Category: Drink

The Home Bartender’s Guide and Song Book was published at the height of Prohibition. I dream of owning an actual hard-copy edition someday, but I’ve been reading a digital version from The Internet Archive with great interest.

Alexander

Someone concocted this camouflaged dynamite years ago. Here’s to him. Smooth as silk, its rich, creamy sweetness made it seem as though you were drinking nothing more than a simple chocolate ice cream soda. —The Home Bartender’s Guide and Song Book (1930)

2 ounces gin – When this recipe was written, the quality of any gin available was extremely variable. The Song Book makes references in places along the lines of, “If you can get your hands on some of the good stuff, do such and such,” implying that many readers would be using some pretty rough stuff. If you want to feel super-authentic, go ahead and buy the absolute cheapest bottom-shelf gin you can find. The rest of us will go ahead with something that won’t make us want to claw our eyes out. I’ve been drinking Hendrick’s Oasium lately and have been very pleased with it in this application.

2 ounces crème de cacao – This is about four times the amount of crème de cacao you’re likely to find in any contemporary cocktail, but go ahead and use the full 2 ounces. That isn’t a typo.

2 ounces half & half – The original recipe calls for heavy cream, but going with something slightly lighter leaves the door open for drinking more than one.

Ask your digital assistant to play “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” by Duke Ellington. This was a standard of the time, and it stands up extremely well, with a rhythm that lends itself to shaking a cocktail.

Combine all three ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker and shake vigorously for 30 to 45 seconds. You should hear the sound of the ice breaking into shards.

Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass, and drink, thinking of youthful indiscretions.

The authors of the Song Book nailed this one. There is definitely a ginny backbone to this drink, but mostly it tastes of slightly sweetened dairy and empty promises.

Baby Fingers

We really don’t know who named this one, or why. But we have a good idea that the name is appropriate enough. And if you think Sloe gin means SLOW, you’re mistaken, lady. Many a stubborn genius, whose forehead caressed a curbstone, changed his mind after several ‘Baby Fingers.’ —The Home Bartender’s Guide and Song Book (1930)

1 ounce gin

2 ounces sloe gin

3 dashes bitters – At times I’ve used cardamom bitters and homemade black pepper bitters, and I’ve been pleased with either.

Ask you-know-who to play you Cab Calloway singing “Minnie the Moocher” from the The Blues Brothers soundtrack. You won’t be sorry.

Combine the gin, sloe gin and bitters over ice in a cocktail shaker and shake thoroughly. Strain into a stemmed glass. This cocktail is at its best when it’s skull-shrinkingly cold, and holding it by the stem of a glass helps keep it colder longer.

If you are the type of purist who keeps their gin in the freezer or uses steel or granite cocktail stones to prevent watering your cocktail down, actually use ice this time. This super-boozy cocktail benefits from the slight dilution that comes with shaking it over ice.

Which is not to say it isn’t good. As the authors of the Song Book indicated, it goes down smoothly and deceptively, and the next thing you know you’ve had three of them and you’ve texted your friend with the Very Bad Ideas. It would be too sweet if not for the bitters. It would be too harsh if not for the ice dilution thing.

Featured photo: Baby Fingers and Alexander. Photo by John Fladd.

• 1 20-ounce can of crushed pineapple, drained.
• Juice of 1 small lemon
• ¾ cup (150 g) sugar
• 2¼ cups (510 g) half & half
• 2 ounces (1/4 of an 8-ounce package) cream cheese
• 1 Tablespoon light corn syrup – you don’t think you have any, but there is almost certainly half a bottle, pushed to the back of the cabinet where you keep your baking stuff.
• 2 Tablespoons elderflower liqueur
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ½ teaspoon almond extract
• 1 lb. (450 g) mixed frozen fruit – I like strawberries and dark cherries.
• 1 Tablespoon sugar

Combine all the ingredients for the ice cream base (everything but the frozen fruit and the tablespoon of sugar) in your blender, and blend thoroughly. Strain through a fine-meshed strainer, then chill in your refrigerator for at least an hour or two — preferably overnight. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, double-bag the ice cream base in large zippered plastic bags, and freeze on its side, to make a solid sheet of frozen base.

When your ice cream base is sufficiently chilled or frozen, roughly chop the frozen fruit, then mix with the remaining 1 Tablespoon of sugar, and set it aside. As the fruit thaws, the juice will bleed into the sugar and create a truly remarkable syrup.

If you’re using an ice cream maker, blend the chilled ice cream base briefly, then churn it in your ice cream maker, according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

If you are not using an ice cream maker, break your sheet of frozen base up into chunks and blend on low-to-medium speed in your blender. As the chunks are ground up by the blades of the blender, it will produce just enough heat to mix everything to the consistency of soft-serve ice cream, which is roughly the same texture as an ice cream maker would bring it to.

Spoon the ice cream base and syrupy fruit into whatever container you’re going to use to freeze it, alternating layers. Label the containers, and harden the ice cream in your freezer for at least a couple of hours before serving it. This should make a little more than a quart of finished ice cream.

Tutti Fruiti is a style of ice cream that was at the peak of its popularity in the 1920s and ’30s. It has a fruity — in this case, pineappley — flavor, with bright pops of fruit. For the full effect of eating it, eat it while watching a silent movie. I recommend Easy Street (1917) with Charlie Chaplin, or The Mark of Zorro (1920) with Douglas Fairbanks. This would be an excellent Date Night activity.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

• 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.