Chin Up

When the weather gets warm, my cocktail cravings turn to summery flavors like mint, cucumber, gin, rum and tequila. One of my favorite ways to use cucumber in a drink is a simple Hendrick’s martini with a thin wheel for garnish – it really brings out the cucumber flavor of the gin. When you want to get a little fancier, though, I highly recommend the Chin Up. Stupid name, but great drink, and using Cynar gives it a lovely color. I also love the hint of salt.

This is an excellent drink for a warm afternoon spent in the kitchen while cooking curry. The layers of bitterness and cool cucumber keep it both interesting and refreshing. It would also be good on the rocks, I’ll bet. I’ll have to try that.

Chin Up

• 1/2 inch cucumber wheel
• 2 oz gin
• 1/2 oz cynar
• 1/2 oz dry vermouth
• small pinch salt
• one paper thin wheel of cucumber for garnish

Muddle the cucumber in a mixing glass. Add the gin, cynar, vermouth and salt, fill with ice, and stir. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a slice of cucumber.

high plains drifter

On the day of our taco expedition, Jon did a little experimentation with tequila drinks, and the High Plains Drifter was the clear winner (the Mexican Firing Squad, despite its ridiculous name, was also very good). It has the familiar flavor combination of tequila and lime juice, but adds in bitters, campari and honey syrup to balance the drink out and make it a bit more elegant. I recommend it.

We generally make honey syrup as needed, simply by mixing equal parts honey and warm water. You can microwave it briefly if, like ours, your honey is old and crystallized and needs a little help dissolving, but you don’t want it too hot when you add it to the shaker, so let it cool a bit first.

High Plains Drifter #1

• 2 oz tequila
• ¾ oz lime juice (lemon juice works, too)
• ¾ oz honey syrup
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
• 1 splash Campari

Rinse a cocktail glass with Campari. Shake the tequila, lime juice, honey syrup and bitters with ice and strain into the glass. Garnish with a lime twist.

Santa Cruz wet wine walk

The last time we visited my brother-in-law, we had to drive to get to the local wineries. Up into the hills, usually, on windy roads designed to get the casual tourist completely lost. And many of the Central Coast wineries weren’t open to the public, anyway. This has all changed with the advent of the Swift Street Courtyard complex, now home to at least six different wine tasting rooms and a brewery. Part of the same complex that houses Kelly’s French Bakery (and a number of other shops), this is a wildly accessible arrangement for a person wanting to taste as much Santa Cruz wine as possible. Which we did.

And thanks to everything being so close together, it can all be done on foot even in a pouring rain. Which it was.

Our first stop was Bonny Doon. Their new space is very spiffy, with a long curving bar and tables set into gigantic barrels, with melted wine bottles for lamps. They had two tasting flights on offer, a regular and a reserve, so we bought one each and figured we’d share. The woman pouring for us took it upon herself to switch around the order of the wines so our two flights would overlap in the most enjoyable manner. We ended up with an exciting spread of bottles in front of us.

spring feeling

Spring has officially sprung! We’ve had some frost on the ground this past week (a rarity this winter), but the days have been mostly sunny and the breezes blow eddies of cherry petals around the streets. Daffodils are in full bloom and the tulips are already beginning to blaze away in pots, borders and farm fields. My garden is beginning to come to life, which makes my fingers itch to get out and weed and plant and take pictures.

MxMo: Absinthe

Mixology Monday is here again, hosted this month by Sonja at Thinking of Drinking, and this month’s theme is a favorite of ours: absinthe!

Anise liqueurs have been a staple in our home bar for years, ever since we walked into a bar in Provence and ordered pastis without having a clear idea of what we’d be getting. When our order turned out to include two small glasses partially filled with clear green liquid, a metal jug of ice water, beaded with condensation, and a plate of bread and tapenade, served at a little table on a sunny patio on a hot afternoon, we fell instantly in love. From then on, the flavor of pastis – or any anise-flavored alcohol – takes us back to that trip and those lovely long evenings.

Mixology Monday: Tea

This month’s Mixology Monday challenge is hosted by Cocktail Virgin, and the theme is tea. Black or herbal, brewed or infused, anything goes as long as it’s tea-based.

When thinking the challenge through, it seemed like we had three basic options: add brewed tea to the cocktail, infuse spirits with tea, or make a tea-flavored sugar syrup. We actually had rather good results mixing brewed oolong tea with aperol and lemon juice, but the drink we became fondest of used the sugar syrup.

The really tough decision was which tea to use. We thought of Lapsang first, with its deep smokiness, but thought that might be too strong. We have some madrona bark tea from Shaw Island which we haven’t yet tasted, but it brews for a long time and we kept forgetting to get it started. One of my very favorite teas, though, is Golden Yunnan, and it seemed like a perfect candidate. Rich and malty in flavor, it seemed like it would go great with booze.

MxMo: money drinks

Note: This Mixology Monday post is brought to you by our house mixologist, my husband Jon. He makes the cocktails, I just drink ’em and take their pictures, so I had him write this post himself – Jessamyn.

Another note: December MxMo roundup is up on Beers in the Shower!

When Jessamyn informed me of this month’s MxMo assignment, ideas did not immediately spring to mind.  Money drinks?  What the heck is a money drink?  Two different definitions were provided, but neither gave a clear direction.  The first definition, a normal drink made with super-high-end ingredients, quickly got ruled out.  We just don’t have enough super-high-end ingredients in our liquor cabinet.  The other definition provided seemed a little better: a drink that you could give to anyone and they would like it.  Still a challenge, but potentially doable.

Since there seemed to be an undercurrent of festivity, with the upcoming holidays, I headed straight for the pomegranate juice.  It doesn’t appear in very many cocktails, giving it an aura of something special, plus it has that great, brilliant red color.

For a gin-based pomegranate drink, it’s hard to beat the Diva Quaranta, which Jessamyn has already written about.  For cold winter evenings, though, we’re often more in the mood for whiskey-based drinks, so I used the Diva Quaranta as a jumping-off point and began tweaking.

Not all of my attempts were successes, but I do believe I found a winner.  Named the Runabout, after one of the better words played in a game of Scrabble the other evening, it uses rye, but would work equally well with bourbon.  I retained the Campari, since I enjoy the bitterness it imparts.  If the recipient of the drink does not like bitter (after all, this is supposed to be a drink that you could give to someone and know that they would like it), omit the Campari and double the Triple sec.

The Runabout

• 1 oz rye
• 1 oz pomegranate juice
• 1/2 oz Campari
• 1/4 oz Triple sec

Stir all ingredients with ice (shaking creates a bit of foam on the top that detracts visually).  Garnish with a lemon twist.  Give to someone you really like and then make another for yourself.

– JLN

liquid breakfast

Eons ago, on our honeymoon, Jon and I stayed at a wonderful place in the San Juan Islands called the Inn at Swifts Bay. It was a charming little B&B with a hot tub tucked back in the woods and a movie library of great quality – and the breakfasts were amazing. It was fifteen years ago and I still remember some of the food (I told you I had food on the brain, didn’t I?). One thing that made a huge impression on us both was the smoothie that kicked off each morning’s dining. Served in a large goblet, it was a puree of peach, a whole lime, banana, and pineapple. It was divine, and as soon as we were settled in our new (married student housing) apartment and owned a blender, we started making them for ourselves.

These days I can’t eat peaches (and pineapple makes my mouth feel a little odd, too), and I usually prefer a glass of orange juice with a hot breakfast than a full-on smoothie, but we still make smoothies on weekdays, especially if we’re feeling a little frail and dehydrated. Every summer I buy flats of local berries and freeze them, so all winter we can mix berries with mangoes, oranges or bananas for a variety of flavors. My usual smoothie formula for the two of us is something like: 1-2 cups fruit, half a cup of full-fat yogurt, half a cup of orange juice, two scoops of vanilla-flavored whey protein powder, and water to dilute and top up.

It’s easy, tasty and restorative. Always a good backup during the holidays, when one sometimes needs a bit of restoring.

Hummingbird Down

Jon’s gotten into making honey syrup-based cocktails, something that seemed difficult until he actually tried it. Now he just whips up a little when he needs it by whisking honey and water together. Simple.

My favorite honey-based drink so far has been the Gold Rush, really just a whiskey sour with honey instead of sugar, and it was the best thing ever when I had a sore throat a few weeks ago. Jon wanted to do a bit of experimentation with other drinks, of course, and I was quite happy when he presented me with a Hummingbird Down last weekend. Bright and tart, the honey is just a lurking warmth in the drink, which is mostly a vehicle for the unusual flavor of green Chartreuse (which I happen to love). It was a hit.

Jack Rose

So last week I told you about the Deep Blue Sea, which is a drink that I really like but my husband doesn’t really care for. It only seems fair that this week I should tell you about a drink that he loves, the Jack Rose. Popular during Prohibition, its fame has dwindled but it remains a classic.

What I find kind of funny is that he first saw this drink in Danny Meyer’s book Mix Shake Stir, which I brought home from the library, and he got a bee in his bonnet that he wanted to make it. He actually went out and bought a bottle of Laird’s Applejack just so he could make this (well, and a few other recipes that called for it. He’d never actually tasted it, though.) Once he had rounded up the ingredients and tried it, it was an instant hit. The sweet-tart of the grenadine and lime (sometimes lemon), combined with the applejack, produces the effect of a ripe tart apple, something Jon is very fond of when it’s just at the right point.

The paper-thin apple slice on top of the drink was inspired by a photo in the Meyer book. It’s showy, but makes the cocktail awfully hard to drink. I might recommend a thin wedge stuck on the edge of a glass, unless you’re trying to impress people.

Jack Rose Cocktail

• 1 ½ oz Laird’s applejack or apple brandy
• ½ oz lime juice
• 1 tsp grenadine

Shake with ice, strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with an apple slice.