Category: Drink

• 2½ ounces medium-shelf vodka. Once you get to a certain price point with vodkas, it takes a pretty refined palate to distinguish between them. Once you add other, more flavorful ingredients, it becomes virtually impossible. You can tell when you’re dealing with the cheap stuff — it has a chemical taste that is not appealing. When you get to the Absolut/Tito’s/Grey Goose level, you can feel comfortable going with whatever is on sale at the liquor store that week.
• 2 ounces sake — I went with a small bottle called Demon Slayer. I have to admit that the main attraction was a cool label.
• ½ ounce elderflower liqueur. I like St. Germaine.
• 1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice. If you think of cocktail ingredients as having personalities, lime juice is everyone’s best friend. She gets along with everyone but very seldom brings any drama. She’s the one you could call at 2 in the morning to talk about the weird dream you just had.
• A large sprig or half a handful of fresh mint.

Start by bruising the mint. Squeeze it in your hand, then roll it around like you’re making a Play-Doh snake. Drop it into a martini glass. This drink is at its best when it is very cold, so using a glass with a stem is key; it keeps the warmth of your hands from heating the drink up.

Fill a cocktail shaker about a third of the way up with ice, then add the vodka, the sake, the elderflower liqueur and the lime juice. Shake vigorously, until you hear the ice start to break up in the shaker. (I don’t know about you, but tiny shards of ice floating on the surface of a cocktail are one of my Favorite Things. I do also like brown paper packages tied up with string, though.)

Strain the contents of the shaker over the bruised mint in the martini glass. The mint will act as both an ingredient and a garnish, so you don’t need to spend important Cocktail Time worrying about that.

Sit somewhere comfortable and devote 100 percent of your attention to your drink, which features a quality I don’t create often: subtlety.

Your first impression will be of the lime juice. She’s delicious here, but not as acidic as you might have been expecting. The elderflower liqueur has taken a bit of her edge off. Because she is such a good friend, though, as you sit savoring the first sip of this drink, she will say, “Oh, have you met my friends?” and she will introduce them to you, one-by-one, starting with the mint. There will be depth from the sake, and a very faint, mellow sweetness from the elderflower.

And you will remind yourself that while samurai were renowned as brilliant warriors, they were also expected to excel at something less in-your-face — flower arranging perhaps, or writing poetry.

It’s a good drink.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

• 3¾ cups (488 g) whole wheat or white whole wheat flour
• 1 Tablespoon baking soda – We’re using baking soda in this recipe instead of baking powder, because molasses is slightly acidic (with a pH of 5, about the same as black coffee) and will react better with the baking soda – think Science Fair volcanoes
• 2½ teaspoons ground ginger
• ½ teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
• ½ teaspoon ground allspice
• ½ teaspoon kosher or coarse sea salt
• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
• ¼ teaspoon ground Szechuan peppercorns
• 12 Tablespoons (1½ sticks) butter, melted
• 1½ cups (300 g) dark brown sugar — I actually always use dark brown sugar for any recipe that calls for brown sugar, but we’ve established that I do not have refined tastes. In this case, go with the dark stuff to make the cookies extra molassesy.
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup (160 g) molasses
• 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• Coarse sugar to roll the dough in

Don’t preheat the oven yet. We’re going to chill the cookie dough for a while, so give your oven a well-deserved rest for the moment.

Mix all the dry ingredients — flour, baking soda and spices — in a bowl, then set aside.

Mix the melted butter and brown sugar, slowly at first, then really put the spurs to it, until it is completely combined and a little lighter in color. Beat in the eggs one at a time and mix on high, until the mixture looks like caramel frosting.

Add the molasses, vinegar and vanilla, and mix some more.

On your mixer’s slowest speed, add the dry ingredients, a couple of spoonfuls at a time. This is to prevent a “WHUMP” of spicy flour leaping into your face with an angry war cry. Just mix it until any streaks of flour disappear.

At this point, your dough will be runnier than you would have hoped, more like a batter. Cover the mixing bowl — I like to use a dollar-store shower cap for this — and chill the dough in your refrigerator for at least an hour. Covered, the dough will stay calm and easy to work with for a couple of days, if you just want to make a small batch of cookies at a time.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350°F, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat.

Scoop out heaping tablespoonfuls of the molasses dough, and roll it into ping-pong ball sized balls, then roll it in coarse sugar. These balls will spread out as they bake, so you will want to spread them out. Expect six to a regular-size half sheet pan.

Bake for six to seven minutes, rotate the pan, then bake for another six to seven minutes. (In my oven, it’s seven and seven, but very few home ovens heat to the exact temperature we set them to, so, as with all cookies, you’ll have to experiment a little.)

Remove the pan from the oven, and let the cookies cool on the pan.

These are a really good, chewy and zesty version of molasses cookies. The vinegar really makes a difference; the acidity makes these super mouthwatery. The Szechuan pepper gives your mouth a little tingle as you finish each cookie.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

A surprising number of cocktail recipes call for Champagne.

Cocktails made in a bar often use it to give a bit of bubbliness to a drink, and it looks good on the list of ingredients on the drink menu. If you’re drinking by yourself, it’s a nice little bit of self-indulgence, and if you’re with friends or a date, you can have fun pretending to be sophisticated. It’s no big deal for a bar to keep a couple bottles of Champagne or prosecco on ice, and use up one or two in a brunch service.

At home, it’s a slightly different story.

If you’re throwing a party, and will be using up a bottle or two of the good stuff over the course of an evening, it’s one thing. But most of us make one or two cocktails at a time, usually to celebrate making it to Friday. We don’t generally have an open bottle of Champagne, and it seems silly to open one just to make a couple of cocktails. If we’re opening a bottle of champagne, why not just drink that?

Beer, on the other hand—

This is a riff on a popular drink from the 1930s called an Air Mail Cocktail. Our version is slightly more down-market, but not less delicious for it.

2 ounces rum – whatever rum you feel like. In my particular case, I still have a quarter bottle or so of some rum I infused with peanut butter and bananas earlier in the summer. It sits on my kitchen counter, and seems to ask, “If not now, when?”

½ ounce ginger syrup – see below

½ ounce fresh squeezed lime juice

1 ounce lager beer – again, whatever you have on hand.

Cheetos – Just because. They seem like a good pairing for this drink.

Pour the rum, ginger syrup and lime juice over ice in a cocktail shaker, and shake for 20 seconds or so, until there is a line of condensation on the shaker, and you can hear the ice cubes start to break up inside.

Strain into a cocktail glass, then add the beer. Don’t worry about mixing or stirring. Things will work themselves out.

Have you ever had the post office hold your mail for you while you’ve been on vacation? Then when you get back, and get your mail all at once, it is a kaleidoscope of brightly colored political flyers, seed catalogs, time-share offers, and a postcard from yourself telling you how much fun you were on your vacation? The Junk Mail cocktail is a bit like that experience. Depending on what kind of rum you use, and how gingery your ginger syrup is, bright, fun flavors will come at your mouth from every direction.

This is a drink that will remind you that you really are fun when you relax a little.

Ginger Syrup — Grate a large hand of ginger on a box grater. Don’t worry about peeling it. Combine equal amounts of water and sugar by weight in a small saucepan, and bring to a boil to make a simple syrup. Remove from heat, and stir the shredded ginger into the syrup. Cover the pot, and leave everything to steep for several hours, or overnight. Strain through a tea towel, twisting and wringing the towel, to squeeze the ginger pulp. Bottled, this will keep in your refrigerator for a month or so.

Featured photo: Junk Mail. Photo by John Fladd.

• 2-pound bag frozen cherries
• Zest and juice of one large lemon
• 1½ Tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon rosewater — if you decide you want more next time, go ahead, but proceed with caution
• 1 Tablespoon cornstarch
• 1 Tablespoon water
• 1 cup (120 g) flour
• 1 cup (99 g) sugar
• ½ cup (68 g) coarsely chopped pistachios
• ½ cup (1 stick) butter
• 1/3 cup (44 g) sesame seeds
• 1¼ teaspoons kosher or coarse sea salt
• 1/3 cup (80 g.) tahini (sesame paste)

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

In a large bowl, combine the cherries, lemon juice and zest, brown sugar, and rose water. Set aside.

Speaking of “aside,” an aside on rosewater: It would be a jaded and heartless person who didn’t like the smell of roses, which makes it a really good background flavor in Indian and Middle Eastern dishes. Rosewater goes well with stone fruit like plums or peaches, and with Middle Eastern ingredients like sesame or pistachios. Here, we’ve paired it with cherries. Be careful though — if you don’t put enough of it in a recipe, you won’t be able to taste it. Add one drop too many, and you’ll be hit with the essence of grandmother soap. Thread the needle,

Back to business: in another bowl, combine the flour, sugar, pistachios, sesame seeds, salt, and butter. Work the mixture with your fingers or a pastry cutter until it breaks up into something that looks like granola. Add the tahini, and stir everything to combine until it looks like extra-clumpy granola.

In a small bowl or ramekin, mix the cornstarch and water into a smooth slurry. This is like a paste, but runnier. Add it to the cherry mixture, and stir everything to combine. As the cherries bake, the cornstarch will help thicken the juice, so that everything will pull together when the crumble is finished.

Pour the cherry mixture into an 8”x8” baking pan, then cover the surface with the sesame crumble topping. Lumps are not only OK but encouraged.

Put the pan on a baking sheet for when (not if) some of the cherry filling flings itself out of the pan to an uncaring world during the baking process. Bake on the center rack of your oven for about an hour, until the topping looks golden brown.

Let the crumble cool, then eat with ice cream.

This is one of those desserts with a different combination of flavors and textures in each bite. The jammy cherries are tart and sweet, with a hint of roses. The crumble topping is rich with butter and sesame, with a whisper of bitterness that off-sets the sweetness. Each bite has a different fruit-to-crumble ratio.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Let’s say you are in the mood for a tropical drink — a tiki drink, if you will — and you crack open a cocktail guide or look up a recipe online, only to be intimidated. Many — not all, by any means, but many — recipes for well-known tropical drinks call for two, three or even four types of rum.

You didn’t even know that there was more than one type.

In theory, these recipes call for dark rum for flavor, white or silver rum to keep the drink from tasting like molasses, and maybe a float of some over-proof rum to add an eye-opening kick to it. Then, maybe some spiced rum to—

At any rate, this is all well and good if you have a really sophisticated palate, or you’re a professional rum taster, or maybe a pirate — but for most of us, the drink tastes like a variety of fruit juices, syrups and, you know, rum. If we want to taste a contrast between the alcohols in a mug shaped like a parrot getting a tattoo, we’ll need to head in a slightly different direction:

2 ounces rum – Whatever type of rum you like or have on hand. If you’re making a run to the liquor store, probably don’t go overboard. Buy something middle-of-the road. If you splurge on a $70-a-bottle-sipping-rum, its subtleties will be lost in a drink with more than two ingredients.

½ ounce bourbon – Again, probably not your best stuff, but not something that tastes like corn and kerosene, either.

½ ounce orange curacao

1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice

½ ounce orgeat – a type of almond syrup used in tropical drinks to give a fruity backnote.

¼ ounce simple syrup

Crushed ice

Fill a cocktail shaker about 1/3 full with crushed ice.

Add all the cocktail ingredients, as well as half of your spent lime to the crushed ice, shake for 10 to 15 seconds and pour — unstrained — into a rocks glass. Drink to “Babalu” by Desi Arnaz.

Mai tais are popular, because they thread the needle of sweet and sour, exotic and comforting, and boozy and fruity. This version adds the complexity of bourbon. Bourbon can be a bit of a prima donna and, unless kept firmly under control, can easily take over a cocktail. It makes itself known in this drink, but in such a small amount it plays well with everyone else on the team.

Now, go shoo the children away from the television and call up 1989’s The Mighty Quinn with Denzel Washington. You won’t be sorry.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Many years ago, we planted a peach tree. Jump forward two decades and we have more peaches than we know what to do with. Two words spring to mind: peach daiquiris.

Peach-Infused Rum

Peaches are full of delicate flavors, colors, and, er, peachiness that are alcohol-soluble. If you cut up a bunch of peaches and soak them in liquor for anywhere from a few hours to a week you will end up with something special. Don’t bother to peel them; peach skins have flavor compounds and colors that will serve you well.

Rinse your peaches, just to make sure you’re not including any dust or bugs then slice them into chunks into a large container, and cover them with rum. For an application like this, your best bet is probably to use a medium-shelf white rum. (Vodka will work perfectly well, as will whiskey. Maybe even tequila.)

I usually let it sit for four or five days, stirring or shaking it once or twice a day. When I think it’s ready, I taste a spoonful or so, then strain it through a fine-mesh strainer. If I’m feeling fancy I’ll strain it again through a coffee filter.

Peach Syrup

Wash a bunch of peaches, then dice them up. Again, I wouldn’t worry about the skins. Freeze the diced peaches for a few hours or overnight. By freezing them you’ll poke holes through all the cell walls with ice crystals.

Later, when you’ve got a little time on your hands, cook the frozen peach chunks with an equal amount (by weight) of sugar. Stir the mixture from time to time, until the juice comes to a boil, then strain that, too. If the syrup needs a little zing, squeeze a little fresh lemon juice into it, not worrying too much about measuring anything.

This syrup will last for two or three weeks in your refrigerator.

Peach Daiquiri

2 ounces peach-infused rum (see above)

1 ounce fresh-squeezed lime juice

2/3 ounce peach syrup (see above)

Combine all three ingredients, with ice, in a cocktail shaker. Shake until a frost line appears in the condensation on the shaker, then strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass.

Is this rummy? A little.

Is it limey? Just limey enough. Lime is everybody’s best friend, and it gets along beautifully in this situation.

Is it peachy? Sweet Leaping Moses on a Popsicle Stick, yes. This is the perfect drink for when a child is whining. After two or three sips, you can assure them that living is easy, that their daddy is rich, and their momma’s good-lookin’. The child’s confused silence will be a little bonus.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.