Category: Drink

You know how you can be in a large crowd, almost overwhelmed by the dozens of conversations going on around you, but if someone 30 feet away says your name, it grabs your attention immediately? I have the same reaction if someone is discussing pizza or tells a knock-knock joke.

Knock-knock.

Who’s there?

From.

From who?

From “WHOM”! Jeesh, I can’t take you anywhere.

Have you ever wondered why that never happens when you’re watching a crowd scene in a movie? It’s because the background extras have been instructed to say a particular word to each other, over and over — one that is unlikely to grab anyone’s attention. If they just said, “blah, blah,” it wouldn’t sound right, but if they said actual sentences, it would run the risk of distracting from the lead actors’ lines.

The industry term for this is rhubarbing, because the mantra-like word they are instructed to say is often “rhubarb.”

So now you know that.

Strawberry rhubarb collins

• 2 ounces vodka – I’ve been using Tito’s lately, and I’ve been pretty pleased with it.
• 2 frozen strawberries (about 1 ounce)
• ½ ounce orange curaçao
• ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
• ¾ ounce rhubarb syrup (see below)
• 4 to 5 ounces tonic water

Blend the frozen strawberries and vodka thoroughly. If you have a miniature blender for making smoothies, this is an ideal use for it. Otherwise, mash the berries up with the vodka in the bottom of a glass with a pestle or a wooden spoon.

Strain the berry vodka through a fine-meshed strainer, into the bottom of an ice-filled Collins glass. Add the curaçao, lemon juice, and rhubarb syrup. Stir thoroughly.

Top with tonic water, then stir again. Add a straw, and drink somewhere relaxing.

Obviously, strawberries and rhubarb are a natural combination; the sweetness of the berries plays off the tartness of the rhubarb. Once in a while you will find a strawberry pie in the wild, or possibly a rhubarb pie, but strawberry-rhubarb is a reliable standby. They work well in this drink but get a little more backbone from the citrusy curaçao. The lemon juice keeps everything from getting too sweet, and the slight bitterness of the tonic levels everything out while bringing fizziness to the table.

Early summer brings a lot of rites of passage — weddings, graduations, anniversaries. This is a good drink to sit and think. Not to brood — this isn’t Irish whiskey — but to take a minute and think about where your life is headed. It is an optimistic drink.

Rhubarb syrup

Clean several stalks of rhubarb, then chop it into smallish pieces, about 1-inch dice.

Freeze the chopped rhubarb for several hours, maybe overnight. This will allow large ice crystals to perforate all the cells and allow a lot of weeping (on the part of the rhubarb, hopefully not yours) when you cook it.

Combine the frozen rhubarb and an equal amount of sugar (by weight) in a small saucepan.

Cook over medium heat. As the rhubarb melts, the sugar will draw out its juice. You will be surprised at how much juice there is. About halfway through the cooking process you might want to help the process along with a potato masher or the bottom of a beer bottle.

When the rhubarb juice comes to a boil, stir it for a few seconds to make sure all the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat, and squeeze a small amount of lemon juice into it. Let it cool, then strain it and store the syrup in a bottle. It will keep for a month or more in your refrigerator.

Save the rhubarb pulp. It looks like it has come out on the losing end of a fight, but it is actually a super-delicious compote that is excellent on toast or ice cream.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

On a good day, a cucumber is 96 percent water. That hydrocentic (a word I just made up and am very pleased with) nature of a cucumber lends itself really well to cocktails. If you can extract the water? It’s bonded with cucumber flavor. That makes for a very good syrup. If you chop a cucumber up and soak it in alcohol, the volatile enzymes that give the cucumber its flavor are happy to jump ship and bond with the alcohol instead of the water. The more finely you chop it, the more surface area you provide for this reaction to play out. Let’s do this.

Cucumber syrup

(Trust me; it’s delicious.) Wash an English cucumber — one of the long, plastic-wrapped, ridgey ones — and chop it into medium (1/2-inch) dice. You don’t have to peel it or even remove the stem.

Put the cucumber pieces into a bowl, and put the bowl in your freezer. You can use any kind of container you like, but an open-top bowl will make your freezer smell like cucumbers. Which is nice.

Inside the cells of the cucumber, ice crystals will start to form. It will probably take an hour or two for the cucumber chunks to freeze up completely.

Using a kitchen scale, weigh the cucumber pieces in a small saucepan, and add an equal amount of sugar by weight. If you don’t have a kitchen scale, a typical English cucumber will probably give you around three cups of diced up chunks. This will probably weigh around the same as 1¾ cups of white sugar.

Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally. The first time you do this, you will be shocked at how much liquid comes out of the cucumbers. (It’s around 96 percent water, remember?)

At some point, crush the soggy cucumber pieces with a potato masher to coax even more liquid out.

Bring the mixture to a boil. Stir it for a few seconds, to make sure that all the sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat and let it sit for half an hour or so, then, using a fine-meshed strainer and a funnel, pour it into an empty bottle. In my experience, it will last about a month in your refrigerator. You will probably end up with about two cups of syrup.

Cucumber gin

(This is even more straightforward.) Wash, but don’t peel, some cucumbers.

Put the cucumbers and an equal amount of gin, by weight (see above) in your blender. Because your goal is to overwhelm the gin with cucumber flavor, you can get away with using a fairly non-fancy gin (I like Gordon’s). Blend at the lowest speed for about a minute. The goal here is to chop the cucumbers up pretty finely, to give them more surface area exposed to the alcohol. You’re not actually trying to puree it or anything.

At this point, you will have a bright green mixture that looks like hot dog relish. Pour it into a wide-mouthed jar, label it, and store it somewhere cool and dark for seven days, shaking it two or three times per day.

Strain and bottle it. If you let it set for another day or so, some of the tiny cucumber particles will sink to the bottom of the bottle, and you can strain it again with a coffee filter to make it prettier. Either way, it will be delicious.

Cucumber fizz

(Finally!)

• 2 ounces cucumber gin (see above)
• ½ ounces cucumber syrup (see above)
• 3 to 5 mint leaves
• 5 ounces plain seltzer
• lemon wedge for garnish

Muddle the mint at the bottom of a tall glass. Add ice.

Add the syrup, the gin, and then the seltzer. Squeeze the lemon wedge, then drop it into the pool. Stir.

Cucumber and mint are a classic combination. Gin loves being carbonated. The lemon gives a hint of acid that keeps the cucumber from tasting flat. This is light and fizzy and reminds you that, against all expectations, a cucumber is a fruit. It is the cocktail friend you never knew you wanted to be friends with.

I like to think that it is happy to make the sacrifice for you.

Featured photo: Cucumber Fizz. Photo by John Fladd.

I know I’m not the first person to point this out, but the original versions of a lot of nursery rhymes and fairytales were pretty brutal. In the original version of Little Red Riding Hood, the story ends with the wolf eating her. Ring Around the Rosie is about the Black Death. In The Old Woman Who Lived in Her Shoe, the shoe is less an actual shoe and more a family-planning metaphor. An old version of Snow White was known in Switzerland as The Death of Seven Dwarfs.

Few of them though, are as hard-core as Rapunzel:

“The prince was overcome with grief, and in his despair, he threw himself from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell poked out his eyes. Blind, he wandered about in the forest, eating nothing but grass and roots, and doing nothing but weeping and wailing over the loss of his beloved wife. Thus, he wandered about miserably for some years, finally happening into the wilderness where Rapunzel lived miserably with the twins that she had given to.” — Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Rapunzel

Never mind Rapunzel’s mother selling her into captivity to a witch in exchange for a head of lettuce at the beginning of the story. These four sentences alone would make an eight-episode Netflix series. Also, wife? Twins?

“That’s both fascinating, and disturbing,” you say, “but how does it relate to cocktails?” I’m glad you asked.

In my relative youth, a combination of poor decision-making skills and the callous forces of Capitalism left me living in a forest cottage for a summer, with literally no money, existing largely on birdseed and the berries that I could forage in a nearby clearing. I can attest to the flesh-slashing properties of blackberry thorns.

I call today’s cocktail“Too Many Thorns.” The prince from Rapunzel would agree with me.

Too many thorns

• 2 ounces gin – this week, I’m using Engine Organic Gin, which comes in an oil can, because why not?
• ½ ounce blackberry syrup (see below)
• 1 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
• ½ ounce blackberry brandy
• 1 egg white

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker, and dry-shake it (without ice) for 30 seconds. It is important to do this, because if you add an egg white directly to ice it will seize up in an extremely unappetizing way.

Add ice, and shake for another 30 seconds.

Strain into a cocktail or coupé glass. Your drink should have a foamy head on it.

Raise a toast to our unnamed, bethorned prince wandering blindly through the wilderness, eating grass and roots, and eat some pâté on a cracker.

So, what’s with the egg white?

Two things: First, it adds a foamy, velvety quality to a cocktail. Additionally, egg whites are slightly alkaline, which levels out the acidity from the lemon juice and blackberries. Lemon is a classic combination with blackberries, and the bite from the gin cuts through the sweetness of the drink and reminds you that there is an adult in the room. Hopefully you.

Though it’s usually grown-ups who climb towers and get their eyes gouged.

Blackberry syrup

Combine one bag of frozen blackberries with an equal amount (by weight) of sugar in a small saucepan. Cook on medium heat. As the berries thaw, the sugar will draw the juice out from them. Because they’ve been frozen, all the cells in the berries have been stabbed by ice crystals and are more than willing to cry about it. Cook slowly, until the mixture comes to a boil. Somewhere in this process, mash everything with a potato masher. Let the mixture boil for 10 to 15 seconds, to make sure that all the sugar has dissolved.

Remove from the heat, then strain it to remove seeds and berry guck. This will keep for several weeks in your refrigerator.

Featured photo: Blackberry without the thorns. Photo by John Fladd.

In my youth, in the late 18th century, I watched a television show about stunt performers. One of the things that stuck with me was a stunt man getting ready to be thrown off a roof, and after going over all his safety protocols, the last thing he did before the fall was to make sure he had his “buddy” with him — in this case, a tiny, dog’s squeaky toy. Apparently, many stunt people have a superstition about carrying a small toy with them during a stunt, so they have a friend with them and don’t have to go through something harrowing alone.

Most driving is somewhat harrowing for me, so for many years I’ve carried a “buddy” with me. In my case he is a 2-inch-high figurine of a musketeer, holding a sword in his right hand and a dagger in his left. Having him with me has always made me feel slightly cooler. I like to imagine myself raising an eyebrow, twirling my mustache with one hand and nonchalantly placing my other on the hilt of my sword. In my daydream, an alley full of street toughs — or, more likely, a clerk at the DMV — would scuttle away, completely intimidated.

Apparently I’m not the only one to feel that way. For three cars and several mechanics, I’ve dropped my car off to be serviced, only to find my musketeer on the dashboard waiting for me, obviously placed there when the mechanic was done playing with him.

Last week, my teenager asked me to drive them to school. It was the morning of the AP Literature Exam, and the apprehension was palpable. When I pulled into the parking lot of the school, we just sat in silence for a moment or two. Eventually, lacking any practical advice, I pulled my musketeer from his spot under my dashboard and held him out.

“Would you like to take The Musketeer with you?”

A moment’s silence.

“Yes, please.”

I’ve been facing down a few challenges lately, and I for one, could stand a little more insouciance in my life, right now.

The Musketeer

This is a riff on a cocktail called The Aramis, after one of the title characters in The Three Musketeers. Apparently there already is a drink called The Three Musketeers, but it is a sweet, ice creamy, after-dinner affair named after the candy bar. That’s not really what I’m going for here, so I’ve adapted something a bit more specific.

• 2 ounces very cold gin — I put mine in the freezer for several hours
• 1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
• ¼ ounce simple syrup
• ½ ounce blue Curaçao

Combine the gin, lime juice and simple syrup over ice, in a cocktail shaker. Shake until the shaker starts to frost over.

Pour into a cocktail glass.

Using a spoon, touching the inside of the glass, slowly pour the blue Curaçao down the side of the glass. Because it is denser than the rest of the cocktail, it should sink to a puddle in the bottom.

Ask your digital assistant to play the William Tell Overture at volume 9. Sip your drink like a boss.

In theory, blue Curaçao is orange-flavored. The reality is that it just tastes blue. The gin and lime juice are pretty bracing, but the hint of syrup and the Curaçao round it out. It will help you feel like a musketeer named after a Greek philosopher.

Featured photo: The Musketeer. Photo by John Fladd.

I opened the door to the back seat of my car and went to put my briefcase in but saw something out of the corner of my eye and stopped short.

A couple of times a week, when I stop at the convenience store to pick up some iced coffee, I will treat myself to one of the individually wrapped chocolate-covered graham crackers on the counter by the cash register. For reasons that remain obscure to me, I must have bought one, then tossed it into the back of my car the day before.

I picked it up and examined it. Although still hermetically sealed, it had clearly had a rough 24 hours. As it sat in the hot car throughout the previous day, the chocolate had melted. It had been cold overnight, though, and it had firmed back up. Not wanting to waste a gift from Past Me, I ate it before getting into the front seat.

“Look at you!” I said to it, as I unwrapped it. “You had a rough day, but you pulled yourself together, and here you are, back on the job. Thank you. I appreciate your work ethic.”

I was suddenly struck by a rare moment of perspective and clarity. I was standing in my driveway, actively working to validate the feelings of a graham cracker. I had clearly turned some sort of emotional corner.

So now, as I decompress from a week where I, too, feel as if I’ve been melted and refrozen and tossed aside, I would very much like a nice drink. Clearly though, my judgment is somewhat suspect at the moment. It is time to fall back on a classic, one that has weathered decades of this sort of week. Maybe something fizzy.

Sloe gin fizz

• 2 ounces sloe gin
• 1 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
• ¾ ounce simple syrup
• extremely fizzy seltzer – I like Topo Chico

Combine the sloe gin, lemon juice and simple syrup with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake thoroughly.

Strain into an ice-filled Collins glass.

Top with seltzer, and stir. If you have a bar spoon — one of the ones with a long, twisty stem — this is a good time to use it.

Garnish with one or two cocktail cherries. If you decide to use one, it will be a special occasion when you eat it at the end of the drink. I like to use two, though. I feel like this whole experience might be a bit traumatic to a cherry, and I like to give it some company.

Sloe gin is a sweet, low-alcohol liqueur. It is not too sweet, though, and could use a little help from the simple syrup to stand up to the lemon juice. The lemon juice, in turn, balances the sweetness and provides brightness to the endeavor. The seltzer dials back the intensity of the other ingredients and provides a spring-like fizziness. This is a delicately sweet, low-octane treat to start your weekend off, giving yourself at least as much validation as you would give to a graham cracker.

Featured photo: Sloe gin fizz. Photo by John Fladd.

I read a lot of travel books — mostly written by confused, bumbling Europeans trying to make sense of life in unfamiliar cultures. I think I like them because I generally feel confused, bumbling around in all cultures.

“Bon jour, mon frère,” someone says to the writer of one of the books. “‘Mon frère,’” he thinks. “Why frère? Why is he calling me his brother, instead of his friend? What’s going on? Am I in trouble?”

“Good morning,” the nice lady at the grocery store says to me, “have a good week.”

“What does she mean by that?” I wonder, for the next half hour.

At any rate, these travel writers say that one of the most frustrating, confusing and ultimately useful phrases that they run into is “Insh’Allah” — “God willing.”

“Will the work be done on time?” “Will I make it through this surgery?”

“Of course.”

Whew.

“Insh’Allah.”

Eek.

I mention this because my poor wife — and pretty much every wife, when it comes down to it, really — has to deal with a similar thing.

“Will you please do this simultaneously important and very easy task for me, please?”

“Of course.” Eventually.

Granted, the “Eventually” is unspoken, but it’s undeniably there.

Which is how we ended up with a basket of elderly blood oranges sitting on our counter, feeling their life force slowly flicker out and leak into the Universe. Nobody in the house remembers how we ended up with blood oranges in the first place. They are beautiful but not easy to do anything with. They aren’t great for out-of-hand eating. They aren’t very sweet. They have seeds. They have a nice flavor and could theoretically make a good marinade or something, but the blood-red color can be a bit off-putting. It really calls for being used in a cocktail.

So my wife was being more than reasonable when she asked me to please, for the sake of all that is good and decent, do something with the basket of blood oranges on the counter.

“Of course, my Delicate Persimmon Blossom.” *Eventually*

My wife sighed with tired resignation, an emotion that has come to characterize most of her interactions with me, her soulmate.

It speaks more to luck, rather than good timing on my part, that I caught the blood oranges minutes before they went bad.

Blood orange syrup

Zest some blood oranges, however many you have. Put the zest into a small saucepan.

Put the pan on your scale, zero it out and juice the oranges into it. Write down how much the juice weighs.

Tare the scale, then add an equal amount of sugar.

Heat the mixture over medium heat, until it comes to a boil and the sugar dissolves.

Remove it from the heat, let it sit for an hour, then strain it.

That’s great, but what do you actually do with blood orange syrup? Aside from adding it to your yogurt, which is great, by the way.

Blood orange tequila fizz

• 2 ounces blanco tequila – I like Hornitos
• 2 ounces fresh squeezed lime juice
• 1 ounces blood orange syrup (see above)
• 2 ounces ginger beer

Combine the tequila, lime juice and syrup over ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake ruthlessly.

Pour — ice and all — into a large rocks glass. Top with the ginger beer, and stir gently.

Sip cautiously — because let’s face it; you are deeply suspicious about this combination of flavors — and then feel relief and a tiny amount of trust in the Universe seep back into you.

The first thing you will notice about this cocktail is how beautiful it is. It is deep red and seems to make nonspecific but compelling promises to you. It tastes as good as it looks. The blood orange and lime work together to give you layers of citrus flavor. The tequila and ginger beer give it some backbone.

When you’ve had a hard week, when the kids are especially loud, when the other dance moms have gotten on your last nerve, when you find yourself wondering what the point of all of this *gesturing vaguely around* is, this drink will throw you a rope.

Featured photo: Blood Orange Tequila Fizz. Photo by John Fladd.