Mixology Monday, July 2014: The Smash

Ooga chaka!
Ooga chaka!
Ooga ooga ooga chaka!
Iii-iiii-iii'm mixin' on Monday..

So who here's in a party mood tonight? I hope you are because we're in the last hour of this month's edition of the best cocktail party on the web, Mixology Monday. This time around we're celebrating the Smash, that particular bracing cocktail formula that, well, I'll let the vivacious eponymous-blogging Stacy Markow, our hostess for the month, take it away:

I’m proud to announce that July’s theme is all about the Smash, those ice-laden, refreshing concoctions designed to celebrate my favorite things about life: stiff drinks and warm weather.
It’s no surprise that in 1862 Jerry Thomas was the first to declare that “the Smash is simply a julep on a small plan.” The drink originally gets its name from the way mint was smashed up in the shaking process.

Fast forward twenty-five or so years later and barman Harry Johnson addresses the Smash as a separate cocktail from the julep entirely and expands the components to include “fruits in season.”

What little was originally written about the Smash can lead most to believe it wasn’t a terribly popular beverage, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. According to David Wondrich, the author of Imbibe!

“From it’s first appearance in the mid 1840′s until after the Civil War, the Smash was just about the most popular thing going. In the 1850′s, at the height of the Smash’s popularity, all the “pert young men, ” the Broadway dandies, San Francisco swells, and junior New Orleans grandissimes, seemed to spend the warm months of the year with a Smash glued to one hand and a “segar” to the other. In fact, the Smash rather became an icon of dissipation”

Johnson’s smashes resemble many modern interpretations found on cocktail menus today. With that said, the basic elements of the drink have remained the same over the years: they always include a spirit base, lots of ice, fresh herbs (the most popular being mint), sugar, and seasonal fruit.

Let’s get ultra creative, smash things, and then drown them in alcohol and ice. Allow your creativity take flight and concoct sweet and/or savory combos to remember using any fruit or herbs you can get your hands on.

When active, follow this link to see what everyone smashed together!


So at first I was noodling, maybe going a particular culinary flavor profile direction, make the drink all fancy, but that petered out before it really got started. Instead, it hit me that I had a recipe idea that I've been saving since even before Feu de Vie was incepted. Oh, I had been planing on starting up the blog since perhaps autumn 2011 and was slowly coming up with ideas for posts, but coming up with the blog's name took forever (and most services won't let you even start without the name in place).

This recipe was born out of my torrid love affair with cachaca that summer, the kind of magic that was made in a simple Caipirinha, and my own (wry) observations on the cocktail blog/tweetsphere and their own torrid love affair with rye whiskey (not a lot's changed, I know).

But, as I got into the swing of things, the plot bunnies of recipe ideas took off and this particular recipe got shelved until perhaps a more seasonally appropriate time during the summer. Then I ran out of an ingredient and couldn't find it again. So the recipe got shelved right next to the Ark of the Covenant, Jimmy Hoffa, and that book I'll be writing til I die in the burbling volcanic Doom Caverns of Developing Ideas.

But, no more! Here, finally, was the perfect time to bring it out into the light! Except it wasn't quite a Smash. It had spirit, sugar, citrus..but it lacked an herb.

Oh, hey, peppermint you say? ...that could work.

Who says brown spirits are for the cold months? In the spirit of the Improved Whiskey Cocktail, I give you..

The Gussied-Up Rye-pirinha
3 oz rye whiskey
1/2 tablespoon demerara sugar
1/4 lemon, cut into muddling pieces
6-8 blueberries
1 sprig peppermint, for muddling
2-3 dashes Angostura bitters
1 sprig peppermint, for garnish

As in a Caipirinha, muddle the blueberries, lemon and Angostura in your serving glass (rocks/double old-fashioned) with the demerara sugar; the sugar crystals will provide great friction for muddling in general and for abrading the lemon peel to help extract its oils.

Add in the mint sprig for muddling, pressing gently on the stem where most of the plant's oils are kept while otherwise going easy on the leaves.

Add in the rye and medium-size serving ice. Seal a shaker tin over top of the glass, invert, and give a few good shakes to thoroughly mix, chill, and start the ice dilution.

Invert again so the mixed drink sits in the serving glass and remove the shaker. Garnish with another sprig of peppermint.

Ahhh...


The spirit greets you on the nose with faint sugar and berry lingering under the garnish's icy menthol. Further nosing reveals an orange/lemon note. Tasting, spice tickles across your tongue from the rye, mint and bitters. As the drink dilutes, lemon's astringency steps up while not completely overpowering a sugary berry note. A bit earthy and moody for a Smash, a cocktail structure that generally implies brightness and a lift from even dark spirits.


Make sure to use a good punchy rye - the always-potent peppermint needs a worthy match (and, I tend to think: spearmint with bourbon and peppermint with rye). For this Gussied-Up version, I used Dad's Hat Vermouth Barrel-Aged Rye, which threw me for a wallop the first time I tried it. It was off the charts in menthol and spice that I'm sure it picked up in the barrel-aging process and a certain "red" quasi-berry attribute in color and taste as well -- beyond their basic aged expression profile, which was also notable on the palate.

The Rye-pirinha (original) circa early 2012:
omit the peppermint and garnish with
blueberries.

Also, demerara, demerara, demerara. It may seem counter-intuitive when you consider how white sugar perks up the blueberry, lemon and peppermint, but the rye (and Ango) loves how the smoky brown sugar brings everything together with depth. White sugar's brightness just wouldn't be the thing here, and in fact, lack of demerara is what made me push off this recipe for years until I finally found it again.

Finally, special thanks to the folks at Herrcastle Farms in Holtwood, PA, who have a stand at the Lancaster County Farmer's Market - one of my fave ingredient hot spots. I was able to request a bunch of peppermint this past Friday afternoon (just as they were staging for the next's day's shipment, natch) for the next day - no mean feat since peppermint tends to be infrequently purchased and the market is only open Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. My blueberries for the recipe also came from them.

Big thanks to Stacy for an ideal theme for the season and to Fred for the cat-wrangling - I can only imagine the mischief and mayhem they're getting up to with a theme like this.

Mixology Monday, May 2014: Aw, Nuts!

*sigh* Hi there, everybody. Boomer here. I suppose MoD does this whenever MxMo threatens to get a but nutty, but she's had issues of late (I'll let her do that talk at some point) and I guess that's why I'm being brought out again.

*scampers up the grandfather clock* Anyway, to start things off in the right position..

It's Mixology Monday time!!! This month's host is the vivacious Elana of Stir and Strain, with the daring, politically incorrect, non-hypoallergenic theme: Aw, Nuts! (we're a bunch of rebels, sister, I tell ya -- and I like it! *shows off pouches distorted and stuffed with walnut halves*)

Nuts? Yes! A few months back I tried, and was wowed by, a peanut-y take on an Old Fashioned at a bar here in L.A. They had infused peanuts in bourbon and with a touch of honey had made magic. Nuts of all sorts make it into cocktails now. Some black walnut bitters here, the sweet almond flavor of orgeat there… circus peanuts. Your challenge is to utilize nuts (and since we’re NOT adhering to the strict rules of what are nuts, peanuts and walnuts both count) in any way you see fit to create a cocktail. Infusions, bitters, almond tinctures are all game. Amaretto, homemade nocino, Frangelico too. Go nuts! (…sorry)

When active, this link will point you to the round-up of nutty funstuffs.

Now to the story of the real nut of the party, MoD for deciding to take on the magic of hickory nuts of all things. (why God, why? why did you make such precious delicious nuts so hard? I have no teeth left!)

The idea was certainly a late-breaking one, yet it happened with just enough time to spare to put in for a special order of rum, picked up this evening (ain't no dickorying around in the system, that's for sure). The hickories had actually been for another idea, possibly with RC Cola, but development's moved slow of late. With some additional research the basic orgeat blossomed into 3 different recipes to try (one on loan). You may hear about the others soon enough, but tonight's cocktail eschews the basic orgeat (with rose water) for the loaner Hickory Syrup, as linked but with some cocktailian-minded mods.

But hickory nuts? Honey, buy them pre-shelled because they iz a bitch. The fortunate thing is that the frustration of shelling them is balanced by the joy of hitting things with hammers! Hickory nuts are closely related to the pecan, same squiggly brain-shape you find with them or walnuts, but so very intractable to remove from the adamantium-like shell.

A few tips that we picked up along the way, gleaned from practice and various spots around the web that I can't quite find (so don't go praising for flights of genius or anything):

1) Pre-soak your nuts for half an hour in room-temp water. As much as it might be a concern that the nut oils might leach before you can make a syrup with them, the shells are so thick that the water doesn't come close to those precious-precious oils. Instead, the shell becomes more shock-absorbent, making hammer blows that much more likely to hit the mark.

2) I read on an historical site that hickory nuts used to be quite a staple of some Native American tribes, and to crack the issue of mass-processing, the entire nut, shell and all, was pounded into a nut-flour using a mortar and pestle, about the size of a butter churn, thereabouts. Well, no butter churn at home, but we did have a marble mortar and pestle for spice grinding. It wound up being perfect for positioning a single nut in the mortar, balancing the pestle on a pressure point, then hitting the pestle with my blunt hammer (rubber and plastic ends instead of a regular metal hammer head). Even with the gentler hammer, the pestle did chip slightly against the nut shells.

3) No need to hammer incessantly on a nut. There's a small seam that runs from the nut-end to the stem-end. Position your pestle on the seam perhaps 1/3rd of the way from the nut-end and hit the pestle until you hear a distinct shell-crack. It may not cleave the nut in two, but at that point you only need gentle taps to complete the cleaving - no need to have the nut explode on you. The same aural technique is also helpful when breaking down the nut further (because the nut meat tends to squiggle into the shell in narrow passageways that grow wider again, hence much more whacking).

4) I've also heard that vises may be useful for these nuts, so kudos if you have one!


But now then: have you heard the one about Bugs Bunny the Bartender explaining to a patron the substitution made on his regular rum-hazelnut cocktail? "Eh...it's a hickory daiquiri, doc!" I'm somehow disturbed that I can't find anyone who's made this cocktail before. Really people, it's 2014 already.

Hickory Daiquiri
2 oz dark/aged rum (Prichard's)
3/4 oz lime juice
1/2 oz hickory syrup
Lime and/or hickory nuts for garnish

Shake. Double-strain. Garnish with lime and/or hickory nuts as is your wont. Waft off to NeverNeverLand as you sip.

To make a Hickory Daiquiri D.O.C., use a mildly-aged rhum agricole and speak Italian instead of French while you make it. :)

Warm sugar and toffee on the nose with a hickory je ne sais quoi and lime notes from the garnish. The rum brings a potent depth on the tongue, the lime's acid rising as it nears the throat, with a creamy/musky hickory overlay that demands slow sipping and exploration.


Though never having tried the rum before, Prichard's seemed the perfect choice, simply for having been produced in the old New England way -- in Tennessee, natch. (seriously, how many hickory trees do you find in the Caribbean?) The rum's aged qualities defeated the regular hickory orgeat: there's a warm, buttery toffee Mother's Milk quality to the orgeat, and it was drowned out by similar notes in the rum. The dark spirit needed something more potent to match (evidently the orgeat needs a white spirit; a light whisky may serve for the smoked orgeat).

Hickory Syrup - follow the recipe for Hickory Syrup here, but:
1) Change the sugar from brown to demerara for a finer taste.
2) Let the nuts steep as you like, adding more water if you feel it reduces too fast or too much.
3) Measure the final liquid quantity at the end of steeping and alter the amount of sugar from 3/4 part of the nuts to equal amounts with the final liquid to create a cocktail-friendly 1:1 syrup.
4) Avoid the corn starch, you don't need it in your drink and once the syrup is cooled it'll be a fine consistency for mixing as-is.



Stay tuned for more hickory and otherwise nutty goodness in the coming days and weeks: MoD didn't spend whole weekends shelling nuts and making syrups just to have them go to waste!

Many thanks to Elana for hosting and yet another brilliant theme [JotJ will be coming 'round the mountain soon, just slow-paced], and to Fred for a brilliant job coordinating some great themes month after month after month.

*bong!* *the clock strikes one* G'night folks! *climbs down the clock*

Hickory Dickory Dock.

Made of Thorns & Blackberry Shrub

Made of Thorns

2 oz aged Jamaican rum (Appleton Reserve)

3/4 oz blackberry shrub

1/2 oz ROOT

2 tsp Fernet Branca

blackberries for garnish

Shake all on ice well and double-strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with blackberries.

Wine-like berry, with mint chocolate and spice sliding into tawny notes of root beer melded to barrel notes and back around to berry again, with a touch of vanilla on the backside. The shrub's vinegar transforms the two herbal liqueurs into something much more savory on first sip.

This may well be an excellent use of Appleton Reserve, that halfway point between gold and seriously aged Jamaican rums. Its minor hogo works well with the other ingredients and that "halfway point" becomes functionality: more golden would be too limpid, more aged would be too soft.


Back in June, with the bounty of summer fruit at hand at the farmers' market, I figured my shrub of the summer would be a blackberry one, a near polar opposite to my apricot-Meyer lemon shrub of last year (a mini-bottle of which I still have - and quite good at that!). (and let's face it, sometimes a girl wants to chug anthocyanins, y'know?) As a matter of course, the shrub would surely wend its way into a cocktail recipe or two, but the first few weeks after the shrub was finished the vinegar still needed to tame itself. I left it in the fridge, forgot about it for awhile and before long the syrup was bursting with fresh-muddled berry flavor. But how to use it?

Meanwhile, sometimes I get recipe ideas while at work, in which case I become very single-minded until I can get home and work on it. ROOT and Fernet and blackberries. But would my homemade blackberry liqueur hold up? Turns out not. Ok, how about blackberry brandy? Ehhh.. blends in too much. (what about the shrub?) (Too tart, too sugary) Maybe a base spirit, dry it out and give it a foundation. Eh, still sweet. Maybe lime? Too sharp.

It took a night or two away before the shrub started making sense: less sweet, less sharp, helps pare down the number of ingredients. Best blackberry flavor of the bunch, and more backbone than muddled blackberries. A slight ratio tweak from the original tester hit upon a true revelation of balance -- while too complex to be a good shrub-demonstrator, there's some kind of kismet happening in Made of Thorns.

I should also note, it bears some resemblance to the Dirt 'n Diesel and the Swagger Rite.


Blackberry shrub
16 oz blackberries (roughly 327g overall)
equal amounts white and demerara sugar
balsamic vinegar
half a bunch of fresh mint (peppermint if possible)
1 tsp crushed allspice berries

1. Measure the weight of your fruit to determine how much sugar and vinegar you'll need; that is, you'll need a weight of sugar equal to the fruit and a weight of vinegar equal to the fruit.
2. Gently muddle the mint in your infuse-bowl with the sugar for 1-2 hours.
3. Add the allspice and berries, muddling all, emphasis on crushing the berries. Cover and let rest at room temperature for about 24 hours, stirring or shaking occasionally to help everything combine.
4. Remove the mint, wringing out the syrup.

5. Measure your vinegar by weight into a pot on the stove. Bring the vinegar to a quick near-boil on the stove and pour over your blackberry mixture, stirring to dissolve and meld.
6. Cover, let cool at room temp, then store the covered bowl in the fridge for 2 weeks. You'll get the best flavor from the blackberries this way.
7. Strain the final shrub syrup, pressing/wringing through cheesecloth to get all the liquid.
8. Bottle and store in the fridge. Let rest at least 2 weeks before using. Shake well before pouring.
9. Makes about 3 cups.

Shrubs are simply equal parts by weight of fruit, sugar, and vinegar. Here I used fresh mint and crushed allspice to enhance the blackberry notes. I divided the sugar into 2 types: white for brightness and demerara for earthiness and a touch of smoke. After finding something like champagne vinegar rather sharp in my apricot-Meyer lemon shrub, I opted for smooth and mellow balsamic, the better to sink into the background and bring the fruit to the fore.

Intensely drinkable mixed with seltzer.

Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini Punch

So who's in the mood for a beach party?

Seeing as yesterday was National Bikini Day, the timing is just about perfect for Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini Punch! (Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot One-Piece Punch, if you're doing a virgin punch)

This has been one of those on-my-radar recipes, but it never took shape beyond a yellow punch base with melon ball garnishes until recently when I seized an opportunity to have a happy hour cohort of willing victims tasters at the office. Because buying melons for punch-for-one doesn't quite work. From all accounts it turned out nicely.

The song never did say what color the polka dots were, right?

Single serving
1/4 oz lemon juice
1/4 oz lime juice
1/4 oz lemon-lime oleo saccharum syrup
1/4 oz passionfruit syrup
1/2 oz pineapple juice
1/2 oz (homemade) apricot brandy or plain brandy
1 oz dry rum (white or gold)
2 1/2 oz carbonated tropical green tea
3 drops orange bitters (Bittercube)
2 dashes orange blossom water
bite-size frozen melon balls as garnish

Shake all liquids (except tea) on ice, then strain into your serving cup. Top with carbonated tea and frozen melon balls as garnish.


Full-size punch version (serves 24)
6 oz lemon juice
6 oz lime juice
3 oz lemon-lime oleo saccharum syrup (2:1)
5 oz passionfruit syrup
12 oz pineapple juice
12 oz apricot brandy or brandy
24 oz dry rum
8 cups carbonated tropical green tea
2 dropperfuls orange bitters
1 1/4 oz orange blossom water
frozen melon balls from roughly 2 melon halves (watermelon, honeydew, canteloupe, etc..)


Combine all but the carbonated tropical green tea and ice in your punch bowl, giving it a good stir, then add the tea, then the ice.

In addition to single frozen melon balls as chilling agents, try making an ice block or ice ring filled with melon balls.


Notes:

• There are a few workable varieties of tropical green tea out there that I know of (Revolution, Republic of Tea, Mighty Leaf). Look for green tea with pineapple flavor plus ginger and/or other tropical fruit flavors. Brew 1 bag per 2 cups near-boiling water until water is cool, then carbonate per your device's instructions (I tend to under-carbonate with my SodaStream, if only because tea tends to foam up quickly).
• Lemon-lime oleo saccharum syrup: in a bowl or ziploc bag, to 3/4 cup sugar (demerara or turbinado if you have it) add the pithless zests (in strips) of 2 lemons and 1 lime. Muddle gently, then seal, letting rest at room temperature overnight. Agitate your container as you like to help the sugar dissolve. When ready to use, add 3 to 6 oz of water depending on desired sweetness, then add to the punch sans zests.
• Rum's simply the natural choice for a punch like this, but play around with the spirits as you like! Brandy's always wonderful for depth, and a nice dry gin plays up all the flavors. I know for a fact that 1792 bourbon is a great match, as is port wine (though then it wouldn't be a yellow polka dot bikini). If using rum, find one with great big vanilla notes, as I think that'll play up the spirit of the cocktail best. I used Mount Gay Eclipse (gold) when serving.
• Though intending to have the melon balls solely function as a garnish, the melon flavors ended up infusing pleasingly into the punch, adding a welcome dimension aside from the citrus flavors. They also played well with the orange blossom water; it'd be worth experimenting more with this flavor pair.
• The orange blossom water itself was a last minute add, but ended up being the right finesse to elevate the punch beyond mundane.
• If going beyond the in-office audience and limited budget for the punch, I'd probably up the alcohol grade slightly (the amount is just right because it still packs a wallop), and get fresh non-gold pineapple to juice. The pineapple in this case was canned Dole's juice. Something more mellow, that would function as a more subtle extender, would take this recipe through the stratosphere.

Old Summer

The air fills with gold and the evening is a never-ending twilight.
T-shirts get covered with long sleeves.

The garden's about done for the year:
A few greens left on scraggly vines.

Summer's winding down, falling into rest.
Hints of smoke in the air, the gains soon to be spent.

Everything gets busy again,
Except for these moments.


[PICTURES REDACTED.
DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND READ NO FURTHER.
THIS COCKTAIL IS UNDRINKABLE.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED - the management]


Old Summer
1 oz bourbon (I used Wild Turkey 101)
1 oz Applejack
1/2 tsp demerara sugar
3 dashes Dr. Adam Elmegirab's Dandelion and Burdock bitters
1-2 wedges fresh grilled or pan-fried green tomato

Muddle green tomato wedge(s) with demerara sugar, bitters.
Add bourbon and applejack, stir with ice. Double-strain into a serving glass over large cube.
Garnish with an extra tomato wedge, skewered and lightly drizzled with molasses.

Notes:

• The tomato I used was slightly larger than a golfball, so I used a couple quarters. Obviously, your mileage may vary, size-wise. As always with green tomatoes, don't mistake green heirlooms for immature tomatoes: immature greens will be firm and not soft to the touch.
• Since I don't have a grill or hibachi, I did a simple pan-fry à la this recipe. A bit of sugar/salt should help the flavor better emerge either way you cook them.
• Beyond that? This is just a simple, down-home recipe. Grab whatever bourbon you like, doesn't have to be fancy. I used D&B bitters because I felt that fit, but any kind of spicy/aromatic/citrus bitters would work here as well.
• The green tomato's interesting for the "green apple" flavor it imparts. There's a fair amount of tanginess among the ingredients, but they all flow together.

Just a little something for winding down on the stoop, the deck, the fire escape and enjoying the last of the good weather, maybe something to warm you as a bit of chill wends its way into the air.