Hot Cider, Fortified with Spiced Butter and Rum

When the sun bears down on Southern California, hot buttered drinks are alien, repulsive things. San Diegans in particular subsist on the simple pleasures of good beer and strong margaritas. Let the fog roll in or a chill come on, though, and our booze equilibrium shifts. We may not get snowdrifts or nor’easters here, but on windswept nights when fat drops of rain spank the windows and tree tips slap wetly against the house, hot rum is a certain prophylactic against the cold.

Good size pats for hot rum

Some folks make a simple, almost Puritanical, hot buttered rum: a tot of rum, topped with hot water, and garnished with a little pat of butter. I suppose that does keep the cold at bay, but its comfort is brutal and perfunctory. I like something more luxe, something actually pleasant to drink, something that makes me look at the bottom of an emptied mug and think 'Maybe one more...' Adding a stick of cinnamon helps, but it still wants a bit more character. Nothing fancy, just…a bit more. For that something extra, I swap out water with spiced cider and flavor the butter with that old British baking standby, mixed spice.

Mixed spice is similar to American pumpkin pie spice, but with coriander, mace, and cloves. We know all these notes; they're just arranged here differently. Mash a bit of it into unsalted butter with brown sugar and there's a spiced butter that is a nice touch on pancakes, waffles, English muffins — even bread and butter pudding. But let's not forget why we're here. We're doctoring rum with it. So let's get on with it.

Mixed Spice

1 tablespoon each — allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg (all ground)
2 teaspoons — mace (ground)
1 teaspoon each — cloves, coriander, and ginger (all ground)

Blend together and store in an airtight container. 

This will make more than you need for the butter. Tuck it into the cabinet and break it out for apple pies, puddings, gingerbread, braised pork, pumpkin stews, etc.

Ready to roll

For the spiced butter, it's almost ridiculous to think of what I do as a recipe. It's more of a guideline; weigh some quantity of butter, add half as much brown sugar, and mash in enough mixed spice with a fork or the back of a spoon to give it the intensity of flavor I like. For those who insist on proportions, try this:

Mixed Spice Butter 

100 g unsalted butter
50g soft brown sugar
1 tsp mixed spice (above) 

Mash into a paste either by hand or in a mixer. Roll into a 5" log on parchment paper. Twist the ends in opposite directions, and store in the refrigerator. 

]Now, then. The drink.

Hot Cider with Rum and Spiced Butter

1 quart unfiltered apple cider (non-alcoholic, but hey, use the hard stuff if you prefer, drunkie)
3 allspice berries, cracked (or a half-ounce of allspice dram)
2 4" cinnamon sticks
2 star anise
2 cloves
3-4 1" wide swathes of orange peel
2 oz rum (Appleton 12 year, Barbancourt 8 year, or Rhum JM are nice)
1 pencil-thick disc of mixed spice butter (above)

Heat the apple cider, spices, and orange peel in a 2-quart pan and simmer gently15 minutes or so. Meanwhile, pour the rum into heat-proof glasses or ceramic mugs. Top off with hot spiced cider and slip a disc of mixed spice butter into each mug.

Repeat until the cider is gone. Then go get more cider.

Goes well with:

• Know what else is good in cold weather? A big ol' mug of masala chai or hot chocolate spiked with Chartreuse. Still don't want butter in your hot booze drinks? May I suggest a negus?
• Half-slab pumpkin, an on-the-fly roast of pumpkin slices, seasoned with a mix I usually use on pork ribs.  Serve it — or not — with a side of homemade German noodles. 
• The mixed spice, tossed with sugar, would make a good dusting for pumpkin and ginger doughnuts. 
• "We’ve known each other nearly twenty years; I know what the boy likes to put in his mouth. The look of surprise that leapt to his face at the first sip was pretty much what I expected." Someone tries the champurrado for the first time.  
• Halloween is coming. Why not try a Skellington Bowl with brandy, rum, and boiled cider?
• Erick Castro's Cinnamon Wind tiki cocktail with Appleton rum and Becherovka. 

Dry Curaçao Ancienne Méthode

Brad Farran's Julius Orange

We like orange liqueurs at the Whiskey Forge. For decades, we’ve relied on those two old stalwarts, Cointreau and Grand Marnier. Cointreau in particular is a workhorse around here. When Mandarine Napoleon showed up on local shelves, I added that to the rotation. Solerno, a blood orange liqueur, is an interesting twist; we like it in cobblers. But perhaps my favorite of the lot is Dry Curaçao Ancienne Méthode from Cognac Ferrand.

Ferrand’s curaçao, a blend of cognac, vanilla, and citrus peels, is based on a 19th century recipe and made in consultation with drinks historian, David Wondrich. The Floating Rum Shack gives the backstory of how the brand came to be. We use it in punches, Mai Tais, with gin, with whiskey. It’s just a beautifully balanced, superbly well-done orange liqueur that’s earned a permanent place on our copper-topped dry sink.

New York bartender Brad Farran gave a recipe for Orange Jul…erm…Julius Orange in a Wall Street Journal piece last summer. I admit; the result is a lot like a boozy version of that shopping mall favorite.

Julius Orange 

2 oz Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao Ancienne Méthode
½ oz Cruzan Single Barrel Rum½ oz lemon juice
½ tsp vanilla syrup
½ tsp sugar cane syrup
1 dash orange bitters
½ oz heavy cream
Freshly grated nutmeg 

Combine liquid ingredients in a cocktail shaker, adding cream last. Shake hard with ice. Strain into a rocks glass over crushed ice. Garnish with nutmeg.

Something lighter, without the sugar and cream, is the Alabazam. I pinched the recipe from 19th century bartender William “The Only William” Schmidt and upped the curacao just a bit to really bring it forward. For the original, see his 1891 bartending manual, The Flowing Bowl.

Alabazam 

2 oz brandy
.75 oz lemon juice
.5 oz Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao Ancienne Méthode
.25 oz simple syrup
Two dashes Angostura bitters
Soda water (Q or Fever Tree)

Fill a tall highball glass two-thirds with crushed ice. Shake all the ingredients except the soda water with ice. Strain into the serving glass, top with soda, and stir.

Goes well with:

• If Orange Julius-type drinks get you going, but you'd prefer one without the booze, try Kenny Shopsin's take on them with fresh orange juice, powdered egg whites, powdered sugar, and crushed ice.
• That cobbler with Solerno I mentioned? It's very nice with Lillet, as served from time to time at San Diego's Polite Provisions. 

Homemade Thai Iced Tea

Cool your boots with a tall Thai tea

Summer is coming. With it comes blazing sun and sweltering nights, the kind of nights you don't want anyone coming near you in bed, much less actually trying to snuggle up next to you. It is the season of cool showers, cold beers, and punch-spiked watermelons — anything to keep the sweat demons at bay. Iced tea production, common enough around here any time of year, goes into overdrive. Some days, I'll guzzle a gallon of plain black Assam or orange pekoe iced teas. For particularly hot nights, though, or when I want a counterbalance to some ferocious curry, I'll make a batch of Thai tea. Poured over ice and dolled up with dairy, it's sweet, soothing respite from the heat.

For many, the making of Thai tea is a mystery. Oddly orange with unidentified exotic smells and tastes, its concoction is often left to restaurateurs and vendors who specialize in such things. That's a pity when it can be made so cheaply and easily at home. And the tastes, while they may be exotic, are familiar enough in other contexts: vanilla, cinnamon, star anise, black tea, and tamarind. Orange flower water as well as artificial dyes sometimes go into the dry tea blend. Come on; you didn't think that orange color came just from natural, wholesome tamarind and tea, did you? The brand I use, Pantainorasingh, comes in one-pound bags and is readily available at many Asian markets or through Amazon.

Thai Iced Tea 

4 cups water
½ cup Thai tea blend (Pantainorasingh brand)
½ cup sugar (white or — my preference — demerara)
3-4 Tbl half-and-half* 

In a 1.5-2 liter pot, bring the water to a boil. Add the tea blend and sugar, then return the mixture to a slow, soft boil. Boil five minutes, then turn off the heat and let the dark, aromatic mix cool 10-15 minutes. Strain it with a fine-mesh sieve or a cotton strainer into a jar or large bottle and refrigerate. 

To serve, fill a 16-20 glass with ice, then pour cooled, sweetened tea to within two fingers of the rim. Finish the drink by pouring in 3-4 tablespoons (1½ -2 oz) of half-and-half.

*The term "half-and-half" confuses some people, so allow me to quote from an earlier piece about goat cheese ice cream:

Half-and-half is, nominally, half cream and half milk in the United States. But that ain’t necessarily so. As Anne Mendelson explains in Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages, it is a “term with no uniform meaning.” Practically, it refers to a light, creamy liquid with 10.5-18% milkfat, depending on the state and manufacturer. Richer than milk, not as rich as heavy cream. Since light cream can range from 18-30% milkfat, there may be some overlap between it and half-and-half. Experiment and substitute at your peril/discretion.

Goes well with:

• Brown Cubes of Joy (coffee ice cubes) in New Mexico.
• Soulless Ginger Lemonade (and plain without the ginger)
• I get serious about the preparation of a proper cup of tea, but still have enough sense to laugh at myself for doing so. I'm not the only one: Rip it. Dip it. Sip it. 
• Masala chai is something I'm less likely to make in the summer months, but when I do brew up a batch on those mornings when I'm up at 4:30, here's how it's done.
• If you know it's going to be especially hot, lay in some bread pan ice blocks for your cool drinks.
• Finally, making plain, everyday, unsweetened iced tea is even simpler than the Thai tea here. Grab some loose tea, a gallon of water, and get brewing. 

Shameful Pleasures

As a kid, I ate things that, upon reflection, were probably better off uneaten. Not mud or hair or other inedible things that whisper "Let me in" to the unbalanced. Proper food, just...not the way one is meant to eat them. Pats of butter, for instance. Christ, I loved butter. Not on rice or noodles or toast (though that happened as well when Mom prepared meals). No. The best butter (salted, of course) was pilfered little slabs, sheered from the end of quarter-pound blocks while nobody was looking and the refrigerator door stood open. And the best place to eat them? Behind the couch in a sunbeam, hidden from view like some feral little beast with a fresh kill.

The last time I snarfed a tablespoon of butter behind the couch, Elvis still performed for sell-out crowds. While my tastes have evolved, my relationship with food remains just as intense; every once in a while, old memories and primal cravings rise to the surface of my thoughts with sudden, compelling urgency.

And so I found myself recently assembling an old kit I hadn't thought about in decades: a box a graham crackers, a half-gallon of milk, a pint glass, and a spoon. Another ritual from childhood. As precise and predictable as any junkie's kit, this has no name. There is no recipe. It's merely a thing I do. It could not be more simple: jam as many graham crackers into a glass as will fit. Then break more and stuff them into the gaps along the side. Fill just to the top of the crackers with milk. Wait a beat. Dig in. The balance of crunch and mush slides along a tipping scale until, at the end, it's a mess. A slurpy, sloppy, chuggable mess.

I may be a grown-ass man with work to do and bills to pay, but now and again, knuckling under to childhood food cravings allows me to put aside thoughts of that work and those bills.

Repeat, as the shampoo bottles advise, if necessary.

The Vanderbilt Fugitive

In issue 41 of The Southern Foodways Alliance’s quarterly newsletter Gravy, co-owner, bartender, and extraordinarily nice guy Bobby Heugel writes “At Anvil Bar & Refuge in Houston, we believe in the narrative power of a great menu. Our Summer in the South menus approaches each cocktail-character as an advocate for Southern traditions and ingredients—few of which are more iconic than buttermilk.”

Set aside for the moment — careful, now, don’t jostle it — the notion of a cocktail-character and instead cast your eye on the concoction Heugel presents in the piece: the Vanderbilt Fugitive.

The original Vanderbilt Fugitives were a group of early twentieth-century writers and poets who came together at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Counted in their ranks were Southern men of letters such as Robert Penn Warren (All the King’s Men), Allen Tate ("Ode to the Confederate Dead"), William Ridley Wills, and others. You can just feel bourbon dripping from the walls at the evocation of their names.

But this isn’t a bourbon drink. If you recall, it’s a buttermilk drink. Oh there’s rum, yellow Chartreuse, Averna, all kinds of delicious things — but it’s the buttermilk that gives it that special je ne sais what?

The Vanderbilt Fugitive

1.75 oz El Dorado 5 Year Demerara Rum
1 oz rich, acidic buttermilk
.5 oz Yellow Chartreuse
.5 oz Averna Amaro
.5 oz maple syrup

Combine all ingredients with ice and shake for at least two to three minutes, allowing cocktail to expand in volume. Strain into a Collins glass with cubed ice. Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg.

~ by Yao Lu and Anvil colleagues

Goes well with:

• The SFA’s “foodletter” Gravy. Download it here.
• When in Houston, drop by Anvil. If you’ve more than six in your party, make certain you all order a Ramos gin fizz — and on no account tell them I sent you.

Bookshelf: Forgotten Skills of Cooking

Every time we go to the supermarket, 

an increasing number of items 

are oven-ready or ready-to-eat: 

cheese is grated, mushrooms sliced, 

fruit segmented — I swear, if they sold toast 

we’d buy it.

~ Darina Allen

A few years ago, I found myself at the home of San Francisco cocktail writer and sometimes bartender, Erik Ellestad. A number of liquor writers had descended on the Bay Area, some to cover meetings of the American Distilling Institute, some just to eat and imbibe. While the rest of us mixed drinks, Pennsylvania blogger Rick Stutz made butter.

Yes, he made butter.

This is both as mundane and amazing as it sounds. Mundane because, well, butter is ubiquitous in America: even if you don’t eat it, you know where to get some. Amazing because almost nobody actually makes the stuff at home. I recognized instantly what Stutz was doing when I heard the mixer beating cream way too long. I was irked with myself because, as simple, straightforward, and easy as is it to make butter at home, it hadn’t even occurred to me as an option — and I’d grown up in a house with a butter churn.

Darina Allen found that over half of the students at her cookery school in Ireland had likewise forgotten how to make butter. Her epiphany came when one who had overwhipped her cream was on the verge of throwing it out. Allen stopped her and took the opportunity to teach the class how to make butter from the failed whipped cream. The students hadn’t necessarily forgotten what they had already known; rather, as a society, the Irish had lost kitchen skills that their grandmothers had known.

Butter bats in ice water

Allen set about correcting that alarming loss that by hosting a series of “forgotten skills” classes at her heralded Ballymaloe Cookery School. Courses included “How to Keep a Few Chickens in the Garden,” “How to Cure a Pig in a Day,” “How to Build a Smoker and Smoke your own Food,” and others on foraging, gardening, dairy, and other topics that spoke to eating what one grew. In her love for game, stillroom crafts, animal husbandry, and making the most of every scrap, she’s a bit like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (with good hair). She still teaches at Ballymaloe and, if you’re so inclined, you can sign up for classes. Most are under €150.

If, however, you cannot quite make it to County Cork — where my mother’s family is from — you are in luck. Mrs. Allen has spun her courses into a book: Forgotten Skills of Cooking. With 700 recipes in 600 pages (and weighing in at just under 5 pounds), it’s one of those books that might — just might — stand in as the sole cookbook for those who want only one. For those drawn by the rustic allure of modern urban homesteading, that goes double.

If you’ve ever thought you’d like to cure your own hams or make marmalade rather than buy it, do yourself a favor and check out the book. A casual flipping of the pages is enough to tell you that an Irish hand is at the stove. You will find recipes for soda bread, salmon, periwinkles, spiced beef, crubeens (i.e., pig’s feet), Irish stew, champ, and colcannon. Overall, though, the recipes strike a balance between hominess and worldly sophistication. You’ll find Moroccan takes on lamb, numerous Italian and French recipes, smoked eggs, duck rillettes, How to Make Crackling, applesauce, sweetbreads, hand-cut potato chips, paneer, porter cake, etc.

There are instructions for raising chickens (“Everyone knows how passionate I am about keeping hens”) and hanging game with extensive notes on preserving and vegetables. The tone that comes across more clearly, regardless of the topic at hand, is one of experience and encouragement, telling us, frankly, that some kinds of forgetting are warranted.

Shaping the butter

What kind? Undoubtedly, it’s the inner voice that tells us, when we see a looming expiration date, automatically to throw out that carton of yogurt or that when we see three moldy berries in a box, it tells us to bin the whole thing rather than discard the fuzzy bits and make a little pot of jam. That’s the voice to forget. Rather, use your own senses to tell when something’s bad or off. Bad berries are bad berries and if they can’t be used, then so be it, but a date of expiry can’t possibly be one’s only guide.

When you understand that electricity came to Mrs. Allen’s home village only when she was only 9 years old, the inherent thriftiness of her approach makes sense. When you’ve lived through the last three years of economic turmoil, you realize her timing could not have been better.

Forgotten Skills of Cooking is a tome I’m glad to have. It jogs my memory of foods and preparations I’ve already forgotten and explains how the old ways once again have become new.

Thank you, Mrs. Allen, for reminding me that I did indeed grow up in a house with a butter churn. I hope you don’t mind if I use my KitchenAid mixer, though, when making my next batch of the yellow stuff.

Note: for the following recipe from Forgotten Skills of Cooking, butter bats (or, as my mother calls them, butter hands) are small wooden paddles used to handle to form fresh butter into manageable cubes, logs, lumps, and balls. They are grooved on one side to allow liquid to stream away and use minimal surface area to shape the butter.

Butter

2.5 quarts/liters of unpasteurized or pasteurized heavy cream at room temperature
2 tsp pickling salt (optional)

Soak the wooden butter bats or hands in iced water for about 30 minutes so they do not stick to the butter.

Pour the heavy cream into a cold, sterilized mixing bowl. If it’s homogenized, it will still whip, but not as well. If you’re using raw cream and want a mor traditional taste, leave ut to ripen in a cool place, where the temperature is about 46F, for up to 48 hours.

Beat the cream at medium speed in a food mixer until it is thick. First, it will be softly whipped, the stiffly whipped. Continue until the whipped cream collapses and separates into butterfat globules. The buttermilk will separate from the butter and slosh around the bowl.

Tip the mixture into a cold, spotlessly clean sieve and drain well. The butter remains in the sieve while the buttermilk drains into a bowl. The buttermilk can be used to make soda bread or as a thirst-quenching drink (it will not taste sour). Put the butter back into a clean bowl and beat for another 30 seconds to 1 minute to expel more buttermilk. Remove and drain as before.

Fill the bowl containing the butter with very cold water. Use the butter bats or your clean hands to knead the butter to force out as much buttermilk as possible. This is important, as any buttermilk left in the butter will sour and the butter will spoil very quickly. If you handle the butter too much with warm hands, it will liquefy.

Drain the water, and wash twice more, until the water is completely clear.

Weigh the butter into 4oz, 8oz, or 1lb slabs. Pat into shape with the wet butter hands or bats. Make sure the butter hands or bats have been soaked in ice-cold water for at least 30 minutes before using to stop the butter sticking to the ridges. Wrap in parchment or waxed paper and keep chilled in a fridge. The butter also freezes well.

Makes about 1 kilo (2.2 lbs) butter and 1 quart/liter buttermilk.

Recipe note: If you prefer salted butter, add ¼ tsp of pickling salt — also called “canning and pickling salt” — for every 4oz of butter before shaping it.

Photo note: Other than the cover image of the book, each of the images here are photos by Peter Cassidy and can be found in Forgotten Skills of Cooking.

Darina Allen (2010)
Forgotten Skills of Cooking: The Time-Honored Ways are the Best — Over 700 Recipes Show You Why
600 pages (hardback)
Kyle Books
ISBN: 1906868069
$40.00

Goes well with:

• Darina Allen is an acclaimed teaching instructor at Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork. Every country, I suppose, could claim it has a local Julia Child — but most agree that Mrs. Allen is undoubtedly Ireland’s.
• Erik Ellestad writes about food and drink at Underhill-Lounge where he famously has been recreating drinks recipes from the the Savoy Cocktail Book “starting at the first, Abbey, and ending at the last, Zed.” At last check, he was one drink away from completion. Mind the anomie, Erik.
• Rick Stutz writes about cocktails, heavy on the homemade ingredients, and with a perceptible tiki bias at Kaiser Penguin.
• Morton’s sells 4lb boxes of canning and pickling salt with no iodine or free-flowing agents. Me? I’d go with some finely ground sea salt.
• Mrs. Allen does not cover making one's own whiskey. I do. 

Dreams of Salt and Honey

Salt, honey, Guinness, and chocolate

For decades, I’ve bought ice cream books: professional catalogs, technical manuals, and amateur how-to books from the 19th century, 20th century, and the latest offerings that cater to America’s increased love of bold flavors. They inform what goes on my table both at home and when I'm on the road. From cider ices in New England and cinnamon gelato in Amsterdam to Midwestern frozen custards laced with chunks of cherry pie, I've eaten my share of ice creams. Last week, I hit Scoops ice cream shop in Los Angeles. Their salt and honey ice cream is one of the best I’ve had in years.

Scoops has a few standard ice cream flavors in the case such as brown bread, but on any given day, you may also find Jim Beam and ricotta, Guinness and chocolate, white chocolate and Oreo, avocado and banana, pistachio and jasmine, and the straightforward Earl Grey.

Click to enlarge

A white board against one wall is scrawled in red and black suggestions for additional flavors from customers. The ideas range from earnest-seeming pleas (AVOCADO! and Sugar free for diabetics) through the intriguing (sweet potato, Cheddar/apple pie and — I'd like to see them pull it off — pad thai) to the merely nasty (cheeseburger: cold beef fat is particularly vile). Some that popped for me:

• elderflower
• green tea
• mango-chile-lime
• coconut-basil
• IPA
• ginger and Hennessey
• Thai ice[d] tea
• PBR
• bacon
• black licorice
• jasmine-green apple
• bacon-maple doughnut

I may pass on the sex and KFC original recipe flavors if they ever get made. Jackasses. Thai tea, though, is great as a sorbet drizzled with cream. An orphaned bottle of Thai tea syrup in the fridge got me thinking What the hell am I going to do with that? Make delicious dessert, that's what.

These days, even convenience stores carry the formerly exotic dulce de leche ice cream — but Jim Beam and ricotta or bacon-maple doughnut? I either need to make that kind of thing myself or hunt it down. Because I can’t just haul my ass to LA whenever I get a hankering for unusual ice cream, you know I’ll be tweaking salt and honey recipes.

Let me know if you've got a workable recipe for that, eh?

Scoops
712 N Heliotrope Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 906-2649

There’s a Scoops website, but it’s less about the business than the art that rotates through. Better to check out Scoops' Yelp page for useful information about the ice cream itself.

.

2nd Annual Northwest Eggnog Competition

Tomorrow night, Uptown Billiards Club in in Portland, Oregon is hosting the 2nd Annual Northwest Eggnog Competition. I'll be down in San Diego, but it sounds like area alcoholists, including Craig Hermann and Jeffrey Morgenthaler, are already gearing up and will be attending the best eggnog throwdown.

If I were anywhere within 40 miles, I'd be there.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009
7:00pm - 9:00pm
Elephant's Deli on NW 22nd Ave., Portland

* * *

As a side to this event, I've got to share this email I got from my buddy Barry. Barry lives near Elephant's Deli, so I called him today to let him know about the event, but also that I didn't yet have all the details.

Now, Barry uses Google's voicemail which also sends him an email with the (supposed) text of the call. I left him a message this afternoon suggesting that he check out the eggnog competition. Didn't know the details other than Morgenthaler tweeted about it. The gist of the message was to look into it because I was going to be in San Diego, didn't have any more info than that, and I didn't want to send him on a snipe hunt.

I busted out laughing at the worst transcription job I've ever seen. This is the complete gibberish that Google sent him as the text of my message:

Hey. It's Phil Shay are you talking about and I just remembered something on the road earlier in the week in Portland atthe post club. Olson's Deli which, I think it's just like of spring away from you tomorrow night. We're having some kind ofPortland bartenders. 8. Not competition and Jeffrey, Morgan dollar will be there. He's a bartender. Clyde common andhave a good point, and several others at least 10 times. I'm not sure which, but it sounds like something that might bekinda fun to do this. It's indeed. That's where it is on another LSATs telling them somewhere and he's got some free time. Idon't know what it is. I don't know any details that would you expect all at home and it's 7 a goes on facebook on 7 mycomputer and tomorrow so I'll be offline mostly for a week or so. Yeah, so give us a while and really do talk to them, cosI'm guessing I was just like swamping doing to our last time when you called. So that's why I was referred, but he's did alot of the virtual church on it. So with the lose of the pros and cons and I haven't had any problems so far as I can, I'd. I'ddefinitely love it and let me point out, it's because I know I have to the pickup the canoe colossal at. If you could. That'spretty cool. So yeah. Catch you later. Bye.

Oh, well done, Google.
Your friend,
Phil Shay
.

MxMo XLII: Dizzy Dairy and Rowley’s New Book

When I heard the theme for this month’s Mixology Monday—dairy cocktails—I gritted my teeth. In the last year I’ve had more milk and cream than at any time since my childhood. Why? Well, the rich history of, and modern innovation in, dairy cocktails is the topic of the book I’ve been working on.

Until I was ready to publish, I wasn’t eager to see public talk about them. No dice. MxMo host Chris Amirault over at eGullet has let the cow out of the barn with MxMo XLII: Dizzy Dairy. For one day, the majority of the world’s online cocktail writers will be blogging, tweeting, and posting Facebook updates on the very thing I’ve been keeping under wraps.

Ah, well. I know when to roll with new developments and, since this is hardly a secret topic anymore, let me tell you a little of what I’ve been up to and throw out a call for help.

As I’ve researched the book, I’ve sampled 1%, 2%, whole, raw, homogenized, and pasteurized milks from huge producers and small family farms. There’s been condensed, evaporated, caramelized, fermented, shelf-stable, and powdered samples decking the kitchen counters. I’ve looked into the dairy underground (where raw milk runners sometimes call their product “mooshine”), put archivists and librarians through their paces digging out manuscripts and old pamphlets, and ordered dairy cocktails in every city I visit. Some—like Ramos’ famous gin fizz—are classics. They can be as simple as Lebowski’s favorite White Russian or laced with fancy beurre noir and sage.

On a recent trip to Philadelphia, I dropped in Rum Bar to say hello to owner Adam Kanter. The milkiest drink on the menu? An orange batida. Long popular in Brazil, batidas often incorporate fruit and sweetened condensed milk (leite condensado) as well as cachaça, a hugely popular cane spirit gaining ground in the US. Bar manager Vena Edmonds kindly supplied the recipe. If you can't find Moleca, a three-year old wood-aged cachaça, consider substituting Leblon or Boca Loca brands. Not the same taste, but a little more funky than a lot of rums.

Orange Batida

1 oz Bacardi O
1 oz Moleca cachaça
1 barspoon of refined sugar (about a teaspoon)
1 oz sweetened condensed milk
½ oz orange juice

Shake hard with ice to fully mix the condensed milk and strain into an old fashioned glass with fresh ice. Garnish with an orange slice. You could also substitute simple syrup to taste for the sugar.

Of course, I was in Philly to hit libraries and archives, too. I’ve dug into the ethnographic, historic, culinary, and literary records from around the world for cultural and scientific information on the lactation of cows, goats, horses, buffalos, camels, and more. Want naturally rose-flavored milk? Grab your passport. The fermented Mongolian mare’s milk drink koumiss that used to be in all the bartenders’ manuals? Hard to find, but there’s an easy work-around. Beyond issues of palatability, I can tell you why we don’t milk pigs, why water buffalo cream is so thick, and how to break down milk punch into distinct families.

But I could use help. I’m looking for recipes to include—with attribution—in the book.

I’ve got more than enough historic American cocktail recipes. What would help are original dairy cocktails made by modern bartenders and cocktail enthusiasts—cocktails using milk, buttermilk, cream, butter (don’t look at me like that: you never heard of hot buttered rum?), or other dairy products. Innovative takes on older recipes and examples from outside the US are also good: Got experience with aged eggnogs, sloe gin fizzes, or pisco-spiked caramelized goat’s milk? I’d love to hear from you.

I can’t promise everyone’s recipe will make the final cut—my editor invariably cuts even my own recipes—but I can promise to talk with you about your cocktail(s), see if there’s room to include them, and give you all kinds of lavish credit if one or more of your recipes makes the final draft.

Email me at moonshinearchives [at] gmail [dot] com and let’s see what we can do.

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