions, perhaps under-do it slightly as the tea particles encourage foaming. Stash is my tea brand of choice, spicy and invigorating, and delicious even without the regular milk-and-sugar chai fixings.


Mint isn't the most original ingredient for a challenge such as this, but I was at the farmer's market a couple weekends ago and the chives just weren't sparking a desire to create as much as a lush bundle of mint was. I was still in the North African flavor state of mind from last MxMo, so when approaching the mint I automatically thought "Moroccan mint tea."

After a meh attempt at something more Penicillin-like with weak-flavored carbonated green tea [forgive me: I just got a SodaStream machine and am now going through a "let's carbonate EVERYTHING!" phase], I had an "I wonder.." moment with a more flavorful chai green tea on hand. Carbonating this tea was much more interesting (with a great backbone), but it needed a different pairing than scotch. More through a process of intuition and "what would I like to drink, right this moment?" than anything else, I happened on my bottle of grappa di cabernet, and then soft vanilla/chocolate-y Tuaca, and then, needing some kind of warmth or red-ness to balance, strawberries. Cardamom-rich Boker's served as a final add-on to match the chai spice and help some of the other flavors come through.

This is probably a little more understated a recipe than my usual M.O., but the finished sip came across especially refined, something which doesn't happen with every drink I do. Plus, I like how the strawberry's tartness and the astringency of the carbonated tea also help balance the sweetness, without resorting to citrus and making this a full-on Smash.

I also tried this with Strega (the witch liqueur, more successfully used in Putney Farm's Strawberry Witch this MxMo), but that ended up far too sweet here: Tuaca has a great advantage with slighter (and less sour/dry) ingredients like green tea and unaged grappa, being less syrupy-sweet than most liqueurs and therefore dampening flavors less.

The strawberry in Acrasia's Bower comes through luscious and fresh-tart, with an indefinable exotically-spiced sweetness. The grappa is a lurking, rolling fist encased in satin, but you don't pay attention to that so much as the soft green edge of the mint, both delicate accent and a visual jungle. The imagery reminded me of the descriptions of the Bower of Bliss in Spenser's Faerie Queen (as I read of it in Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae -- F.Q.'s still in my book basket waiting to be read). And me, grasping for a name this morning, did some googling for some kind of reference: the name "Acrasia" itself just seems to fit the cocktail's image above (in F.Q.'s book on Temperance, no less!). Only after I decided on the name [mind you, I'm still quasi-comatose] did I realize, hey, Acrasia's an enchantress. This drink really is a Witch's Garden!


Many thanks and props to Mr. Holmes for hosting and Mr. Yarm for wrangling. Cheers!

And stay tuned shortly for a non-MxMo post, a little something for the month of Taurus, now that we're in Gemini!

Ti(n)sanity!: Lullaby Sangaree and Insufferable Creole Minx

Welcome back to the March Madness portion of Ti(n)sanity!, the series exploring all the unique ways you can use herbal tea in cocktails, featuring Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer tea (tisane, natch) as the Maguffin/common denominator.

As you might expect when it comes to teas or tisanes in cocktails, they're primarily utilized in various forms of infusions. Our previous three entries explore straight water infusions (that is, how you'd normally brew tea or tisane). The first baby step beyond that is to brew the tisane as normal, but then add a sweetener: a tisane syrup.

Syrups in cocktails tend to be restrained in usage: a quarter to half an ounce is generally considered plenty of sweetening for one drink, unless the syrup is to be the star of the cocktail (overmuch sweetness has a tendency to mask flavors too - and what's the point of putting something in a drink if you're not going to get a sense that it's in there?). Syrups also have the inherent problem of diminishing the alcohol level of the cocktail, so too much will limit the kick of the drink.

Let's start by making the syrup, and then getting to its applications:

Tension Tamer syrup
1 cup (8 oz) strong-brewed Tension Tamer tea (2 teabags)
1/4 cup mild honey

Pour the boiling water over the teabags and let steep until cool. Remove and squeeze out the tea bags, then combine the tea and honey in a sauce pot on the stove, stirring and heating gently until reduced to 1/2 - 3/4 cup. Let cool, bottle, then store in the refrigerator until ready to use.


To shake things up a bit for this series, I'm going to offer two different recipes to highlight different syrup usages. Now, before I really got started mixing in earnest, the first thing I did was follow a hunch by pairing the syrup with some Rainwater Madeira I had on hand. Match. Made. In. Heaven. It's like the Madeira rejoiced at evolving into a slight vermouth.

But one of the flaws of Tension Tamer tea as an ingredient is its delicacy: cocktails need to be kept simple and on the light side in order to best highlight it. And the first cocktail I worked on here didn't do such a good job. So, I retreated back to that basic Madeira/syrup combination and pushed it just a little further into a Sangaree.

No! Not the Bronze Age Batman pirate rogue. A Sangaree, which isn't too far etymologically or ingredient-wise from Sangria, tends to use fortified wine (or ale, or porter, or regular wine) plus a small amount of fine sugar, crushed ice, and a couple of citrus wheels or zest all shaken together then poured into a serving glass. Some classic, but more modern recipes will use a liquor as the base, though generally a fortified wine will be included in the mix too.

For this Sangaree, I figured soft and simple was best, not to mention it would make a fitting toast to my newborn nephew, barely one day old today.

Lullaby Sangaree

3 oz rainwater madeira

1/2 oz Tension Tamer syrup

1 or 2 red grapefruit wheel halves

strawberry fan

Shake the first three ingredients with crushed ice and pour mix and ice into a chilled tumbler. Taking Mr. Ellestad's suggestion to include fresh berries, garnish with a strawberry fan.

Nutmeg is the traditional garnish for a Sangaree, but the Tension Tamer serves as the spice in this case -- nutmeg would only overpower anyhow. Madeira is the first set of flavors you taste, with the herbs sneaking in in bouts of sweetness, counterpointed by glancing sour and bitter grapefruit notes and tart strawberry on the nose.


For the first cocktail I developed, with the Tension Tamer syrup meshing so well with Madeira I wondered how a take on the Creole Lady would work. The Creole Lady was a recipe I saw while researching Madeira back in January, which happened to use a syrup, albeit grenadine. For some reason when researching, though, I swore I saw two different versions of the Creole Lady, one with bourbon and one with gin; it probably didn't help that I conflated the Creole Contentment --and the notion of unfixed base spirits-- into the same family, either. Turns out, both versions of the Creole Lady exist on the Internet but the gin variant appears to be an aberration of mysterious provenance while the bourbon (or whiskey, generally) variant has roots back to 1937 (at least).

The clarification on that point didn't happen until well after the recipe development, however, and when mixing, neither the gin nor the bourbon were just right. I also happened to have the Suffering Bastard, no doubt prompted by Dagreb's recent inversion, the Flourishing Heir, floating around in my head -- the bourbon and gin an intriguing combination I had never tried before, until now of course. 

Insufferable Creole Minx

1 oz bourbon (Elijah Craig 12)

1 oz gin (Citadelle)

1 oz rainwater madeira

1/2 oz Tension Tamer syrup

1 dash cherry bitters 

grapefruit zest

Stir all on ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnishing with a grapefruit twist.

You'd think gin might not be a good match for other herbal notes (though that never stopped the Martini), but here the gin and syrup work on different levels, all while sharing a couple of botanicals so as not to be completely disjointed. The bracing dry gin is out at the fore, leaving the sweet herbal syrup to linger as an undertone revealed on the finish. Further, the bourbon, Madeira and syrup do blur into one another with shared cinnamon, wood, nut and sweet notes, but the dry gin helps to break that up, all the better to appreciate the mix.

The cherry bitters are a nod to the Creole Lady's dual-cherry garnish and single dash of bitters - one dash should be all that's necessary, before you start drowning out the other flavors. The grapefruit zest bridges many of the disparate ingredients, while punching them up to a new level, plus adds a little extra bitterness in case you need it (somewhat reminiscent of a Brown Derby).

In all: malty, rich, bitter, with a surprise around every turn.

Stay tuned dear readers! Tomorrow our Maguffin makes the big leap to alcohol infusions!

[Update: Hi, dear readers! I couldn't help but notice how popular this post has been. If you'd care to leave a comment, I'd be curious to know which of the recipes you like or what drew you to follow the link. Best, MoD]

Previous Ti(n)sanity recipes:

T. T. Punch (rhum agricole)
Me-tea-orite (single malt scotch)
Introduction and eThéreal Toddy (grappa)

Disclaimer: this is a non-sponsored post. Also, I'm not looking to do sponsored posts. I just really like this tea, is all, and have a policy of happily and independently buying all my ingredients.

Mixology Monday, September 2012: Equal Parts

Did you know? It's Mixology Monday! A venerable institution among cocktail bloggers, MxMo has been the web's premiere rotating monthly cocktail party, now on its 65th iteration. The event, on a hiatus since February but long-helmed by Paul Clarke, has been passed to the great Frederic "Fear the" Yarm of Cocktail Virgin Slut to take up the charge.

Feu de Vie didn't even exist the last time MxMo took place, so it's a thrill to be a part of it this time.

To start things off again, this month's theme is Equal Parts. The challenge, as described on the Mixology Monday site:

For this month, I have chosen the theme of equal part cocktails — those simple drinks where only one jigger is needed despite how many ingredients are added. These recipes have gained a lot of popularity as classics like the Negroni and Last Word have resurfaced, and variations of these equal part wonders have become abundant.

Find or concoct a drink recipe that has an equal parts recipe. Garnishes do not count, and if you want to be a non-purist and include a dash of bitters, that is fine too. 

When active, this link will send you to the summary post of this month's festivities.


This is going to be an odd post, both for the multiple recipes and because the inspiration as linearly-read happens backwards. The Hello Katie and Oh Good, My Dog Found the Chainsaw are a response to the Hell Kitten not being as spirit-centered as this MxMo's "Equal Parts" theme might expect, and a number of their elements derive from the Hell Kitten and not vice versa.

Hello Katie

So I wanted to keep thematic with the Hell Kitten, but with more structure. As far as major Equal Parts formulas go, you have the how'd-they-come-up-with-that? Last Word, the classic class-of-its-own Negroni, the split-spirit-with-vermouth Saratoga, and the split-spirit-Sour Between the Sheets. I decided on a Between the Sheets variation, mainly because it's just so darn comfortable. It's one of the first serious cocktails I ever ordered - mainly as a conversation piece, but without flavored spirits or otherwise over-sweet. Also: I haven't yet gotten to the original Last Word cocktail (and my herbal liqueur collection is lacking); I am Negroni-formula'ed-out at the moment; and if I want to pull elements from the Hell Kitten, I've already done a tequila-vermouth combo. A fruit juice carryover would suggest a Sour at that.

So, I grabbed the tequila, strawberry, and citrus (when it had grapefruit..) from the Hell Kitten, but in doing so wanted to veer to a slightly different set of flavors from El Clavel Rojo. The white Rémy V and red tequila por mi amante, plus Galliano's vanilla and the original cocktail's name, "Hell Kitten", all added up to wanting to name this one "Hello Kitty" - but apparently that name's been grabbed a few times already.

But then I looked at the ingredients again and realized they're a good introduction to my major spiritous loves that I've blogged about thus far, if the relevant tags are anything to go by. If not Hello Kitty, then how about, *waves*, Hello Katie? I do generally do the anonymous act on here and Twitter, but you can call me Katie or Kate. And though I'm sure Feu de Vie has been a bit under the radar so far, I'm glad you stopped by for a visit and do hope you return!

Hello Katie (top),
Oh Good, My Dog Found the Chainsaw (bottom)

Hello! -Katie

3/4 oz tequila por mi amante

3/4 oz Rémy Martin V (eau-de-vie)

3/4 oz Galliano l'autentico liqueur

3/4 oz Meyer lemon juice

Shake, strain, chilled coupe, Meyer lemon twist.
Small crack of Himalayan pink sea salt if desired.

The tequila por mi amante is mellow and laidback in its strawberry flavor, Rémy V harmonizes and balances, Galliano's low anise note best emerges here, followed by a creamy sweetness, and the Meyer lemon's aromatics are a lace shawl over the strawberry and spice while not being overly tart and palate-burning like regular lemon in a Between the Sheets.

The Hello Katie's variant, the Oh Good, My Dog Found the Chainsaw, uses cachaça in place of the Rémy V (and a Meyer lemon twist in the shape of Stitch ears perhaps?). A more "street" cachaça like 51 Pirassununga tends to dominate while a higher grade like Leblon is much gentler like the eau-de-vie and whose grassy notes frolic with Galliano and the Meyer lemon nose - and perhaps bring out the strawberry even more.

Hell Kitten

Think of this as the love-child of Hello Kitty and The Most Interesting Man in the World. That or it's the cocktail version of pink Victoria's Secret sweatpants with "P I N K" arced across the rear.

It all started with the thought that I could showcase some spare hibiscus tea ice cubes as an ingredient. I had made them in my Tovolo 1-inch cube trays, which, interestingly enough, hold a little over 1 oz of liquid per cube if filled to the brim. (a ha! Units for Equal Parts!) Exact 1 oz cubes wouldn't be out of the question. But what then? How about a fast, furious and cute riff on the El Diablo?

Hell Kitten

2 oz habanero-infused blanco tequila

2 oz ginger ale

2 1-oz strawberry juice ice cubes

2 1-oz hibiscus tea ice cubes

Strawberry or strawberry-habanero blossom garnish

To a rocks glass add tequila, then ice, then top with ginger ale. Give a quick stir to get the drink pink. Really PINK.

Garnish with a strawberry, or, if you're really craving heat, a small strawberry inserted inside a seeded/veined habanero, cut with petals to look like a flower, as pictured (drink fast because it will infuse).

Notes:

• I used this recipe for habanero tequila. Mind the infusion carefully and taste-test after each hour. Even with a seeded and veined habanero being infused, it picks up plenty of heat by the 2-hour mark (a tiny taste test at that mark gave me a serious capsaicin high). 3 hours was just about right.
• Please please please please PLEASE practice scrupulous safety techniques when handling these little buggers (the habaneros). Use rubber gloves, protect your eyes, clean anything they touch before anything else touches it. I thankfully avoided it and don't want to know what a stray swipe of 350,000 Scoville units in the eye feels like.
• As for the structure, usually a highball is a 1:2 ratio mixer:spirit or vice versa. It's a bit overloaded on the mixer side with the ice, if only to manage the heat and to account for the time it takes for the ice to melt (and, 2 ice cubes doesn't make much sense amount-wise - 4 works a lot better).
• In addition to hibiscus ice, since the Equal Parts part of the theme would make it difficult to double-up on the same mixer, I also made strawberry juice ice cubes. If lacking a juicer: puree fresh berries, double-strain through a fine sieve and cheesecloth. The juice will remain thick, regardless of pulp removed, but that thickness is good for adding body to the drink, which moderates the tequila's harshness. (also, the leftover pulp is gangbusters if added to pancake batter)
• Ginger ale instead of ginger beer: the sweetness to balance the heat, and why cause confusion where the heat's coming from? The name does include Kitten after all.