Category: Drink

This drink is all about appearances. It is over-the-top to the point where it feels like it’s missing its sparklers, three paper umbrellas and a peacock feather. This might be the most visually impressive drink you’ll ever make. Our hero — or superhero in this case — flirts with being just a little too much — too sweet, too boozy, too good-looking — but ultimately looks too good not to drink.

• 1 ounce kirsch, a high-octane Dutch cherry brandy
• 1 ounce coconut rum
• ¾ ounce grenadine
• ¾ ounce blue curacao
• 2 ounces plain seltzer or club soda
• Regular ice cubes
• Crushed ice or pebble ice

Tajin powder for the rim – this is a spicy spice flavored with chili and lime. It will help cut through what might otherwise be a very sweet drink.

Rim a rocks glass. Run a wedge of lemon or lime around the rim of the glass, then turn it upside-down and swirl it around Tajin that you have sprinkled on a plate. The spice will cling to the citrus juice and give you a rim of flavor when you sip your drink.

Carefully fill the glass about halfway with crushed or pebble ice, making sure not to knock any of the spiced rim loose.

In a cocktail shaker, combine regular ice, the brandy, the rum, and the grenadine. Shake thoroughly, then pour over the ice in your rocks glass, keeping straight to the middle — again, so you don’t mess with that pretty rim.

In a mixing glass — this could be an actual mixing glass or a largish measuring cup — stir the blue curacao, seltzer, and more regular ice. This will combine them without the seltzer losing its zip. Gently pour the blue mixture down the center of the drink, straining out the ice in the mixing glass. Because of the gas bubbles in the blue mixture, it is not as dense as the red mixture, and will rest on top of it in a separate layer, if the superhero bartender gods are with you.

If you’ve ever eaten chunks of mango or pineapple on a skewer that have had Tajin or chili powder sprinkled on it, you’ll notice a similar vibe to this spicy/sweet cocktail. The drink itself might have been too sweet, but lightening it up with club soda and replacing the sugared rim with Tajin has brought the operation back within operating tolerances.

Featured photo: The Superman. Photo by John Fladd.

From the 1930 Calumet Baking Book

• 2 cups (240 g) all purpose flour
• 1½ teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 2/3 cup (132 g) sugar
• Zest of two oranges
• 2 eggs, beaten
• ¾ cup orange juice — perhaps from the oranges you just zested.
• 1 cup (114 g) Grape-Nuts cereal — At some point in your youth you probably tried the dry, gravel-like cereal that comes in a very small box and its appeal was lost on you. Interestingly enough, the older you get the better the Grape-Nuts get. You find this listed as an ingredient in a surprising number of recipes starting in the 1930s. Presumably, Grape-Nuts were new, exciting, and a social signifier of some kind?

Mother’s Day is one of the three or four days of the year when non-mothers decide to make a big deal about cooking breakfast for the mom of the house. Muffins are a good choice, because they are easy, hard to mess up, and don’t leave the kitchen looking like a combat zone.

This is a good recipe to make with even young children. It’s super straightforward. The key is to measure all the ingredients out ahead of time. Most of us have the image of the joy of intergenerational cooking with children. In point of fact, even very young kids like the idea of cooking but have the attention spans of coffee-addled squirrels. The act of measuring out ingredients is indescribably tedious to them, whereas turning on a mixer and adding ingredients one at a time will take about 11 minutes — the length of a Bluey cartoon.

Preheat your oven to 375°F, and put muffin liners in 12 muffin tins.

In a small mixing bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together. Set it aside.

In your mixer, cream the butter, sugar and orange zest together. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a silicone spatula, then beat in the eggs, a little at a time.

When everything has mixed together thoroughly, add half the flour mixture (turn your mixer to its slowest speed to avoid poofing yourself with flour), then half the orange juice, then the rest of the flour, then the rest of the orange juice.

Remove the bowl from your mixer, and stir in the Grape-Nuts.

Divide the batter between the 12 lined muffin tins, then bake for 18 to 20 minutes.

Let cool 10 to 15 minutes, then eat with butter or topped with ice cream.

Featured photo: Orange Muffins with Grape-Nuts. Photo by John Fladd.

• 2 ounces botanical gin – This time, I went with Collective Arts Plum and Blackthorn Gin, and I do not regret it.
• 1 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
• ½ ounce simple syrup
• Club soda to top

Fill a tall, straight-sided glass — appropriately enough, this is called a Collins glass — about three quarters full of ice, then add the gin, the lemon juice and the simple syrup. Stir the mixture with a long-handled spoon or a chopstick.

Gently add club soda until it reaches almost to the top of the glass, then stir everything again.

Hold your drink up to the light and take a couple of deep cleansing breaths. Watch the bubbles rise to the top of your drink. Take a moment to remember a time in your life when you were proud.

In my case, I think of a time, many years ago when I finished waiting tables late at night and decided to treat myself to a quick drink before I went home. As I walked to the door to the bar, I loosened my tie, wrapped my apron into a small bundle, and stuck it under my arm. I opened the door and walked into the bar, only to remember that it was College Night, and the place was packed to the rafters with kids. There were easily 15 college students between me and the bar.

I was just considering turning around and just heading home, when Curtis — a legend among bartenders — shouted at all the college kids.

“Hey! Make a hole! Workin’ man comin’ through!”

The kids fell silent and opened up a path the bar. You could tell that they didn’t know what to think:

“How strange! Who is this old guy? And, what is this ’working’ that he speaks of?”

I got to the bar, and Curtis already had my drink waiting.

I gave Curtis a crumpled handful of bills from my tip money.

He didn’t do anything cheesy like fist-bump me, but he gave me a nod.

Just a nod, but the memory of that nod has stayed with me throughout the years since and has stiffened my spine.

So, that’s what I think about as I watch the bubbles in my Tom Collins bounce their way up through the ice in my glass, and then I take a sip.

It isn’t sweet. It isn’t super-fruity. It is extremely refreshing. It’s the sort of thing a grownup might drink.

What a working man might drink.

Featured photo: Tom Collins. Photo by John Fladd.

• A 2-inch chunk of cucumber – I like using the long, skinny English cucumbers; they seem to have a little more flavor. Go ahead and wash it, but don’t bother peeling it. The peel will add color and flavor to the finished drink.
• 2 ounces chili-lime rum – I’ve been using Captain Morgan’s for this. I do not regret it.
• 1 6-ounce can of pineapple juice

Muddle the cucumber thoroughly in the bottom of your cocktail shaker. This means smooshing it up with a stick. If you don’t have a muddler you can use a wooden spoon, or a beer bottle if it fits, or if you’re up for a project you can actually go outside and find a stick (wash it before using it). I’ve heard of a guy who cut off the handle of a child’s baseball bat, presumably not while his child was using it. The point is that you want to crush this chunk of cucumber, body and spirit, until it is the consistency of applesauce.

Add the rum, and shake your rum & cuke for 20 seconds or so. This is what is called a “dry shake,” meaning without ice. When you muddle herbs or fruits or vegetables, you do it for three reasons:

1. By smashing your cucumber up, you’ve given it a lot more surface area to interact with the alcohol.

2. You’ve broken up the cell walls inside the cucumber and released some of the flavor compounds from their tiny prisons. (If you are really committed to breaking up the cells of the cucumber, you can freeze it first. Ice crystals will poke holes in the cell walls before you even get to it with the muddler.)

3. So now you have all these flavor compounds floating around unattached. Some of them like water just fine and will dissolve into it without complaint. Others are pickier and are waiting around for some alcohol to bond with. By dry shaking your rum & cuke before diluting it with melting ice, you’re swooshing the flavor and color chemicals around in an alcohol solution. On a molecular level you’ve kick-started a party. As you shake it up you’ll hear a “slosh-slosh” sound, but the botanical molecules will hear Ozzy Osborne’s “Crazy Train.”

At this point go ahead and add a handful of ice to the shaker, as well as the contents of the miniature can of pineapple juice.

Shake the mixture for another 30 seconds or so, then strain it over fresh ice in a Collins glass. It will have a gratifyingly foamy head on it. This drink is best suited to drinking with a straw.

This is a mildly refreshing drink. The cucumber flavor team has spread throughout the pineapple juice, keeping it from being too sweet. There is a subtle citrussy spiciness from the flavored rum.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

You will need a pre-baked pie crust for this recipe. You can make yours from scratch, but let’s face it; that can be intimidating. The way people talk about making pie crust makes it sound like a harrowing experience. In point of fact, once you’ve figured out the process it’s pretty straightforward; it’s just difficult to describe. It’s one of those things you’ve got to dive into and get your hands covered with flour. If you know a grandmother, have her show you.

In the meantime, if you don’t have the confidence to tackle making a crust yourself, just buy a premade one, or a frozen crust that you just have to thaw out and roll into a pie pan. A store-bought pie crust will work perfectly well in this recipe. Just follow the directions on the package to “blind-bake” it — to bake it before adding the filling.

The filling may be one of the easiest pie fillings you’ll ever make. It makes an apple pie look like differential calculus.

• 4 eggs
• 1 cup (198 g) brown sugar
• ½ teaspoon kosher or coarse sea salt
• 6 Tablespoons (3/4 stick) butter, melted
• 3 Tablespoons cider vinegar

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Do what you have to do to have a pre-baked pie shell ready for you.

This pie is so easy that it really isn’t worth the hassle of getting out your electric mixer. Get out a mixing bowl and a whisk.

Whisk the eggs, brown sugar and salt together. Whisk in the melted butter. Whisk in the vinegar.

Boom! The filling is done. Pour it into your prepared pie crust and bake it on the middle rack of your oven for about 35 minutes. Take it out when it’s brown and not jiggly anymore. Set it aside to cool.

Like many egg-based pies — quiche, for instance — this will be puffy and domed when it comes out of the oven, then it will settle down as it cools.

You often hear of old-fashioned pies like this described as “poverty” pies, or Depression Era pies. The explanation is that the vinegar is a stand-in for fruit that frugal housewives couldn’t afford. I’ve never bought that explanation. You can’t afford a couple of apples, but you have eggs, butter and (depending on the recipe) cream? Think instead of New England or the upper Midwest in the middle of winter 100 or more years ago. You’ve got access to chickens and a cow — or your neighbor does — but fruit is hard enough to come by that you’ll save it for a special occasion. If you’re baking a pie for your family, you’ll use vinegar as a flavoring agent that will give the filling an acidic tang.

Which is what you’ll find here. This is a sweet, super-buttery, rich pie with a background sourness that cuts through that richness and is extremely satisfying. It’s a good dessert pie, but even better with gossip over a couple cups of strong coffee.

Featured photo: Vinegar Pie. Photo by John Fladd.

Some drinks are worth devoting some time to.

Herbal Green Gin

• 2 cups (16 ounces) London dry gin
• 1 large handful (1 ounce)/30 g) fresh parsley

Blend the gin and parsley together in your blender, slowly at first, then working your way up to its highest setting. After 30 seconds or so cut the power and let the green gin sit for an hour or so. Pour it through a fine mesh strainer, then run it through a coffee filter.

Then, start your cucumber syrup.

Cucumber Syrup

• One large English cucumber
• An equal amount by weight of sugar

Wash but don’t peel the cucumber, then chop it into medium dice. Move it to your freezer and freeze it solid. Clearly this will take a few hours. If you check in on the gin you will see that it still has some time before it is completely filtered. We’ll get to the actual cocktail tomorrow.

Tomorrow

Cook the frozen cucumber pieces and the sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. By freezing the cucumber, you have poked holes in its cell walls with ice crystals. As it thaws, everything will collapse into a surprising amount of liquid mush. Bring it to a boil briefly (to make sure that the sugar has completely dissolved), then remove it from heat, and let it steep for about an hour. Strain the syrup through a fine-mesh strainer, and you can get started on your actual cocktail.

Your Actual Cocktail

• 2 ounces parsley-infused gin
• 1 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 3/4 ounce cucumber syrup

Combine all three ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker, and shake thoroughly, then strain into a chilled, stemmed glass.

At this point you’ve put two days into making this drink. Is it worth it?

It really is. Like many utility cocktails, this is at its best when it is skull-shrinkingly cold. It is sweet but with a complex flavor. The herbiness is there, but so is the cucumberality. Interestingly, while you can find each of those flavors — both of which go really well with fresh lemon juice, by the way — if you look for them individually, a fusion of the two is elusive. Your palate flips back and forth between them but doesn’t settle on a combination flavor — a parscumber, if you will. Nevertheless, it is delicious.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.