Infuse: Oil Spirit Water

Eric Prum and Josh Williams, the team that brought us Shake have added a new book (and product) to their growing line. Infuse starts with that ubiquitous Mason jar and tops it with their new product, the infuser cap.

Infusing stuff is not this revolutionary idea. It is as old as the hills. What is new is the design for the infusion top. Williams and Prum who are W & P Design found that they had loads of infusions sitting around in Mason jars. When they tried to add them to drinks or whatever...they ended up with infusing the table and floor more than the drink. Since they are designers, they set out solve the problem.

If you are one of those people, like myself, who has jars and crocks, and bottles of concoctions sitting around infusing and steeping, you will understand this problem.  My beautiful, oak vinaigrier is full of red wine vinegar, but the oak spout is often clogged making it hard to get to the vinegar. The tall Italian infusing bottle is equipped with a small spigot at the bottom to release the infusion, but the peels and spices are the first things sucked into the spigot, which immediately clogs. A bag of glass marbles aids in keeping the ingredients at bay, but doesn't allow for easy agitation of the infusion. And those Mason jars...well the current cherry bounce has more than once bounced onto my shirt!

W & P Design not only came up with a great design, but they came up with a book to show us how to use the design and become master infusers. Infuse, like Shake before it features photos of the mise en place for the recipes. For instance, the Olio Santo is a Calabrian chili oil.  On the table are the infuser, the oil and the peppers.

You, too, can master this recipe!

Olio Santo

1/2 oz of dried Calabrian chilies
8 oz of extra virgin olive oil

i         Grind the chilies in a spice grinder of food processor
          until coarsely ground. (Use gloves or wash your hands
          after handling!)

ii        Combine with the olive oil in an 8 oz Mason jar. Seal
           and shake briefly until the ground chilies are evenly
           mixed in the oil.

iii        Let sit in a cool dark place for two weeks to allow the
            oil to infuse and the chilies to settle.

iiii        Use sparingly as you wold use hot sauce. the infusion
             will keep u to two months if kept in a cool, dark place. 

As the title implies, there are many mediums to infuse, oil, spirits, and water for instance. Just when you think you have thought of EVERYTHING to infuse in every way...Infuse comes up with new ideas.

My biggest problem with the whole Infuse thing is that, after reading the book, I want at least a dozen stainless spouts to infuse away and the spouts are a tad pricey.  I will wait for the next iteration...the large mouth spout!

Now get out there and infuse something!

Death & Co

Death & Co is how I have been feeling lately, but I won't bore you with the details.  But I will try to start posting on a regular basis. 

So Death & Co was a Christmas gift.  Every year my friend, Ann, goes to my Amazon Wish List and buys me cookbooks.  But in the last few years, she has also gone a bit rogue by choosing an extra book she pick on her own.  This year, that book was Death & Co.

When I opened it, I told her that I was, indeed glad to get the book.  It had sold out at many bookstores shortly before Christmas and was quite a find.  Ann said proudly, "I know you like books about offal."   Now here was a dilemma.  Do I say but this is not a book about offal, it's a cocktail book?  Do I ignore the comment?  Does it matter?

Not really.  While Ann loves to eat, she is not a big cook, so it really didn't matter.  "It's a cocktail book," I said and Ann seemed pleased as she will drink cocktails but won't eat offal, so it was  kind of a "win/win" for both of us.

Death & Co is the cocktail book from the bar of the same name.  It has been that IT place to go in New York for grand chefs, hipster dudes, and other mere mortals.  The reason that there is so much respect for this bar is because they know their stuff.  David Kaplan, Alex Day, and Nick Fauchald have committed to paper the aesthetics of the bar. 

In the old days of cocktails, a gin and tonic was a gin and tonic.  Now days, there are hundreds of gins and more than a few different tonics.  (As the owner of over 15 gins and and a handful of tonic options, let me just say how happy I am about the proliferation of independent spirits, but I digress....) Today's world is filled with craft spirits, each having its own taste and flavor.  Add hundreds of new spirits to an equal number of new bitters and mixers and cocktails are exploding every where.

Death & Co like a good cocktail offers up a base of history, a bit of technique, a dash of science and mixes it together into a cocktail book that will stand the test of time.  Yes, fifty years from now, your grandchildren will be thumbing your old copy of Death & Co in their first apartment in Brooklyn...or probably Hoboken, as Brooklyn is already too expensive for you to live there!  The real question is how many of these specific "craft" spirits will still be here fifty years form now or even ten years from now?

My very favorite of all time gin, Veranda, had only a brief run over a decade ago in Vermont.  It was before every other disgruntled business owner opened a distillery.  It was before anyone ever mentioned craft spirits or cared that much about cocktails.  Still, it was sublime.  Then it was gone.  What makes Death & Co such a comprehensive work, its detail to specific ingredients, might just be the death of the book in the future.  So before we lose this wealth of glorious ingredients, get out there and have a drink.  While you may not be able to afford Brooklyn, you may be able to still drink one.

Brooklyn

2 ounces Rittenhouse 100 Rye
3/4 ounce Dolin Dry Vermouth
1/4 ounce Amaro Ciociaro
1 teaspoon Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur

Stir all the ingredients over ice, then strain into a coupe.  No garnish

Shrubs

We love shrubs.  During the summer, we get gigantic boxes of blueberries and look forward to a good blueberry shrub.  Over at Lucindaville, our reoccurring drink posts, Cocktails At The Burnpit, featured the Last Hurrah, our farewell to summer cocktail featuring both blueberry shrub and vodka. We always keep a bottle of Pok Pok Som Drinking Vinegar on hand. So as soon as we heard that Michael Dietsch was writing a book about shrubs, we  clicked the pre-ordered button. 

Shrubs are not terribly hard to make.  They are basically a mashed fruit or vegetable, some sugar, some vinegar, steeped and strained.  That being said, the thought of moving past blueberry or raspberry seemed a bit difficult.  Well, not if you have Shrubs.

Dietsch starts out with history of shrubs, filled with references to many cookbooks, bar guides, and botanical treatise...and we do love a good cookbook reference!  Then he moves on to shrub recipes for every occasion.  Yes, there is Benjamin Franklin's Shrub as well as Martha Washington's.  There are simple fruit shrubs and a veggie shrub here and there.  Great combinations here and there and finally a collection of cocktails featuring the delightful shrubs in the book.  Our burnpit is going to jumping!

A lot of times, we need a single stalk of celery for something.  Then, we have a big bunch of celery that just sits in the crisper getting limp.  This is the perfect antidote to that occurrence.

Celery Shrub

1 pound of celery, leaves still attached
1 cup sugar
1 cup apple cider vinegar

1. Wash celery stalks and, if necessary, scrub with a vegetable brush to remove dirt.

2. Cut the stalks into 1-inch pieces.

3. Add the celery to blender and and cover with about 1/2 cup water.

4. Start the blender on low, and as the celery starts to get chopped up, turn the speed up to puree.  If after about 30 seconds, the mixture is still very thick and chunky, add a little more water.

5. Place a fine mesh strainer over a bowl.  Line with a piece of cheesecloth if desired. Pour the celery mixture through the strainer. Press or squeeze the celery puree to express the juice into the bowl.

6. Pour the celery juice into a jar.  Add sugar and cider vinegar.  Cap the jar and shake to combine.

7. Refrigerate, shaking well every other day or so to dissolve the sugar.

If you have never had shrub, you are missing out!  Now you know exactly what you are missing and how to remedy that situation.  Now grab up a copy of  Michael Dietsch's Shrubs for yourself or some other cocktail maven.  They will be king of the bar...or queen of the burnpit.

Cocktails For Book Lovers

Two of our favorite things!  Books and Cocktails. 

The obligatory statement that we were given a free copy of this book and why we most often don't take free books:  When we were offered a copy of this book, we jumped at the chance.  Here's the deal, we love to get books in the mail.  We are not real fond of getting books that require us to review them.  Here's why.  We like to write about books we like.  What if you send us a culmination of your life's work and we hate it?  We don't want to write that we got your book, you gave it to us, and frankly, we hate it.  Plus, we don't like to write about books we hate.  If we hate it, we don't bother.  So, most of the time, we don't take books to review.  Full disclosure.

Tessa Smith McGovern has pulled together fifty cocktails to be paired with favorite authors.  The collection is not a gaggle of cocktails simply mentioned in novels; there is no Ian Fleming Vesper Martini, for instance.  Instead, McGovern gives the reader a bit of info about a specific writer, an excerpt from their work and then a suggestion for a drink and further reading. It is a kind of like: If you love Zora Neale Hurston, you'll love the Orange Blossom.  Or, say you have read everything by Collette, but did you know she loved a glass of mulled wine?  Well now you have a recipe.

McGovern runs a web series called BookGirlTV where she interviews authors and often mixes a cocktail with them.  Frankly, this sort of companion drinking could be a huge boon to Amazon.  In addition to other books you might like, how about a cocktail to go with your book.

Yes, Virginia, we have read Virginia Woolf.  So why not have a drink in her honor.  This drink is inspired by Woolf's old address, 29 Fitzroy Square, also the location for the BBC's adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma.  Who wouldn't love this.

Fitzroy Fizz

Stone's Original Ginger Wine
Champagne

Pour Stone's Original Ginger Wine into a chilled flute glass.  Top with champagne.

While drinking and driving is a bad idea, drinking a reading is a really good thing.  Pick up a copy of Cocktails For Book Lovers for inspiration.  Pick up a copy of Cocktails For Book Lovers and host the best book club -- EVER. 

P.S.  Jeff Bezos, give me a call!

Punch

Truth be told, we do love making those exquisite little cocktails with fresh this and steeped that.  A pinch of herb, a drop of bitters, a soupcon of sugar syrup, with flowers frozen in ice.
But face it, there are time when you really need a big old pitcher of drink.

That is where Punch comes in. Colleen Mullaney has put together a little book of punchy cocktails that will make your party sing.  Or, it could just make YOU sing, but try valiantly to refrain from making a "selfie" video of you singing.  Drinking punch is a no-posting zone!

Growing up in the South, I have seen some godawful concoctions dumped in a punch bowl.  They usually consisted of a ring mold of solid ice, a cheap sherbet, some ginger ale, and rum.  Scary. 

So it is nice to find a book that offers up tasty, elegant and bulk alcohol for those party situations when you don't want to spend all your time making drinks.  One can pick from fruity punches, traditional champagne punches, tea and coffee punches, and the occasional tropical delight.  You don't have to wander all the way to the 1600's to find a drink. 

 We are rather enamored of her citrus cooler.  Lite, refreshing and bursting with summer and a bit of rum.

Citrus Cooler

2 cups light rum
2 cups tangerine juice
1 cup pineapple juice
1/2 cup Cointreau
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup cherry juice

Lemon and lime slices for garnish

Combine the liquid ingredients in the punch bowl and mix well.  Add the ice cubes, garnish with the slices of lemon and lime, and serve immediately.

Since this is a punch book, one is often told to put everything in a punch bowl, but you can pour it all in a big pitcher which makes it much easier to carry out to the porch.  Be sure and take an extra glass because it won't be long before you have company.

Shake

Our favorite bar item is our Mason Jar Shaker.  Excellent use of the tried and true Mason jar.  Lord knows the Mason jar has been the leading conveyer of alcohol from here to there or from there to your lips.  When Eric Prum and Josh Williams got together and gave the jar a fancy strainer top well, you know, the rest is history.

So we were thrilled to find that the duo was giving it another shake and writing a drink book.  What do you think they would call such a book?  Shake. Shake: A New Perspective on Cocktails is the perfect companion to the Mason Jar Shaker.  Actually, it is the perfect companion to any drinker’s arsenal of books.  Here's why...

The drinks are good.

The drinks are fun.

The drinks are easy.

The instructions are way cool.

The drink recipes have the ingredients laid out on a table, so there is no doubt that you are doing things right.  Once you can see what you will need, the actual assembly is a snap.   Here is the easy way to take the L Train. One recipe makes two drinks.

The L Train

2 Shots Gin

1 Shot St-Germain

½ Shot Fresh Lemon Juice

2 Sprigs of Lavender (plus 2 to garnish)

Seltzer

i.  Add the Gin, St-Germain, Lemon Juice and Lavender to the shaker.

ii.  Add ice to above the level of the liquid and shake vigorously for 10 seconds.

iii.  Strain the mixture into chilled Coupes and top with Seltzer. Garnish with the remaining Lavender sprigs.

Think about it.  Gin.  St-Germain.  How can you loose?  Shake is a great cocktail compendium.  Sure you can use a plain old shaker but go ahead and splurge on a Mason Jar Shaker.

  

Pickles, Pigs & Whiskey

 If I see one more rail-thin chef with a radish tattooed on his ass and FOOD tattooed across his knuckles going after a piece of kindling with a pair of tweezers and removing a splinter of said kindling and setting on top of a dime-sized dollop of pond scum foam sitting in the center of plate the size of a old LP and telling me it's the entrée, I will freaking scream.

Don't get me wrong, I like a little pond scum foam as much as the next gastronaught, but at some point we just need something to eat.  Something like Pickles, Pigs & Whiskey.  Think about it...it's cold, rainy and all you have had today is coffee.  Would you choose Door #1 -- A musty, dry-aged kindling over a pond scum foam, gathered just his morning; or Door #2 --Barbecue and Bourbon?

Pickles, Pigs & Whiskey is the first book by Big Bad Chef, John Currence.  It's about damn time.  The subtitle claims that the book contains: Recipes From My Three Favorite Food Groups. Yes, this is a cookbook, but it also a look inside the mind of chef who really, really loves food and understands that food needs a lot of people around before it is actually, food.  It reads like a diary or perhaps a love letter to the South with some recipes thrown in.

One immediately knows one is in good hands when an iron skillet sits on the front of a cookbook.  Rest assured, no one in their right mind would ever put pond scum in grandma's iron skillet.  Full disclosure, many of these recipes are quite "chefy" in that there a lot of ingredients and several steps, but don't be discouraged.  For instance, the pickled deviled eggs; clearly, before one can devil them, one must indeed pickle them.  Don't despair.

Perhaps our favorite element of this book is the playlist.  Next to cookbooks, we love our tunes more than anything.  In Pickles, Pigs & Whiskey, not only does one get great recipes and fun-filled stories, but a huge playlist of really great music.  I am told that said playlist is available on Spotify, but I still don't really understand how Spoitfy works, but if you know, do head over there and check out the playlist.  In the meantime, when you find a recipe you want to make, don't forget to crank up the tunes.


One of our favorite tunes is Poncho and Lefty by Emmylou Harris.  It is the featured song for a nifty punch and you know what all the Federales say...

Bourbon Milk Punch

4 ounces whole milk
2 tablespoons half-and-half
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 ounces Buffalo Trace bourbon
4 teaspoons confectioners sugar
Freshly ground nutmeg, for garnish

Pour the milk, half-and-half, vanilla and bourbon over cracked ice in a cocktail shaker.  Spoon in the sugar and shake vigorously.  Pour into a large old-fashioned glass, sprinkle nutmeg over the top and serve.

Now get out there and buy this book.  And now, in honor of the Big Bad Chef, I am going to say something I have never, ever said before -- Hotty Toddy.

Smoke & Pickles

Since I have been having a terrible month, my FFF (faithful foodie friend) Anne, sent me a cookbook.   It was the highpoint of my month!   She sent me a copy of Smoke & Pickles by Edward Lee.  I must admit that Edward Lee is not a chef that I have ever been really fired up about.  This book might have just changed that.   While Southern food is defined by a bunch of different ingredients, one thing that people often leave out of the equation is the story. 

A big bowl of collard greens is just that.  But tell me who made the bowl, how they were cooked, which family member cooked them in which pot, where they were picked, who owned the land during the War Between the States, and you have yourself a big bowl of Southern collards.

So what is a Korean boy from New York City doing running a Southern restaurant in Kentucky?  That is a story.  The story begins like most cooking stories do, in a kitchen with a mother or grandmother.   Then there was tossing out Korean barbecue to make some extra money, but when a noted chef walked in and the food was sub par, Lee had to rethink the whole thing.  Then there was a fluke call from a friend who said come on down for the Derby.  They always need cooks and you can watch the race.  He went and stayed.

For a boy who grew up in a Brooklyn tenement, he sure can tell a good story.  His love of the land is positively palpable and his respect for the things that grow and roam that land are evident.  He has managed to keep all the things his grandmother taught him while expanding the culinary framework of old southern tradition.  He does it beautifully.  And the boy knows his bourbon! 

Jalapeño-Spiked Bourbon Julep

4 to 6 fresh mint leaves, plus a sprig for garnish
1 ounce Jalapeño Simple Syrup (recipe follows)
Crushed ice
2½ ounces bourbon
Splash of club soda
A jalapeño slice for garnish

Place the mint leaves in the bottom of a julep cup, add the simple syrup, and gently bruise the leaves with a wooden muddler or a wooden spoon. Add enough crushed ice to fill the cup almost two-thirds of the way. Add the bourbon and stir gently, then fill the cup almost full with more crushed ice. Top with a splash of club soda. Garnish with the mint sprig and slice of jalapeño and serve immediately.

Jalapeño Simple Syrup

1 cup water
1 cup sugar
2 jalapeño peppers, chopped (seeds and all)

1. In a small saucepan, combine the water, sugar, and peppers and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Turn off the heat and let steep for 20 minutes.

2. Strain the syrup and allow to cool. Keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Next time you throw a party, break out this recipe and nice jar of kimchi!  

Bitters

We have been waiting a long time for Brad Thomas Parsons book Bitters. That slight touch of bitterness adds a remarkable depth to cocktails and why shouldn't it be used to achieve that same level of nuance in cooking. Inspired by Parsons' book, the canned clementines we wrote about at Lucindaville featured a dash of bitters in our recipe.

There are a plethora of cocktail books out there, but Bitters is so much more. First and foremost, it is cultural history that encompasses food, medicine, and government in a tangled web of who's who. Are bitters food? Alcoholic beverage? Medicine? Well yes and no.

In a landscape of potions and elixirs and prohibition, what bitters survived. In an era of a romantic cocktail renaissance, who are the new players and will they survive this heyday? And you????

Will you head into your kitchen laboratory and whip up your own batch of bitters?


Yes, boys and girls, Brad Thomas Parsons answers all these questions and more. As one might suspect, the vast majority of the recipes in this book are for drinks. However, tucked neatly in the back are a dozen or so recipes for cooking with bitters. We cannot advocate the inclusion of bitters into cooking more. The section on compound butters, alone, will elevate your cooking prowess, not to mention that a "hostess gift" of a lovely log of compound butter will make you a standout in a sea of Two Buck Chuck wine.

Our favorite ice cream gets a bitters boost as do the ubiquitous spiced nuts. Now if you grew up in house with a little home bar, there was probably an old bottle of Angostura bitters floating about. Angostura was always publishing little recipe books and a staple recipe was always the broiled grapefruit with a splash of bitters. In keeping with that tradition, here it is:

Broiled Bitter Grapefruit

1 pink or ruby red grapefruit, chilled
Angostura bitters, Peychaud's Bitters, or other aromatic bitters
1 tablespoon melted butter
2 tablespoons Demerara sugar or turbino sugar
Garnish: maraschino cherry (optional)

Preheat the broiler and cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil.

Slice the grapefruit in half at its equator. run the knife along the perimeter of each exposed half and along the membrane of each segment to loosen the segments. Dot each grapefruit half with 2 to 3 dashes of bitters.

In a small bowl, mix together the melted butter, sugar and 6 healthy dashes of bitters to form a sugary paste. Cover each grapefruit half equally with the brown sugar-bitters mixture and place on the prepared baking sheet. Broil until the sugar starts to crisp up and bubble, 2 to 4 minutes, Serve at once.

How fun was that? Now get in there and dig around in that old bar cabinet and find that bottle of bitters and start thinking of all the things to add a slash of bitterness.

The How-Not-to-Miss-the-Cocktail-Hour-Cookbook

Just as the Swinging Sixties were rolling to an end, Edward Lowman was gathering all of his entertaining expertise into a single volume -- The How-Not-to-Miss-the-Cocktail-Hour-Cookbook. Lord knows we have no intention of missing the cocktail hour, so this little cookbook is simply a must-have. We are told from the start:

"The joy of cooking for friends is in spending time with them. Time away from guests is precious. The secret of cooking-cum-conviviality is now told by an inveterate entertainer with gourmet tastes."

The recipes and menus in this volume promise no more than 20 minutes in the kitchen and away from the cocktails. In fact each recipe has its own TAG time. (That would be the Time Awayfrom Guests.)

Surprisingly, Edward Lowman, who happens to be a medical doctor, is a huge fan of MSG. He just loves to throw it in everything and swears that there is no proof that MSG in any way affects those hypochondriacs who complain of headaches and other ailments. I already have a headache.

Lowman has a very good list of shortcuts at the beginning of his book and a list of things not to do. Lowman says:

"There are many good prepared food products that measure up well in the art of gourmet shortcuts, but there are others that will dismally betray your trust and expose you with an inferior result. These latter are what I dub "N.O.O.C.D." which translated means, "Not of our class, darling!""

On his "Yes-Yes" list he includes items such as prepared pie crusts, packaged breadcrumbs, frozen cleaned uncooked shrimp, curry powder, and bakery bread. No-Nos include canned shrimp, instant coffee, pre-cooked rice and cornbread mix! (I am totally creeped out just typing "cornbread mix."

Alas, many of his soups begin with canned soup, and of course, I feel that most probably, canned soup should end up on the "no-no" list. Here is the very first recipe. The TAG time is a mere 1 minute. Just the time it takes to drag it out of the refrigerator. This recipe sounds positively dreadful and yet, there is something about it that makes it sound that it just might work, you be the judge.

Quick Pâté Maison

2 6-ounce packages liverwurst
1 3-ounce package cream cheese
2-tablespoon butter, melted
1 1/2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon MSG
1 1/2 tablespoon sherry
1/4-teaspoon salt
1/2-teaspoon curry powder
1/3-cup mayonnaise
Pinch nutmeg

Have liverwurst and cheese at room temperature (easier to mix). Combine all ingredients and mash and cream well together, using a fork; do not use and electric blender. Chill well.

Frankly, if you stuffed this into tiny little ramekins and served it with some toast points, it might just be a winner.

The best news - you will only miss 1 minute of cocktails.

Sumptuous Dining in Gaslight San Francisco

San Francisco has always had its share of fine dining and debauched behavior. This is by no means a recent phenomenon. If fact, much of the high jinks of the past 50 years seems downright timid compared to the era ending the nineteenth and beginning the twentieth century.

Saloons, restaurants and houses of ill repute were rampant until 1921 when the Clubwomen’s Vigilance Committee foisted a respectability, coinciding with Prohibition, on the city.

Sumptuous Dining in Gaslight San Francisco by Frances de Talavera Berger and John Parke Custis is a glorious reliving of gaslight San Francisco in its heyday. The book is a biography, cookbook, culinary history, architectural history, cultural history and plain old entertaining history of San Francisco’s eateries and the people who made them from 1875-1915.





They are a colorful lot. There is “Irish” Dan O’Connell who confounded the Bohemian Club. He was brash, charismatic a bit of a poet:

Fill me a brimming goblet,
I said to my winsome wife,
Let me read in its bubbles reflected,
The story of its life.

Much to our sadness, “Irish” Dan failed to leave behind a recipe book, but a few of his recipes exist with some help from his friends.

Fricassee of Veal Bohemian

2 pounds of veal, cut into 2-inch chunks
3 tablespoons arrowroot
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
Cracked black pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano, crushed
1/2-teaspoon garlic powder
3 tablespoons bacon fat
3 tablespoons chopped fresh celery leaves
1/2 boiling water as needed

Dredge the chunks of veal in a mixture of arrowroot and dried seasonings. Brown the dredged meat in the hot bacon fat, and add the celery leaves. Cover the skillet and cook the meat slowly, in the same skillet, just until tender. Do not overcook it. If the skillet becomes dry during the cooking, add as much as 1/2 cup of boiling water.

A San Francisco chef who did leave behind his recipes was victor Hirtzel. The chef at the famed St. Francis Hotel, Hirtzel collected recipes and menus into the appropriately titled Hotel St Francis Book of Recipes and Menus, first published in 1910. With numerous printings, copies of his book are still prized among chefs and cookbook collectors alike.

San Francisco boasts inventing Peach Melba for the singer Nellie Melba,

Nellie Melba

Chicken Tetrazzini for the singer Luisa Tetrazzini,

Luisa Tetrazzini

and Pisco Punch for everyone else. Duncan Nichol of the Bank Exchange Saloon invented the Pisco Punch and it soon became the most popular and most copied drink in San Francisco. Nichol died with his recipe and with another of his Pisco punches, the Button punch. Pisco is an Italian brandy made from a grape known as the Rose of Peru. It is colorless, fragrant, and strong. It has been described as tasting like a fruity Scotch.

Pisco Punch

1 tablespoon Pernod
1 1/4 ounces Pisco Peruvian or other brandy
1-ounce Meyer’s Catawba or any grape juice
Shaved ice
6 ounces chilled pineapple juice

Coat the inside of an ample fizz glass with Pernod by swirling the liquor around the glass. Discard any of the liquid that does not cling. Pour the brandy into the glass and add the grape juice. Fill the glass with shaved ice and pour chilled pineapple juice to the brim.

Of a similar Pisco punch, the writer Rudyard Kipling said:

“It is the highest and noblest product of the age. I have a theory it is compounded of cherub’s wings, the glory of the tropical dawn, the red clouds of sunset and the fragments of lost epics by dead masters.”

The tales are tall and they continue throughout this book. It is thoroughly delightful. There is however one hugely egregious, if not fatal flaw in this book – there is no bibliography. How can that be? Who cold possibly gather such a delightful band of stories and recipes and fail to provide a list of further reading. I am shocked.

Still, it makes me want to pack my bags and go to San Francisco.

The Canapé Book

In 1934, Rachel Bell Maiden wrote the very first book on the canapé, appropriately titled The Canapé Book. Most of the canapés in this little book involve ingredients pulverized into a paste and spread on toast with the occasional shrimp perched atop the paste.

I mean this description to be in no way lax. Maiden not only used her own recipes but she traveled to many a famous hotel to get their recipes for canapés. Here are a couple.

Hotel Gotham, New York

Gourmets

Chopped cooked ham seasoned with mustard and butter, Spread on toasted whole-wheat bread.

Or perhaps this.

The Mayflower, Washington

Yarmouth Canapé

Make a mixture by joining equal amounts of Yarmouth bloater paste (Crosse and Blackwell) and sweet creamed butter. Spread on thin, freshly made graham toast.


Alas, I believe Crosse and Blackwell is no longer in the business of making bloater paste so you will need to buy Shippam's bloater paste.


The most charming elements of the first canapé book are the illustrations by Lucina Smith Wakefield. While a few of them are less than politically correct in today's environment, they are quite eye catching.




So get out there, make some paste and have yourself ...

...of your dreams.

Absinthe Cocktails

Man or Woman does not live by bread or pasta alone. Every now and then you need a stiff drink. And I do mean stiff. So grab a bottle of the newly legal old green fairy, absinthe.

What does one do with this bottle?

Grab a copy of Absinthe Cocktails by Kate Simon with lovely drink photos by Lara Ferroni. Simon who is an editor at Imbibe magazine (hey there are magazines for everything which makes me think you haven't read this month's Modern Ferret, but I digress...). Simon has great contacts with bartenders around the globe so the book features many new spins on absinthe. In addition, it lists all those faves of years gone by like the Corpse Reviver #2.

Here's a spin on the very lady-like Grasshopper from Jackson Cannon at Boston’s Eastern Standard.

Absinthe and Old Lace

1 ounce dry gin
1/2 ounce absinthe verte
1/2 ounce green crème de menthe (Jackson likes Bourdeaux-made Marie Brizard’s)
1/2 ounce simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water)
1/2 ounce half-and-half
1 egg white

Garnish: 1 dash Bittermens’ Xocolatl Mole Bitters or shaved bittersweet chocolate

Fill a stemmed glass with ice and let sit to chill. In a shaker, combine the ingredients and shake without ice to blend. Add ice and shake until chilled. Discard the ice from the stemmed glass, shaking out any excess water. Strain the contents of the shaker into the chilled glass. Garnish.

Having been very fascinated by the deadly absinthe, I am glad to see a drink book offering up many new ideas. If there is a problem, its that the book offers up particular brands of absinthe, vermouth, bitters, gins, until you kind of lose track of what it is you are trying to make. It may not bother some people but it left me distracted. Chronicle Books published this volume and they just love these small, focused, lavishly illustrated tomes. And so do I.

Remember, it's always "after 5" somewhere.

The Robert E. Lee Family Cooking and Housekeeping Book

Having a pile of family recipes is a lovely thing but usually a family thing. What happens when you find yourself with a pile of recipes attributed to the family of Robert E. Lee? That was the dilemma faced by Anne Carter Zimmer. Zimmer is the great-granddaughter of Robert Edward and Mary Custis Lee and her maternal grandfather was Robert E. Lee Jr.

As a child, Zimmer, like most self-conscious teenagers, was slightly embarrassed be the family connection. As she grew up, she realized the importance of her heritage and realized that her family recipes were more than just an assemblage of household tips, but a historical record beyond the scope of her immediate family.

A page from the collection featuring a Sally Lund Cake

She set out to translate the fragmented recipes and advice into a workable collection of recipes for the modern cook, enlisting a group of cooks to test and re-test the recipes while she searched for the family significance of each recipe. It was not always an easy task.

‘Sometimes what we did was more treasure hunt than testing, and occasionally serendipity served us well. "Butter the size of a goose egg" was an easy measurement to track down, because somebody's sister-in-law raised geese. But the size of a "bottle of oil" remained questionable and a "dripping box of flour," impossible to determine. Two receipts for caromels [sic] made a primitive chocolate fudge that either crumbled or relaxed into puddles; only later would I puzzle out why. And eventually I learned (from an eighteenth-century source) to make boiled puddings, but only after producing ugly, gluey concoctions that looked, as one helpful tester remarked, "like a brain."”

The result is the The Robert E. Lee Family Cooking and Housekeeping Book, a cookbook/history of days gone by. Since it is summer and since it is miserably hot, we felt that a refreshing drink from Robert E. Lee might be just the ticket. (Now we know that being a boy and being a general, Robert E. Lee most probably never lifted his hand to make a drink or food, but we are giving him credit anyway.)

Robert E. Lee's camp cooking kit

Roman Punch

Juice of 5-6 lemons
3 cups sugar
1 cup (8 ounces) currant jelly
2 quarts minus 1/2 cup water
1 cup brandy
2/3 cup black rum
About 5-6 tablespoons or bags of green (or black) tea

Heat about half the water with sugar and jelly, stirring to dissolve. Make tea with the rest. Combine the two mixtures. Cool, add lemon juice, brandy, and rum. Ripen overnight at room temperature or up to 3 days in refrigerator, then freeze if you like. Makes about a gallon.

Time to gather around the Burn Pit (actually, gathering around the air conditioner might be more fun) and lift a glass to the Confederate Dead, or to Wednesday. It doesn't matter as long as you are lifting a glass!

Perennials: A Southern Celebration of Foods and Flavors

My friend, Jim, brought me a copy of Perennials: A Southern Celebration of Foods and Flavors, compiled by the Junior Service League of Gainesville, Georgia.

It is one of those eclectic Junior League cookbooks, with some great recipes and some truly funny recipes and some that one might just deem, inedible.

On Saturday, my goddaughter called hoping to find a recipe for a simple syrup. She was getting ready for the Kentucky Derby in true Alabama fashion. She was organizing Mint Juleps and snacks, but she had no intention of actually WATCHING the race. Still, it was important to have all the trappings, regardless of the actual event.

I gave her the two parts water, one part sugar, boil for 10 minutes and cool recipe. Some people use the equal parts sugar and water, but I find it a bit too sweet.

Perennials has a nice Mint Julep recipe.

The General’s Mint Julep

18 mint leaves on stem, divided
2 teaspoons water
1 teaspoon sugar
Finley crushed ice
2 1/2 ounces 86 or 100-proof bourbon

Partially tear 12 mint leaves, leaving them on the stem. Place the leaves in a large glass or silver julep mug with water and sugar. Stir slowly until sugar is dissolved. Fill with ice. Add bourbon. Add more ice to fill as bourbon melts the original ice. Stir. Tear remaining mint leaves; place atop ice. Serve with a straw.

Well, clearly, this is a Georgia recipe. Who makes a single Mint Julep? People in Georgia.

Nina's Mint Julep -- one of many...

In Alabama, we make a big old pitcher of Mint Juleps because we serve the General and the rest of the troops. And while a horse race is nice, it takes about 2 minutes – Mint Juleps have far more staying power.