My New Book: Drugstore Whiskey, Pharmacy Gin

You've heard of bathtub gin, sure. Everyone has. The stuff has become shorthand for the legendary horrors of Prohibition-era drinking. But what was it? No, for real: what was that stuff — and was it always a horror? Where did it come from? Where did it go?

A peek inside.
Kornschärfe: It schärfes the Korn.

Though it may seem as if the action has slowed around here, the truth is that behind the scenes at the Whiskey Forge has been hectic as I've been writing for various magazines, traveling, giving talks around the country, and getting elbow-deep in several book projects. This morning, I woke to a tweet from Bitters author Brad Thomas Parsons congratulating me on the announcements for one of those books.

Here's the deal: I have a contract with Countryman Press, a branch of W.W. Norton, for a new book tentatively called Drugstore Whiskey, Pharmacy Gin that will hit the shelves in 2015. Eater reports "Veteran booze writer and author Matthew Rowley is at it again, this time turning his attentions to the recipes of the Prohibition bootleggers." Publishers Marketplace gives a little more:

Author and historian Matthew Rowley (Moonshine!, 2007) continues his exploration of illicit alcohol and cocktail culture in Drugstore Whiskey, Pharmacy Gin: Making It and Faking It with 200 Secret Booze Recipes from the Height of Prohibition. Using high-resolution images from a secret 1920’s manuscript, Rowley examines the traditions, ingredients, and cultural context of Prohibition bootlegging with extensive annotations and over 200 recipes. Sold to Ann Treistman at Countryman Press by Lisa Ekus of The Lisa Ekus Group. Publication Fall 2015.

If you've come to any of my talks over the last six months or so, you already know a bit about this since I've been using some of the material when kicking around notions of Prohibition-era urban moonshine. Years ago, I was given a gift: a 1920's manuscript hidden within what looked like a book of poetry. It wasn't. Rather, the book held page after page of handwritten recipes — in English, German, and occasional Latin — for gins, genevers, absinthes, whiskeys, rums, brandies, and dozens of spirits and cordials, essences and extracts, all tied to New York City at the height of Prohibition. Some recipes are for genuine articles. Others hail from an earlier era, a time when traditional beverages relied on herbs and spices for their flavors. Still others depend on 19th century advances in applied chemistry simply to fake some spirits and "enhance" others.

It'll be cool. Even most bartenders hip to vintage drinks haven't seen anything quite like this.

Okolehao, Historic and Modern

Many drinkers prefer it to gin (1912 ad)

One week in September of 1886, the Deputy Sheriff in Maui rounded up fourteen men the Honolulu Daily Bulletin called “illicit dealers in the ardent.” The ardent in this case was okolehao, the Hawaiian analog of mainland moonshines. Early journalists called it white mule and Hawaiian whiskey — although it wasn’t really whiskey. Not yet. That came later.

A handful of cocktail recipes calling for okolehao show up in the historical record. If you read Jeff "Beachbum" Berry’s books on tiki drinks, however, you will learn, perhaps with disappointment, that okolehao is extinct. Berry suggests a few substitutions — he proposed Martinique rum at first, but later recommended bourbon or rye — and there’s a reason. We'll circle back around to that. He wasn’t wrong; when he wrote the books, oke, as some call it, had fallen from production.

Like a lot of other discarded spirits these days, okolehao is back. In fact, in the summer of 2013, attendees of my standing room only talk on moonshine at Tiki Oasis in San Diego sampled a twist on a whiskey sour made with a modern take on the old spirit: 100-proof okolehao from Island Distillers in Honolulu. It’s a cane and ti-root distillate that's earthy, vegetal, and a little funky.

Hawaiian Moonshine

Distillation seems to have come to Hawaii in the 1790’s. I say “seems to” not because the date is uncertain, but because Hawaiians seem not to have distilled spirits at all until then. That changed when William Stevenson, an escaped convict from Australia, used rendering pots from a whaling ship as the boiler for a rudimentary still. The iron pots were said to resemble a woman’s plump backside and the nickname “iron bottom” stuck. In the local language, “iron bottom” was "okolehao" and the stuff eventually became nearly as popular as the bit of anatomy that inspired it.

Like moonshines in general, okolehao didn’t have a single recipe. There were as many ways to make it as there were stills and distillers. Any single batch might contain distillates of taro, rice, honey, corn, bran, sweet potatoes, kiawe beans, molasses, breadfruit — whatever was nearby and cheap and could be fermented. If pineapples were cheap, it had pineapples in it. If white table sugar were cheap, then that’s what distillers used.

Ti plant, courtesy of Dave Flintstone,
Island Distillers

But one thing held this island mule together in a way that mainland moonshines, in their diversity, did not and do not have — a single, defining, ingredient: ti. From the day Stevenson made that first batch until now, regardless of other ingredients it may contain, ti is at the heart of Hawaiian moonshine. For countless visitors over the last century, taking home a bottle of okolehao — or at least taking one as far back as the ship where it was emptied before next landfall — was a reminder of their time in that Pacific paradise.

Ti shrubs grow throughout Hawaii. It is also called ki especially in 19th century accounts. The botanical name is Cordyline fruticosa and historical accounts boast of “inexhaustible” supplies. The leaves have medicinal and decorative uses, but the big, starchy root is what is what we’re interested in.

On mature plants, these roots are huge; they can grow to 25 kilos or more, bigger than a lot of dogs. Dave Flintstone, distiller at Island Distillers, says that when harvesters select plants for his okolehao, they look for those with a central stalk about the thickness of a man’s wrist.

After workers unearth them, the roots are baked in underground ovens called imus. If you are familiar with how tequila is made, you’ll see the resemblance to how agave hearts — the piñas — are roasted in kilns or ovens.

Freshly unearthed ti root,
courtesy of Dave Flintstone, Island Distillers

In each case, starches convert to sugars under heat and the whole thing is crushed and fermented. Distillers run the low-alcohol ti root wash through stills to concentrate the ethanol but collect those compounds that give okolehao its characteristic funky taste and distinctive smell.

In fact, okolehao’s smell could be a problem for distillers, haulers, and customers. That distinctive aroma often tipped off law enforcement to nearby stills and mash tubs, or confirmed that a container had held okolehao and not, for instance, whiskey or water. When caught red-handed in towns with their illicit cargo, Hawaiian bootleggers often smashed the glass demijohns they used to transport their haul to the ground in attempts to destroy damning evidence. This dodge was so common that during the 1920’s, one catty journalist suggested that officers should be issued sponges so they could mop up evidence and squeeze it into vials before it trickled away.

When police did capture okolehao, though, it had a habit of transforming in evidence holding rooms. Old reports note that quantities of the local moonshine remained the same, but in storage, the proof sometimes mysteriously would go down. Any kid who’s drunk her parents’ liquor and topped off the bottles with water knows exactly what happened in those police storage units; somebody inside was pilfering the hooch.

Holy Terror Hitchcock:
not a fan of the oke

It worked in reverse, too. Not only did hooch disappear, it sometimes showed up where it did not belong. In the mid-1890’s, the Marshal in charge of enforcing laws in the short-lived Republic of Hawaii was Edward Griffin Hitchcock. Known as “Holy Terror” Hitchcock, he was the top law enforcement officer in the islands. The nickname “Holy Terror” came from his efficiency in rounding up criminals, but the moniker was also a poke at his family; his father had been a missionary and the younger Hitchcock kept ties to Hawaii's missionary community.

In 1894, Marshal Hitchcock issued a letter to owners and managers of every place in the islands that sold liquor. In it, he schooled them on Hawaiian law and reminded them of the fines that could be levied on any person who sold adulterated liquor.

The adulteration in this case was okolehao. Rumors were going around that saloon keepers had been stretching their stocks of imported liquor with the local moonshine. The Hawaiian Star newspaper explained the next day that

Okolehao is very cheap and, containing such a large per cent of alcohol, can be employed in the preparation of drinks to immense pecuniary advantage. It was at one time, if not now, used in the preparation of wine. An extract was imported to which diluted okolehao was added in such quantities as to bring the alcoholic property up very high.

So what we have is a wine extract coming from California that’s got very little, if any, alcohol in it. Local merchants would add okolehao and water. Give it a stir and what've you got? Wine! Adding both high-proof okolehao and water to imported whiskey — maybe with caramel to bring back a semblance of barrel-aging — was a way to cheat customers and squeeze more profit out of every drink sold.

Swapping out moonshine for legal liquor is underhanded and illegal. And it is a trick that is still done in some bars — especially for customers too drunk to notice that their vodka is more white mule than Grey Goose.

Despite those early reports of “inexhaustible” supplies of ti plants, harvesting them is hard work. That’s why, since the 19th century, other sugars went into the mash: pineapple, refined white sugar, cane juice, rice — again, the stuff that was nearby and cheap. Very early on, ti became something distillers added to the mash rather than something they fermented as the mash.

From Island Distillers,
a 100-proof modern take
on Hawaiian moonshine

Authentic okolehaos, in other words, have long been made from less than 100% pure ti root. Some were pure, but not all. When I asked Flintstone why he didn’t make a 100% ti root distillate, he said that, though economics factored into it, the primary reason is that modern palates would find it too harsh and unpleasant, making it too hard of a sell.

And that brings us around to Jeff Berry’s recommendation to use bourbon or rye when there’s no okolehao. The first legal, commercial producer of ti-root okolehao was E. H. Edwards. In 1906, he imported a 200-gallon still to Kona specifically to make it. His business ultimately failed because the product was inconsistent, but he did make enough to put in barrels and ship to a bonded warehouse in Honolulu where it aged and took on color from the barrels.

You probably wouldn't mistake one for the other, but Edwards’ spirits started looking, smelling, and tasting — at least a bit — like whiskey. When his company was bought out, the new owners continued the practice; bonded, barrel-aged okolehao became common until Prohibition, when all beverage alcohol became illegal.

By the mid-twentieth century conditions had changed. Okolehao was legal again and popular both with tourists and US military stationed in Hawaii. By the 1960’s, however, okolehao had ceased being a blend of ti root and other sugars fermented and distilled on the islands, but was instead whiskey imported from the mainland and flavored with ti extract or ti roots simply ground and steeped in the whiskey to give it the "authentic" taste. This is why, when mixing drinks from recipes that call for okolehao but date from the 1960’s, Beachbum Berry says to use bourbon or rye.  Minus the funk of ti, that’s pretty much what midcentury okolehao was — at least the commercial stuff.

Hats off to Dave Flintstone for helping to resurrect local, high-proof wet goods.

Goes well with:

• Okolehao, naturally. Pick up a stoneware bottle of the 100-proof cane-and-ti distillate when you're in Hawaii or track down distiller Dave Flintstone through his distillery's site, Island Distillers to have a supply shipped.
• Swipes, the Pruno of Territorial Hawaii. Not all the beverages of old Hawaii were something you'd want to drink. By all accounts, swipes were a scourge that made many a sailor regret his stopover to the Hawaiian islands en route to the Philippines. 
• Visiting sailors and desperate drinkers aren't the only ones to his the sauce in Hawaii. In 1911, the Hawaiian Star printed a tall tale of feral hogs getting into a batch of okolehao.

Smoked Bacon, Apple, and Cabbage

BC: Before Cabbage

This time of year, the pantry is loaded and the fridge is full. We’re working our way through it all, but we’ve had our fill of rich dishes and heavy meals. My last hurrah will be a huge pot of grillades we’ll cook off this afternoon for a New Year’s breakfast tomorrow. Otherwise we’re winding down the holiday season and have started picking at leftovers rather than cooking many full meals — carving off a few ounces of smoked ham for hash, sandwiches, or snacks; killing off the gravlax, tucking into roasted sweet potatoes from two nights ago; using the last bits from open bottles and jars.

A fridge purge, in other words. Good to do a few times a year, anyway, but eating up everything in what's been a fridge full of rotating food makes me feel — just a bit — virtuous. Either that, or I'm a sensitive about how much money we tend to blow on the holiday feasting and it's time to reel in the spending.

Part of the purge did involve a bit of cooking, but a hot dish of pork and apples — and a few other odds and ends lying about the place — was quick and barely any work at all. The juniper berries give it a whiff of gin; just the thing for a chilly night.

AD: Already Done

Smoked Bacon, Apple, and Cabbage 

8-12 oz smoked bacon, sliced and cut into finger-width pieces
1 green/white cabbage, cored and sliced coarsely
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 cooking apples, cored and cut into slices or small chunks 

Seasonings 

6-8 juniper berries, crushed
1 tsp sea salt
2 long peppers, crushed (or 1 tsp black pepper)
1 tsp dried thyme
2 Tbl red wine vinegar
1 Tbl brown sugar
a knifepoint of ground mace or a few gratings of nutmeg 

Heat the oven at 350°F/180°C. 

In a heavy cast-iron pot with a lid (I use a big-ass Le Creuset), cook the bacon over medium heat until browned and just lightly crisped at the edges. Add the onion and cook until it softens. Add the apple chunks and stir them around until they’ve got a bit of color, then stir in the seasonings and the cabbage. Add the remaining ingredients and cover. Pop it in the oven and cook 30-45 minutes until the apples are cooked through, the cabbage is softened, and the whole thing is piping hot.

Goes well with:

• If you've got a bit of country sausage languishing in the fridge or freezer, these biscuits ain't a half-bad way to use it up.
• Bacon jam. Some make it with coffee, but that's unspeakably nasty. Try it that way if nasty is your bag, but otherwise, my version with apple cider and a restrained amount of maple syrup is the one you want. 
• Bacon dumplings for a wicked hangover. Don't delay. Make them today. Your future self may thank you tomorrow morning. 
• Those grillades we're making today? A recipe I tweaked from New Orleans chef John Besh. Eight pounds of pork shoulder that will go into the pot this afternoon...and will be gone by this time tomorrow.
• Although we didn't make noodles for this one, a batch of homemade German egg noodles would've been a solid side. 

Home Fires: The State of Home Distilling in the US

Lew Bryson, editor at Whisky Advocate, asked me write about the current state of affairs for home distilling in the United States. A blanket federal ban on the practice is in place, but a few states are bucking those laws with more permissive laws and regulations of their own. Regardless of the laws, sub rosa distillers from the East Coast to the West are making an awful lot of homemade liquor for themselves, their families, and friends. No, I didn't forget you, Alaska. In fact, I'd be surprised if we don't see a new reality show called something like Alaska Bootleggers or Ice Road Moonshiners in the near future. From the Fall 2013 issue of Whisky Advocate, here's a piece originally titled Home Fires.

Casual observers often assume that home distilling, like wine making or beer brewing, is legal in America. Zymurgy Bob knows better. According to federal law, distilleries are never permissible in homes. His advice? “Do everything you can to reduce your visibility to the law,” he exhorts. “Conceal what you are doing.” The pseudonymous author of Making Fine Spirits, a guide to building and operating home-scale stills, closes his introductory chapter with modern home distilling’s most ironclad commandment: Thou Shalt Not Sell.

Alcohol distillation in the United States is highly regulated and federal judicial code is uniformly severe with those who skirt the rules. Once federal prosecutors bring charges against a suspect for illicit distillation, they are forbidden by law from dropping the case without express written permission from the Attorney General. If found guilty, violators could face up to five years in prison and be fined $10,000. Because illicit distillation, the argument goes, is a tax dodge, those who defraud the United States of tax revenue through such clandestine distilling shall forfeit (not may or might — shall forfeit) the land on which the distillery is located as well as equipment used to make spirits and all personal property in the building and yard.

Running off a few liters of whiskey or ultra-pure vodka in the basement may seem a harmless pastime to some, but are they perverse enough to risk losing homes, land, and nearly all their possessions by actually firing up a still?

For thousands of Americans, the answer is yes. Across the country, hobbyists buy and build small stills for making spirits in secret. Profit is beside the point; these distillers do not sell their products. Compared to the output of Chivas or Beam, their covert batches of gin, rum, seasonal brandies, whiskey, and hausgemacht absinthe are miniscule. Tuthilltown Spirits alone loses more in angel’s share than what most hobbyists produce in a year. Their enthusiasm, however, burns no less brighter than that of professional — and legal — craft practioners.

One California hobbyist, Navy Frank, grows wormwood in his yard and keeps glass jugs of homemade spirits in his dining room. Home distilling, as Frank describes it, is a facet of a larger DIY ethos. “It’s a maker mentality that drives people to make homemade cheese or beer or build something with their own hands or garden. There’s all this wonderful cross-pollination. If you sketched the connections of what people like us get excited about, they would form the most overlapping Venn diagram ever.”

Frank — not his real name — is a Navy veteran and an engineer by trade. In his cellar he makes rum, neutral spirits, absinthe, honey distillates, and a peated single malt. “That’s probably my favorite, but after sharing, and sampling, and more sharing, I’m down to just one bottle.” His modular distillery system uses three separate pots that can be rigged with different heads and condensers that vary with what, and how much, he is making. The largest boiler could hold a child. The smallest, no bigger than a rice cooker, is for extracting botanical essences.

I mention a New York distiller who created a flavor library of over 200 botanical extracts, including angelica seed and rare agarwood. “Oh,” he smiles. “Ramón!” Despite the continent between them, the two distillers know each other through online hobbyist groups. In this, they are typical. Hobbyists regularly turn to online forums such as Yahoo Distillers and Artisan Distiller for guidance. Like Frank and Bob, Ramón prefers a pseudonym, but because he works in the distilling industry, his concern goes deeper than their straightforward desire to avoid legal attention. While it’s not uncommon for craft distillers to have learned the basics of their trade at home, and even continue to refine it there, the majority who do so will not admit that on the record. Like them, Ramón assumes investors, concerned that federal liquor violations could ruin a licensed distillery, might jettison a partner or employee accused of illicit distilling. “If TTB keeps making it easier to open distilleries,” he muses, “then maybe the hobby side of the equation could finally become legal. I’d happily pay for a permit to make ten gallons or twenty each year for myself. I bet 90 percent of home distillers would do the same.”

While it’s true that several hundred American craft distilleries have opened in the last decade, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) does not issue permits for home distilling for any price. Some states, though, allow noncommercial production to varying degrees. Alaska, for instance, excludes “private” manufacture of spirits from its alcohol control laws...except in quantities that exceed federal limits. In other words, Alaska allows zero liters for home distillers. Missouri is more explicit, asserting that “No person at least twenty-one years of age shall be required to obtain a license to manufacture intoxicating liquor...for personal or family use.” Such use in the Show Me State, it may be noted, is up to 200 gallons per year. Go, Missouri. Arizona expressly permits personal distilling of spirits such as brandy or whiskey if owners register their rigs with the state’s Department of Liquor Licenses and Control. According to DLLC, however, none has done so.

Mike McCaw, distillery consultant and publisher of Zymurgy Bob’s book, argues that as governments are forced to examine all spending, “We may, just may, be at a political inflection point where [legalizing home distilling] could happen...it is simply not cost effective to chase down people with ten gallon stills.” Bob himself is less sanguine. Speaking by phone on his book tour, he says that pursuing people with ten gallon stills “does make sense if they’re selling it and there is tax evasion going on. And that is one of the main points of the whole “do not sell” prohibition. There is no money and so no tax being evaded there.”

“I hope — I hope — that’s giving me a margin of safety.”

I hope so, too. Good luck, Bob.

Goes well with:

• First things first. If you have legal questions about distilling in your country, state, or province, please get in touch with consultants and/or attorneys who know your local laws. The discussion forum of the American Distilling Institute is a good place to start. In the UK, check in with the Craft Distillers Alliance. 
• The business about unregistered distilleries and distilling with intent to defraud leading to forfeiting  one's property in the United States is addressed 26 USC § 5615. The full text is here. 
• Zymgurgy Bob's book, Making Fine Spirits, is available here. Mike McCaw, distillery consultant, still designer, and publisher of Bob's book, can be reached through The Amphora Society. 
• Whisky Advocate magazine is here. An earlier piece I did on white whiskey — and what to do with it — for the magazine is here. 
• Even the Ten Dollar Whore Sneered at Me, in which a New Orleans...ahm... independent contractor disapproves of me.

Bookshelf: The Big Con

Never be untidy or drink with a savage. 

There is nothing worse than drinking 

when you are trying to tie up a mark. 

You've got to have your nut about you all the time. 

You need what little sense you've got to trim him—and 

if you had any sense at all, 

you wouldn't be a grifter.

~ anonymous roper in David W. Maurer's The Big Con

Today, we've got something on the fringes of saloon culture and the sporting life. I've spent uncounted hours — years, even — in the company of criminals. Moonshiners, mostly, but thieves, embezzlers, enforcers, bad cops, and felons of various stripes. One connected mook I knew in Philadelphia had $80,000 stolen from his closet and didn't report it because, well, it wasn't the sort of stash one wanted to explain to the 5-0. After nearly three decades of hearing and hearing about cons, the patter of confidence games, scams, and rip-offs spike in the conversational landscape like flashes of lightning.

Short cons, designed to separate a person from the money he is carrying on him, seem particularly obvious. In fact, on my recent trip to Puerto Vallarta, the short con was ubiquitous; vendors, waiters, taxi drivers, fixers, and others tried to shave a bit of trim from tourists. Here, someone "forgets" to give the right change, there someone else pads the bill with an entree nobody ordered. For the locals, it must be like shooting fish in a barrel. The short con is not always a terrible thing. In New Orleans, if a little kid bets you a dollar that he can tell you where you got your shoes, take the bet, lose a buck, and walk away with everyone smiling. A con, sure, but also a dollar's worth of entertainment.

Then there's the big con. Almost nobody walks away from a big con with a smile. In 1940, University of Kentucky linguist David W. Maurer published The Big Con, his study of confidence men, suave criminals who, from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, bilked marks out of enormous amounts of money. By the time Maurer wrote his book, this particular style of grift was already in its decline. Nominally concerning the language of these mostly nonviolent criminals who gained the confidence of newly-made millionaires, well-to-do farmers, wealthy businessmen, and others who could get their hands on lumps of cash, the book is simply fun reading.

Maurer introduces grifters such as the Yellow Kid, Crawfish Bob, Limehouse Chapppie, the Big Alabama Kid, Slobbering Bob, the Postal Kid, Queer-pusher Nick, the Hashhouse Kid, Fifth Avenue Fred, the Indiana Wonder, the Jew Kid, Tear-off Arthur, Devil's Island Eddie, and the High Ass Kid. You'll learn about the blow-off, the cackle-bladder, the wire, the rag, the pay-off, and a whole lot more of the language you might expect to hear around Prohibition-era saloons, joints, and hangouts.

In the world of criminals of the period, con men were talked about as the aristocrats of crime. Insidemen who maintained big stores (fake betting parlors, brokerages, and gambling dens where mark were fleeced one right after the other) traveled widely, stayed at the finest hotels, dined well, dressed impeccably, sometimes had drivers and avoided socializing with 'lesser' criminals such as second-story men, pickpockets, and heavy racket types who resorted to violence. They leveraged and worked with crooked cops, hoteliers, circus managers, train conductors, detectives, judges, district attorneys, and saloonkeepers. They almost never worked their home town or anyone who lived in the town in which they operated. Rather, they worked over travelers on ocean liners and, especially, trains.

Writes Maurer:

The ease with which people make traveling acquaintances may account for the great number of marks which are roped on trains or ships. When a mark is off his home ground, he is no longer so sure of himself; he likes to impress important-looking strangers; he has the leisure to become expansive, and he likes to feel that he is recognized as a good fellow. The natural barrier to friendships come down. He idles away time chatting and smoking in a way he would not do at home. And the roper knows how to play upon the festive note which is always latent in a traveler away from home.

Cities such as New York, Denver, Chicago, and New Orleans had hundreds of ropers working the trains feeding the city. When they found a mark they felt could be taken for $10,000, $50,000, or more, the roper befriended the 'savage' and brought him into town to meet the insideman who would propose a sure-fire way to make money...illegally.

And the whole con hangs on that. Con men felt that they could never cheat an honest man because he wouldn't take the bait of a crooked way to make a killing by, say, delaying the results of a horse race by a few minutes to place a bet with the help of a disgruntled wire operator. But, writes Maurer, the first world war "brought a crop of millionaires and sub-millionaires whose purses swelled out of all proportion to their knowledge of investments. As soon not these men had made the money slightly on the shady side and to them the rag and the pay-off [two types of con games] appeared as very logical methods of taking profit." These were the marks on whom con men preyed.

If you've enjoyed movies such as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, David Mamet's House of Cards, The Sting, and — especially — The Grifters, do yourself a favor and check out Maurer's book. Nicholas Cage in Matchstick Men is a lesser contribution to the genre, but even bits of Django Unchained seem lifted from its pages. It's back in print with a forward by Luc Sante from Random House's Anchor Books imprint.

Goes well with:

• Gene Siskel's and Roger Ebert's takes on the 1990 film The Grifters. 

John Egerton (1935 -2013)

When news of John Egerton’s death came last week, I was moments away from meeting friends camped out on a Puerto Vallarta beach. I left the condo stunned, numbly descended a long and treacherous staircase the regulars dubbed The Exorcist Stairs and made my way to their group mere feet from the surf. Sitting under a palapa with a bucket of ice and beers with my toes in the sand should have been the start of a fantastic week. Instead, heartache spread from my chest, down my arms, and settled into my very bones. I was sick with sorrow.

What's in that glass, John Egerton? Tea? (Photo from the SFA's site)

John was co-founder of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi and in the group’s early years I served with him on its board. John Egerton was good. He was kind. He was fiercely smart, deeply self-deprecating, and possessed of a burning sense of justice. When he wrote and spoke about the American South with such affection, he didn't shy from pointing out its flaws...and sometimes a way forward from its tangled and occasionally painful past.

Without John, there may not have been an SFA. If there had been no SFA, I might never have met people who became some of my great friends and favorite sidekicks. The might never have been a moonshine book which I wrote primarily at the insistence of author Ronni Lundy, another SFA co-founder. The ripples of Egerton's touch continue even today when I listen to music I know only because a friend from North Carolina stayed with us in July and relentlessly plied us with new tunes on Spotify. The friend? Dean McCord, VarmintBites on Twitter and a current SFA board member. Dozens of others have made my life better, people I know mostly through our connections to this singular gentleman.

Last summer, I wrote about his book Southern Food and included an anecdote about his power as a storyteller. I have so many fond memories of John Egerton, but this  — after a long bus ride and too much whiskey for everyone — is one of my favorites.

In the summer of 2004, I threw a small get-together in Birmingham, Alabama. I was on the board of the Southern Foodways Alliance then, a group dedicated, in a nutshell, to celebrating the food and drink of the changing American South and the people who made it. Maybe a hundred of us were there for a small conference. After two long bus rides that day, the group was beat, so I invited a handful to come up to my hotel suite for restorative drinks and food once they'd recovered from the sun, the bourbon, and the rides.

One of those was historian John Egerton. 

A few restaurateurs showed up. Several editors from papers, magazines, and broadcast news were there. Bartenders and writers rounded out the group. A half-dozen different conversations rose and fell until one voice—one kindly, avuncular voice—dominated the room: Egerton's. 

Egerton is a charmer with a ready smile and (almost) always a kind word to say. He so mesmerized this group of experts with his tales that they soon gathered around him in a loose semicircle on the floor and spilled onto beds and chairs, absorbing warmth from the Promethean fire of his insight and wisdom.

The hole he left is gut-wrenching, but John Egerton helped to bring together uncounted strangers and make them friends. I like to think he'd chalk that up as a win.

Squayrill Stoo

Accretion of Squirrelly Evidence

Our neighbor has been feeding the squirrels. Now, I like our neighbor and have no beef with squirrels...in the abstract. Watching them frolic in the park has always given me a smile and I've bottle-raised scads of Midwestern grey squirrels back in my days as a nature center volunteer.

These days, however, I own a home and the footing is far less certain for those little red-tailed beasts. The current crop of chattering rodents raids the garden, gets under the eaves, and digs holes all over the yard. They're not nearly so charming when they turn destructive. Yet they come to gorge themselves on peanuts laid out just over the fence by our well-meaning neighbor. As they feast, they drop spent shells over the ground. The shells don't particularly bother me. Easy enough to shovel up every week or so, but the destruction is getting out of hand and if they start chewing on wiring, we could have some serious safety problems.

It occurred to me that peanut-raised squirrels might —like hogs finished on acorns, peanuts, or chestnuts — be delicious. Smoked is, of course, one way to go, but with so little fat on them, they'd need wrapping in bacon or some other basting arrangement. Stewed squirrel has always been popular in parts of the American South. Brunswick stew, though mostly made with chicken these days, was often made with squirrel — and is a great accompaniment to pulled pork barbecue. A bit more than I want to tackle today, though.

With that in mind, I pulled out a South Carolina recipe for 'squayrill stoo' or, rather, squirrel stew. The unusual spelling stems from the fact that the recipe is from a book of Gullah cooking called Bittle en' T'ing: Gullah Cooking with Maum Chrish' by Virginia Mixson Geraty. The Gullah are an African American people who have long lived in coastal South Carolina and Georgia — heavy on the "African." Gullah speak a creole language derived from Sierra Leone Krio, tell African folktales, make African handicrafts, and are largely descended from slave laborers who worked on rice plantations in the area.

Here's Geraty's take on what to do with the little buggers — first in Gullah, then in standard American English. Remember to sabe de tail fuh de mens weh on dem hat.

Squayrill Stoo (Squirrel Stew) 

Tek cyah wen de squayrill skin. Nail de hide up fun dry fuh mek colluh. Sabe de tail fuh de mens weh on dem hat.

Clean de squayrill en' rub'um wid pot-salt en' peppuh. Dreedge'um wid flowuh en' browng'um een bakin greese. Sametime chop uh laa'ge onyun en' pit'um 'long de squayrill. Kibbuhr'um wid watuh, pit uh lead 'pun de pot, en' set'um back fuh cook tell de squayrill meat tenduh en' de graby t'ick.

One squayrill specify fuh mek stoo fuh fo' head.

Maum says:

Be careful when you skin the squirrel. Nail the hide up to dry for a collar. It makes a nice fur piece. Save the squirrel's tail for a man to wear on his hat. 

Clean the squirrel and rub it with salt and pepper. Dredge it with flour and brown it in bacon drippings. 

While the squirrel is browning, chop a large onion and have it ready to put in the pot. Add enough water to cover the squirrel, and add the onion. Put a lid on the pot and set it back on the range to cook until the meat is tender and the gravy is thick.

One squirrel will make enough stew for four people.

Goes well with:

• Possum up a Guava Tree, a look at one of our nocturnal visitors — and recipes to deal with him.

• Gedörrtes Hundefleisch: A Swiss Recipe for Dogmeat — I don't always eat dog meat, but when I do, I want to make damn sure the cook knows how to prepare it.

San Diego Bartender Challenge

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages: be advised that tonight and tonight only, a cohort of San Diego bartenders are going mano a mano in the fourth annual Bartender Challenge.

Held each year at El Dorado cocktail lounge, the challenge pits bartenders making drinks against each other in elimination bouts until only one remains, a champion bestowed with $200 in walking around money, the coveted Otis Buffalo Memorial Trophy, and a bottle of Buffalo Trace bourbon.

The twist? Each round a new secret ingredient, Iron Chef style, is introduced to the mix. Bartenders mix a drink on the fly using the secret ingredient and an arsenal of bitters, modifiers, juices, garnishes, and whatnot in four minutes.

Come on down; the Bartender Challenge is always a fun time and a chance to meet up with staff from some of the city's great watering holes in one place. I'll be there, taking a rare weeknight break from a handful of book projects while projecting the mien of a sober and stoic judge.

For the first few rounds, anyway. Judging cocktails is thirsty work.

2013 Competing Bartenders:

Sarah Ellis — Jayne's Gastropub
Ryan Kuntz — El Dorado
Leigh Lacap — Craft & Commerce
Eric Johnson — Sycamore Den
Hass Mahmood — Lion's Share
Anthony Schmidt — Noble Experiement (2 Time Champ)
Christian Siglin — Banker's Hill Bar & Restaurant (Defending Champ)
Christy Spinella — Polite Provisions

And the judges:

Trevor Easter — West Coast Brand Ambassador for Beefeater/Plymouth Gins
Lindsay Nader — Brand Ambassador for Absolut Spirits
Brooke Arthur — Brand Ambassador for House Spirits Distillery
Levi Walker — Craft spirits manager at Young’s Market Company
Matthew Rowley — Oh, hey, that’s me. Historian and author.

Details

Fourth Annual Bartender Challenge
7pm Tuesday, November 19th 2013
El Dorado Cocktail Lounge
1030 Broadway
San Diego, CA 92101
http://eldoradobar.com

Tabasco Sauce in the Applejack

All but the most degenerate boozers reach for some drinks before others. Nothing wrong with having our favorites, although the punctilious zealotry of the martini and mint julep crowds can get overbearing. Throw all the juices, syrups, tinctures, spices, and whatnot at the modern bartender's command into the equation and folks can get downright obsessive about what works in their cups and what doesn't. "Any guy who'd put rye in a mint julep and crush the leaves," wrote opinionated Kentucky bullshitter Irvin S. Cobb, "would put scorpions in a baby's bed." Exaggeration. Probably. Who knows? Cobb lied like it was his job. Because it was his job. But scorpions, though? Best to keep that old corn guzzler away from babies and not chance it.

Hot sauce is where I usually put on the brakes when it comes to cocktails. All things being equal, a dose of cayenne, chipotle, or tabasco peppers in the glass will generally make me pass. The heat's no problem. In fact, we bust out homemade hot sauces for weekend breakfasts and weeknight dinners often.  On a hot day, a round or three of micheladas hits the spot. When the temptation to mix chiles and liquor occasionally does strike, it's liable to take the guise of a Snapper, that vastly superior Bloody Mary cousin that replaces vodka with gin. We've used Cholula to good effect in a Caesar-type concoction titrated with the barest volume of absinthe. A sangrita with blanco tequila is not the worst option for daytime drinking. The common element? Tomato. Paired with and tempered by tomato, hot sauce might — just might — bring a drink together, but otherwise in most drinks the stuff is just gimmicky, an exercise in machismo, in how much heat one can handle. 

Or it's a prank. 

Back in Philadelphia, cheesemonger friends collected the oily drippings from fifty- and hundred-pound aging provolone cheeses in eight-ounce plastic tubs. After weeks or even months, they'd label the cloudy, yellowish — and pungent — accumulation Prank Juice. At some point, some jackass who needed taking down a peg was going to swallow that nightmare fluid. 

Hot sauce in so many drinks is kin to that South Philly prank juice. And the joke is old, old, old. From 1904 to 1908, cartoonist H.C. Greening penned a comic that featured Uncle George Washington Bings, Esquire, a literary descendant of cannonball-riding Baron Münchhausen and forefather of 1960's blowhard Commander McBragg. In the strips, Bings was a small-town braggart, forever telling tall tales about his exploits around the world. The Los Angeles Herald ran a six panel strip in 1905 which Bings belittles a fire-eater to villagers sitting around a bar's pot-bellied stove. "Why," he claims, "I could make that bluff look like a December frost." As he warms up to some choice braggadocio, the mischievous bartender dashes hot sauce in his applejack.

His reaction? Just about what you'd expect from anyone who'd been given a well-deserved dose of prank juice.

Too small? Click it!

Goes well with:

• Allan Holtz's thumbnail on Greening and Uncle George Washington Bings in Stripper's Guide.
• Clam Squeezin's, Absinthe, and the Bloody Fairy Cocktail — that Cholula thing I mentioned.
• Applejack in the church lemonade? Sure, why not?
• More apples. I wrote a piece on American apple spirits (including applejack, cider royal/cider oil, apple-based absinthe, and more) for Distiller magazine last Summer. Here it is.
• More properly meant for mixing with pulled and chopped pork, the North Carolina barbecue sauce we make around here is not much more than vinegar and ground chiles. Nevertheless, it's great on eggs, red beans, and even the occasional gumbo. You're on your own if you put it in drinks. Here's the complete recipe. 
• Historically, saloonkeepers and bootleggers might add hot chiles to alcohol to give the liquids a kick or bite and mask the taste of poorly made or adulterated beverages such as the swipes of 19th century Hawaii.

Ivan Orkin on Hanjuku Tamago, Half-cooked Ramen Eggs

As I mentioned, I like buying things — whether they are kitchen tools, boots, whiskey, brandy, meals, or even writing gear — from artisans who pursue ideals with single-minded focus. In particular, I’ll revisit cooks and chefs who obsess over details. I’ve never visited one of Ivan Orkin’s restaurants, but when he dedicated the bulk of his recent book Ivan Ramen to the proper preparation of one single bowl of shio ramen (at least, the way he makes it), it was as if I’d stumbled across a lost cousin.

Orkin, a New Yorker who founded the small Tokyo noodle soup joint Ivan Ramen in 2007, has made a name for himself not just as a curiosity — a gaijin who makes ramen — but as a cook and restaurateur who makes proper Japanese noodle soup with meticulous attention to technique and ingredients. His book opens with a short biography and is sprinkled with a few interviews of ramen enthusiasts, then dives into recipes, over 40 pages of which detail the construction of a bowl of shio (“salt”) ramen. Forty. One bowl of noodles. Makes Julia Child’s recipes seem terse.

That’s not to say that the recipe for making the bowl of ramen as he makes it in his shop is difficult. Aside from the logistical obstacles a cook in London, Munich, or St. Louis might have finding the exact same chicken or flour, the recipe is straightforward; it’s long because Orkin gives the recipes for rendering chicken fat, for stock, for noodles, for making sofrito and shio tare (the mélange of salt, sofrito, and water that gives a salty flavor to Orkin's “salt” ramen).

And then there are eggs. Some weeks, I’ll slurp down three or four bowls of ramen and, when they are an option, I’ll include cooked eggs either in the bowl or on the side. Shops rarely get the eggs right. Often, they are so overcooked that a greenish-grey ring with more than just a whiff of dog farts surrounds the yolk. You shouldn’t even use those for egg salad or deviled eggs. Maybe for feeding the dog before letting her out of the night. But there’s another way to do eggs: hanjuku tamago, eggs with softly set whites and semi-liquid yolks.

Now these are eggs worth making.

David Chang in his Momofuku cookbook recommends cooking eggs at 5 minutes and ten seconds exactly. Orkin takes slightly longer in his Tokyo shop: six minutes and ten seconds. Get a timer if you don’t have one. Try these eggs. Find a time that works for your elevation, the size of eggs you use, and the degree of gooeyness you like in your yolk. Six minutes works for me about 200 feet above sea level in San Diego.

“My search for perfect eggs, Orkin writes in Ivan Ramen, “took me to innumerable egg farms.”

After an extensive search, I found one that tasted great, had the most brilliant orange yolks, and peeled easily. (Believe me, when you have to peel two hundred eggs a day, that's an important criterion.) Then I spent almost as much time figuring out how to cook the eggs properly as I did perfecting the noodles. But I've got it now: punch a pinhole in the bottom, boil for 6 minutes and 10 seconds, stirring gently for the first 2 minutes, then ice immediately. Once they're cool, the eggs are peeled and soaked in a light shoyu tare...Sliced in half and served at room temperature atop the ramen, the eggs are a perfect supporting cast member for the soup and noodles, adding an extra touch of color and unctuousness to the bowl.

Hanjuku Tamago, Half-Cooked Eggs for Ramen 

50 milliliters (3½ tablespoons) sake

50 milliliters (3½ tablespoons) mirin

200 milliliters (1¾ cup + 1 tablespoon) soy sauce

30 grams (2 tablespoons) sugar

40 grams (3 tablespoons) garlic, chopped coarsely

75 grams (2½ ounces) fresh ginger, chopped coarsely

6 room-temperature fresh large eggs

1 liter (1 quart) water

Simmer the sake and mirin in a saucepan over medium-high heat for 2 minutes to cook off a bit of the alcohol. Reduce the heat to low, then add the soy sauce, sugar, garlic, and ginger and simmer and stir for 10 minutes. Let come to room temperature; you can store the mixture in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. You want a big pot so that when the eggs go in, the temperature won't drop too drastically, and the water will quickly come back to a boil.
Poke a small hole in the bottom (larger end) of each egg with a pushpin.

Gently slide the eggs into the boiling water. Start your timer. Stir for the first 2 minutes. Prepare a large bowl of ice water to shock the eggs.

The total cooking time for a large egg in Tokyo is 6 minutes and 10 seconds. You might decide to adjust that time depending on the size of your eggs, how many you're cooking, or what the chickens were thinking about when they laid them.

Remove the eggs after 6 minutes and 10 seconds, and immediately place them in the ice bath. Stir until there are no pockets of hot water. 

In a large bowl, combine the shoyu tare with the liter of water. When the eggs are cooled completely—after about 15 minutes—peel and soak them in the seasoning liquid for 2 hours in the refrigerator. The eggs will hold in the soak for 3 days.

When it comes time to slice the eggs and add them to the ramen, a taut nylon fishing line gets the job done without losing any of the precious yolk.

Ivan Orkin with Chris Ying, forward by David Chang (2013)
Ivan Ramen: Love, Obsession, and Recipes from Tokyo’s Most Unlikely Noodle Joint
224 pages (hardback)
Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 978-1-6077-466-7
$29.99

Goes well with:

• Ivan Orkin is on Twitter. Check him out. 
• Tampopo, Jûzô Itami’s 1985 "noodle western" that seemingly every ramen enthusiast (including Orkin and yours truly) know and love.
• Mark Robinson's Izakaya: The Japanese Pub Cookbook and its recipe for pu-erh glazed walnuts.
• Chris Bunting's great guide to shops, pubs, breweries, distilleries, and drinking customs of Japan, Drinking Japan. 
• How else do we like using eggs around here? In homemade marshmallow creme, in Dutch advocaat (by way of San Diego), maybe a dish of Eggs, William S. Burroughs, and pickled as either Pennsylvania Dutch bar eggs or bread-and-butter pickled eggs.