Category: Drink

Most Americans don’t seem to appreciate bitter tastes. We’re fine with other strong flavors — we love sweets, many of us will go at a bag of salty snacks like it’s been away at war, there are certainly chili-heads who crave intensely spicy foods, and some children eat sour candies that would make the head of an adult collapse in on itself. But what about bitter foods?
I enjoy some bitterness from time to time, so on the off chance that you do, too, or are in the middle of a contentious break-up, here is a bitter but delicious cocktail, with a very bitter name:

Remember the Alimony

• 1 1/4 ounces Fino sherry – I’m not exactly sure what “fino” means in this context, but whatever full-bodied sherry you have on hand.
• 1 1/4 ounces Cynar or other bitter Italian liqueur. Cynar is the one with an artichoke on the label.
• 3/4 ounce medium-shelf, London dry gin — Because of the strong flavor of this drink, subtle flavors will be overwhelmed; this is not a job for your best top-shelf gin. I used Gordon’s, and I do not regret the decision.

We will not be using a cocktail shaker for this drink. Add several ice cubes to a mixing glass, then add the sherry, Cynar and gin, then stir gently but thoroughly.
Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass.

As expected, this is a bitter drink — not bitter to the extent that you’ll have to smash your fists against the table to force it down or anything, but there’s no getting around its bitterness. When you take your first sip of it, your immediate impression will be a bit of raisinyness from the sherry, quickly followed by bitter notes from the Cynar. It actually has a smooth finish and goes down easily, but there is a tail of bitterness in the aftertaste.
This is a very grown-up drink, for sitting by a window and watching the snow or rain come down and thinking about the turns your life has taken.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

This is an excellent all-day project for when weather has you stuck in the house. No one part of this recipe is difficult or takes very long to complete, but there are several stages where you need to walk away and leave it so the magic can happen.

• 6 1/2 ounces (185 g) small pretzel sticks
• 2 1/4 cups (446 g) sugar – You’ll be using small amounts of this during different steps of this recipe, so measure the two and a quarter cups into a small mixing bowl.
• 12 Tablespoons (a stick and a half) butter, melted
• An 8-ounce package of cream cheese
• 1 cup (227 g) heavy cream
• A 3-pound bag of frozen strawberries – If you can find 3 pounds of frozen sliced strawberries, so much the better.
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat your oven to 400°F. Set the bag of strawberries out to thaw.

Spray a 9×13-inch baking pan with non-stick baking spray, or oil it liberally with vegetable oil.

Pulverize the pretzels. You can do this in a food processor, a blender, or a combination of a rolling pin and anger issues. Combine the pretzel dust, the melted butter and 1/4 cup of sugar thoroughly, then transfer the mixture to the greased baking pan. Tamp the pretzel mixture down with the flat bottom of a measuring cup or a rocks glass.

Bake for 10 minutes or until the edges of the pretzel base start to brown slightly. Remove from the oven, and set aside to cool for half an hour.

With a hand mixer or stand mixer, beat the cream cheese and 1/2 cup of sugar for a few minutes, until it is fluffy and friendly-looking, then slowly drizzle in the cream, and beat the mixture until it has soft peaks. With a large spoon or a spatula, transfer the cream cheese mixture to the pretzel substrate, and smooth it out. Move the baking pan to your refrigerator, and let it chill for at least half an hour.

Put 2 pounds (2/3 of the bag) of strawberries in your blender or food processor, and puree them thoroughly, then strain the liquid into a large saucepan through a fine-mesh strainer. Add the salt and the remaining 2 cups of sugar, then cook the strawberry mixture over medium heat until it just starts to come to a slow simmer. You don’t want to cook the flavor out of the strawberries; you just want to get the sugar completely dissolved. If you bought frozen whole berries, slice the remaining ones. Mix the remaining berries into the puree.

Using a sturdy spatula, cut servings of the pretzel-and-cream mixture, and top generously with strawberry sauce. This can be served warm or chilled, and goes extremely well with plain seltzer.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Here is my take on this classic.

1½ ounces light rum — On this occasion I’ve used Captain Morgan’s Sweet Chili Lime, because I’m wacky that way.

1 ounce cognac

½ ounce London Dry Gin — We want some of that juniperish astringency in this drink to offset so many fruit flavors, so I’m going with a solid standby, Gordon’s.

2 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice

1 ounce fresh squeezed ruby red grapefruit juice

½ ounce orgeat — This is a sweet almond syrup that punches up the fruitiness of a tropical drink

½ ounce dry sherry to float

Add ice to a cocktail shaker, then add the rum, cognac, gin, lime and grapefruit juices, and orgeat. Shake thoroughly while listening to a song about making bad decisions on the beach. I recommend “Una Más Cerveza” by Tommy Alverson. Or anything by Jimmy Buffet.

Strain over crushed ice in a Collins glass. As it happens, I don’t have an ice maker in the door of my refrigerator, so I am forced to crush it myself, like a savage. I wrap a handful of ice cubes in a tea towel and smash it with something heavy.

Pour a float of sherry on the top of the drink with a straw and a paper umbrella.

This is fruity and refreshing, but at the same time boozy enough to get your attention. It goes down easily, but not so easily that it raises any suspicions. One will lead to a second. When you start to make a third Fog Cutter, a responsible person might remind you that you have a big day tomorrow.

The key phrase to remember here is, “Tomorrow’s not the boss of me!”

Featured photo: Cornmeal crepes. Photo by John Fladd.

Crepes

• 1¼ cup (285 g) whole milk
• 2 eggs
• 3 Tablespoons butter, browned
• ½ cup + 2 Tablespoons (80 g) flour
• ½ + 2 Tablespoons (100 g) cornmeal
• 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Mascarpone filling

• 2 cups (1 16-oz container) mascarpone cheese
• 4 Tablespoons sugar
• Large pinch of fresh-grated nutmeg
• Strawberry preserves, homemade or jarred
• Finely minced basil for garnish

In your blender, mix the milk and eggs together. Add the browned butter and mix again. Add the dry ingredients — the flour, cornmeal and salt — and blend yet again. Add the vanilla and blend one last time. (Making crepe batter in a blender makes things go extremely smoothly — if you put the ingredients in in the right order. If you were to put the dry ingredients in first, with the wet ingredients on top, there is a good chance that the batter wouldn’t mix properly, and a gelatinized blob of flour would sit at the bottom of your blender jar, mocking you.)

Put your blender jar in the refrigerator and chill the batter for at least half an hour.

If you have a small, non-stick skillet, this is its big moment. Place it over medium heat, and melt a lump of butter in it.

Take your crepe batter from the refrigerator and give it another spin in the blender to make certain that everything is well mixed. Because the cornmeal is heavy and is prone to sinking to the bottom of the batter, you might want to reblend the batter after every two crepes.

Pour about a quarter of a cup into the hot melted butter, and swirl the pan around to spread the batter over the entire bottom of the pan. Return the pan to heat, and cook your crepe until the top surface isn’t shiny anymore and the edges start to brown just a tiny bit. Then lift a corner of the crepe with a spatula, and flip it over with your fingers. Cook the B-side of the crepe for another minute or so, then transfer it to a plate.

If you are using a non-stick pan, you will not have to rebutter it. If you are using a different species of frying pan, you will probably want to regrease it between crepes. Cook crepes until you have used up all your batter.

Separately, mash the mascarpone, sugar and nutmeg together, and stir until they combine into a very stiff mixture.

Now you have a choice. If you want sweet dessert crepes, fill them with strawberry preserves and top with the mascarpone topping. If you want a less sweet, slightly savory crepe, fill it with the mascarpone and top it with strawberry preserves. Either way, garnish with minced basil.

Serve with ice-cold milk or sparkling wine.

Featured photo: Cornmeal crepes. Photo by John Fladd.

It is said that the three hardest things for a man to say are “I was wrong,” “I need help,” and “Worcestershire sauce.”

From time to time recipes will call for Worcestershire sauce, and it’s one of those ingredients that we shrug and add without a lot of thought. The other ingredients in a bloody mary — or, in this case, her alcohol-free-but-still-a-party-girl sister, a virgin mary — are all pretty self-explanatory:

The tomato juice is there to provide an acidic, savory base for the other ingredients. It stands up well to strong flavors and doesn’t taste washed-out as the ice melts and it gets diluted a bit. The lime juice is also acidic and is there to give extra zing to the tomato juice. The various spices and flavorings are there to give layers of flavor to the tomato base, which really is very good at carrying complex flavors.

But the Worcestershire sauce is a bit of an enigma. It is there, it turns out, to add umami, a savory quality. Yes, technically tomato juice is a fruit juice, but it is at its best when it leans into savoriness, not sweetness. And Worcestershire sauce, which is made largely of anchovies, adds another layer of salinity and savoriness to the production. (Yes, I know you could have happily gone the rest of your life without knowing about the anchovies. Sorry.)

A 5.5-ounce can of tomato juice

1 Tablespoon pickled pepper brine – I like the liquid in a jar of pickled banana peppers or pepperoncini

1 Tablespoon fresh squeezed lime juice – about a quarter of a lime

1 teaspoon ginger paste – I use pre-pulverized, jarred ginger paste. If buying an entire jar of ginger paste seems like too ambitious a purchase for you, peel a knob of fresh ginger root, and chop it finer and finer, until it collapses on itself and turns into paste.

1½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1/8 teaspoon onion powder

1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

1/8 teaspoon celery salt

Chili/lime powder for the rim of the glass

Garnish – This is where many restaurants lose their minds. Do an internet search for “bloody mary garnish” and brace yourself; some bloody marys have more garnish than actual bloody mary. Since we’re skipping the alcohol this time around, wowing your guests with garnish might be the way to go. This time, I’ve skewered a half-sour pickle, a large olive, a lime wedge and a chicken nugget.

Sprinkle some chili/lime powder onto a plate. Wipe the rim of your glass with a lime wedge to moisten it, then turn the glass upside-down and swirl it around in the powder, to coat the rim.

Add all the remaining ingredients and ice to a cocktail shaker. Shake to combine and chill.

Strain over fresh ice into the prepared glass, and garnish to whatever degree you can justify.

If you wanted to have a bloody/virgin mary party, you could easily make a large batch of this, and lay out garnish stations.

Featured photo: Virgin Mary. Photo by John Fladd.

So you find yourself with half a dozen fresh pears on your hands. What does one do with Too Many Pears?

Pear Crisp

Filling

• 6 ripe medium-to-large pears, peeled, cored and chopped
• ½ cup (107 g) brown sugar
• 1 Tablespoon corn starch – This filling will be very liquidy, particularly if your pears are super-ripe and/or juicy. A full tablespoon of starch will help everything pull together as it bakes.
• ¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
• 2 teaspoons bourbon – optional
• Zest of 1 orange – This too, is optional. Bourbon and orange both get along extremely well with pears, but a love triangle of all three is a bit chaotic. You should probably pick one and give the other a lovely parting gift.

Crust

• ¾ cup (67 g) rolled oats – not instant or steel-cut oats
• ¾ cup (90 g) all-purpose flour
• 1⁄3 cup (71 g) brown sugar
• ½ cup (65 g) chopped nuts – Walnuts or pecans are traditional, but if you wanted to use hazelnuts, or even pistachios, who could argue with you? “Why, yes, Helen, I did use hazelnuts in the crust. **steely gaze** Thank you so much for asking.”
• ½ cup (1 stick) butter, melted (about 1 minute in your microwave)

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Grease an 8”x8” baking pan liberally with butter. I like to smear a full tablespoonful around with my fingers. You know, for thoroughness.

Combine all the filling ingredients. Stir and set aside.

In a separate bowl, combine all the crust ingredients except for the melted butter. Add the butter, and stir the mixture with a fork, until it all pulls together into a lumpy, streusel-y texture.

Pour the pear mixture into the buttery baking pan, then top with the crust mixture. Place the baking pan on a lined baking sheet, in case of a bubble-over situation, then bake for 30 to 35 minutes.

Remove the pear crisp from your oven when it looks golden-brown and gloppy. Let it cool for 10 minutes or so; at 350°F, the brown sugar/pear syrup is dangerously hot. Aim for “warm and comforting” rather than “hot from the oven.” Top with vanilla ice cream, or serve with a milkshake. You won’t be sorry.

Featured photo: Pear Crisp. Photo by John Fladd.