Ginger Pie, a Rescued Recipe

Harold and Maude—Hal Ashby's’ black-humored 1971 film—once inspired me to bake a pie. If I’d known how much research eventually would be involved in making the simple dessert, I’d’ve said to hell with it. The perseverance paid off.

In the movie, Ruth Gordon’s seventy-nine year old Maude invites a much younger Harold (played by Bud Cort) into her rail car home. Maude—eccentric, art-loving, vivacious—stands in wild contrast to morose Harold whose faked suicides are sad jokes staged to wring some evidence of warmth from his frosty mother. In the rail car, Maude offers him oat straw tea and ginger pie. While prospects of oat straw tea did nothing for me, I was left dumb in the wake of increasingly irrelevant dialog at the mention of ginger pie.

Ginger pie? I’m no stranger to baking, but I’d never heard of it. At first, I mistook the pie for a physical thing. It had a homespun, old-timey ring that reminded me of something long forgotten. Dandelion wine, maybe, or spring tonic. At first dozens, then hundreds, then—literally—thousands of cookbooks stymied me as I hunted for a recipe. Gingerbread, ginger tea, ginger snaps, stir-fries, ginger syrups, ginger cordials, chutneys, beers, ales, candies, ginger-lacquered duck, and more, but no ginger pie.

Since nothing suggested or resembled what I was looking for, I put together working notes on a recipe of my own. Some of the ingredients were obvious, but I felt as if I were reinventing something that should be easy to find: Pie? No problem—got pans, got dough. Next! A great big mess of ginger. And eggs. And…um… sugar, of course. Plus…maybe…damn. There’s got to be a recipe in one of these books.

But I forged on. Southern chess pie had a sturdy, crack-topped custard that seemed a versatile base—But what kind of ginger? Fresh? Candied? Dried and ground? Preserved in syrup? In sherry? Just ginger juice? I try each of those. Fresh ginger turned out to have the strongest, most assertive flavor, giving racy overtones to an otherwise sweet and homey pie.

Fresh ginger holds promises of liveliness and sass, of exotic and ancient histories. There is a potency in a fat hand of fresh ginger that just might inspire a breath of fire when it's reduced to tiny, tiny cubes and strewn throughout a rum-laced custard.

The search for the recipe and subsequent experiments with what I thought ginger pie should be brought me a deeper understanding of what I was stalking. When I failed to uncover any recipes, I went back to Maude, the root of my inspiration.

Her eccentric, nuts-to-tradition take on life is a big part of the film’s appeal. During a memorial Mass, she psst, psst, pssts Harold’s attention with sibilantly inappropriate offers of licorice. Her wistful reminiscences hint at a past built on old world loves and tragedies. Once a firebrand activist, Maude continues in small ways undermining worldly complacency by finding joy in simple, everyday things; somersaults, a field of daisies, raucous songs, and seagulls, as well as frequent and spontaneous episodes of grand theft auto.

I came to realize that ginger pie was not some old-fashioned recipe fallen out of favor. It was more than that. By offering a slice, Maude extends not only hospitality, but a slyly camouflaged offer of herself and Harold’s first hints of escape from his doleful life. With the point of that pie, she wedges open Harold’s somber soul and floods it with bracing warmth and sweetness, the distillate of her own fading life’s fire and spice. Harold’s change is so profound that he picks up a banjo, abandons his mourning suits, turns cartwheels, and declares his intention to marry a woman old enough to be his grandmother.

This pie doesn’t affect those sorts of change; it’s not likely—not likely, mind you—to prompt proposals. Sitting here with a late-night wedge pilfered from the kitchen, though, I can’t help but smile. In the end, I don’t know what Maude’s recipe was, but I’ve cemented friendships over slices of this rich, ginger-and-rum custard pie. Surely that is the sort of thing she meant to dish up.

Ginger Pie

1 unbaked pie crust
¼-1/3 cup minced young ginger
2.5 oz aged rum*
1.5 cups sugar
8 Tbl unsalted butter, room temperature
¼ tsp salt
3 eggs
2.5 Tbl all purpose flour
¼ cup heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon zest

At least one hour before beginning, combine the ginger and rum in a small bowl or jar and set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar. Add eggs one at the time and mix after each addition. Add remaining ingredients, including the rum and ginger, and combine thoroughly.

Pour the mixture into the unbaked pie crust and bake at 350F about 50 minutes, until the center has mostly set, but is still just a little wobbly – it will firm on standing. It should have a slightly darkened, crusty top. If necessary, cover the pan with a tented piece of aluminum foil or an overturned stainless steel bowl to prevent overbrowning while the pie bakes.

Warm, the pie cries for heavy dollops of whipped cream barely able to hold itself together. Cold, it’s best to sneak mall slivers while the rest of the house sleeps.

* Appleton Estate V/X or Clement VSOP are both grand rums for the pie. You want something with some age to it. In a pinch, you could use a white rum, but avoid spiced and dark ones: After all, this is a ginger pie, not a rum pie.

Ginger Tea After Shouting at the Pipes

Sunday nights, I often meet friends out for beers and tequila. Not last night.

Last night, as my friends gamely tried to have as enjoyable a time as they could manage without me (this is how I imagine it goes when I'm not around), I was curled on my bathroom floor, sweating, shivering, too weak even to reach for the phone. "Come," I wanted to plead. "Bring me water." I had an inexplicable, insatiable craving for butterscotch candies. My febrile hallucinations were occasionally interrupted with bouts of roaring at the porcelain. Afterwards, the cool tile floor felt so, so good.

When Dr. Morpheus came home hours later, the verdict was swift: food poisoning.

Though we didn't have butterscotch candies, I got water and, after a while, ginger tea. We call the stuff ginger tea, but the hot drink is more properly a decoction. That is, it's a highly seasoned liquid that's been flavored by long, low cooking of plant matter in water. See? It's kinda like tea. Calling it a decoction around the house, though, is like calling a possum an opossum; technically correct, but a bit contrived.

Ginger has long been regarded as soothing to upset stomachs. You may recognize it from that ginger pie I sometimes bake. I break out this decoc...this tea now and then to combat queasiness. Even if the effect is a placebo, sipping this hot, bracing tea helps me feel just a little better. But I tell you this: when I'm wrapped in a towel to ward off chills and my clammy, sweaty head is pressed against the cool toilet like it's dispensing God's own heavenly grace, a little better makes a world of difference.

Ginger Tea for an Upset Stomach

The proportions here are to taste, but the end result should smell and taste strongly of ginger. I like a bit of honey to round out taste and to soothe my throat, but leave it out if you got some beef against honey.

1 quart/liter of water (more or less)
8 oz/ 230g fresh ginger
Honey (optional)

Wash but do not peel the ginger. Slice into fat coins or ovals. Put them in a nonreactive pot big enough to hold around 1.5 quarts. Pour the water over it. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes. Strain some into a glass or mug, sweeten with honey to taste, and return the pot to a low flame.

Top off with fresh water now and then as you strain off more to drink until the ginger loses its potency or you just get sick of the stuff. 

I haven't tried this next bit, but it stands to reason that when you're done with the drink and there's some left in the pot, you could strain off the solids and add twice the volume of sugar as tan ginger water is left. Heat just until the sugar dissolves and you've got yourself a nice ginger syrup for cocktails or drenching cakes or whatever.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I still feel wrecked, like I've been mauled by a cougar or fell off a speeding truck. I'm off for some Ibuprofen and tea.

Two Lemonades: Fresh or with a Soulless Ginger Twist

Summer has come on cruelly for parts of the United States. Since last week, temperature spikes in the Midwest and East Coast have made me worried for family...and relieved that San Diego remains, as ever, lovely.

I will be traveling to those hot and humid places over the next few weeks, though, and undoubtedly will keep cool with beer, whiskey, iced tea...and lemonade.

I don't bother with pre-made lemonade, the powders and mixes. I'm not all snooty and think they're too sweet or otherwise unhealthy — it's just that fresh lemonade is easy to make from three ingredients we always have on hand; lemon juice, water, and sugar syrup. Why fake it when doing it properly takes so little effort?

This is an extremely versatile basic recipe. The ratio of ingredients is a straightforward 5:5:3, so use cups, milliliters, coffee mugs, etc. Any volume will work as long as you maintain the ratio. Scale up or down as your thirst, crowd, and container size dictate.

Fresh Lemonade

17oz/500ml fresh lemon juice
17oz/500ml cool water
10oz/300ml 2:1 sugar syrup

Mix in a pitcher. Chill if you've got time. Pour into glasses over fresh ice.

Monday, I was faced with a pot of ginger-infused water. It was leftover from Sunday night's ginger tea. Rather than throw it out, I swapped it out for the water I would otherwise use in the above recipe and made ginger syrup with the rest.

I strained the ginger water and set aside 250ml. About about 350ml remained, so I added twice the volume of sugar (700ml) and heated the mix in a pot just enough to dissolve the sugar. With everything in place, it was simple to make a batch of

Soulless Ginger Lemonade

Soulless? Does it lack the pungency and bite we expect from fresh ginger? No, that's there. It's even more refreshing than the plain version. Soulless because, as even we gingers know, we have no souls.

8oz/250ml fresh lemon juice
8oz/250ml  cool ginger-infused water
5oz/150ml 2:1 ginger syrup

Mix in a pitcher. Chill if you've got time. Pour into glasses over fresh ice.

Of course, if you have ginger syrup on hand already, this is a snap to make. Just use that and plain cool water. Doctor this any way you see fit; blend it with blackberries, spike it with mint or basil, but don't forget the ameliorative effect a stiff dose of bourbon could have on a glass of ginger lemonade. Carbonate the stuff, add a dash of bitters with the bourbon and you've got something pretty close to a Kentucky Mule.


Goes well with:

• Empinken your drinkin' with pink lemonade — a look at its history and notes on execution (hint: use cocktail bitters).

MxMo XL: Bai Nai Punch

In Thai, bai nai means "Where are you going?" For my friends Barry and Rebecca, who have spent some time in Thailand and just married last month, the common greeting seemed a fitting name for a drink to mark their wedding day.

Since this month’s Mixology Monday's theme is ginger, it’s doubly fitting. More than that, maybe: Matt "Rumdood" Robold is hosting MxMo XL: Ginger this month, so it'll be worth checking in later in the week to see what cocktail recipes have been delivered to his door. The Bai Nai punch uses ginger syrup as well as falernum, a Barbadian syrups flavored with cloves, lime, and other ingredients, including ginger.

The drink is particularly suited to large gatherings such as weddings, pool parties, beach outings, or backyard cookouts. The recipe for the Bai Nai—based on Dale DeGroff’s Perfect Passion from his 2009 book The Essential Cocktail—yeilds a single serving. The syrup recipes that go into it, though, have large yields because they are particularly versatile. While I like DeGroff’s original recipe with its muddled ginger, strawberries, and lychees, it would have been a monster hassle to make it one drink at a time for 180 guests. Instead, I scaled it, made some substitutions, rejiggered the measurements…and added an ingredient.

Lychees provide an exotic but elusively familiar element—the taste is something like table grapes, but clearly not just that, and the aroma is unmistakable (once you know what it is). To give the recipe an additional lychee flavor and aroma boost, I added a small amount of Soho, a lychee liqueur imported by Pernod Ricard. Use it with a light touch—it's tasty, but it doesn’t take much to be too much.

Bai Nai Punch

1.5 oz vodka or 40-45% abv neutral spirits
1 oz. strawberry/lychee syrup (see below)
.75 oz lemon juice (freshly squeezed)
.5 oz falernum
.25 oz ginger syrup (see below)
.25 oz Soho Lychee liqueur

Shake with ice. Strain into stemmed cocktail glass. Garnish with a paper umbrella anchored with an orange slice.

The Syrups

Ginger Syrup
4 oz fresh ginger root, peeled, and cut into small dice
24 oz water
.5 oz fresh lime juice
1 tsp lime zest
1.5 c Demerara sugar

Bring the water almost to a boil in a pan. Add ½ cup to a blender with the ginger. Process briefly to shred the ginger. Rinse out the blender with the remaining hot water, then transfer the ginger mixture back to the pan. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer and add the remaining ingredients. Leave at a bare simmer for an hour (do not boil). Let cool and strain.

Yield: about 24 ounces

Strawberry/lychee syrup
6 pints fresh strawberries
6 12-oz cans of lychees
2.5 quarts simple syrup (1:1 sugar and water)
The light syrup from two lychee cans

Wash and hull the berries. Add them with the lychees to a large plastic container. Add half the simple syrup and roughly chop with an immersion blender. Add the remaining syrups, cover, and let sit overnight in the refrigerator. Strain.

Yield: about 90 ounces

.

A Swift Kick from a Kentucky Mule

I am aware, in some vague sense, that a mule is a type of shoe, although I am fairly certain that I don't own any. More familiar to me is the proper dead mule, a symbol deeply entwined in — and arguably a signifier of — the literature of the American South. But it is the Kentucky Mule, that bourbon-fueled harbinger of excess, that has kicked off many an evening with friends and family around the Whiskey Forge.

Everything tastes better through a grunge filter

Some history: Around the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, vodka was an obscure spirit in the United States, small potatoes, nothing like the cash cow it is today. The Moscow Mule is the drink that changed that.  That original mule, a vodka-and-ginger beer highball, was made famous at the Cock 'n' Bull Tavern in Los Angeles. By the time Elvis sang his way through Blue Hawaii twenty years later, the drink had become a classic. In Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, Ted Haigh reports that a girlfriend of Jack Morgan, the Cock 'n' Bull's owner, had inherited a copper goods business. She presumably was the source of the squat copper mugs that remain to this day de rigueur for serving the drink.

Vodka, though, is not everyone's first choice when it comes to making and downing mixed drinks. Nor are copper mugs. Enter the variations. Tweaking the basic idea of a spirit, lime, and ginger beer leads to regional and topical versions of the drink; the Mexican Mule (tequila), Caribbean Mule (rums), the Blackberry Mule, and Audrey Saunders' Gin-Gin Mule. Most of them benefit from a dash or two of cocktail bitters. Classically, that has meant Angostura bitters, but when we swap bourbon for the vodka to yield a Kentucky Mule, I've found that Fee Brothers' old fashion aromatic bitters is the better choice. Use what you've got.

American-style ginger ale doesn't have the backbone this drink requires. Instead, use the more fiery ginger beer. A Cock 'n' Bull brand does exist. We've used that as well as Bundaberg from Australia and the fearsome Blenheim's from South Carolina (I quite like that one, but it's a bit strong for some). We've found that Gosling's sells a reasonably-priced, all-natural ginger beer for making a Dark 'n' Stormy, but it's our favorite of the lot for this drink instead: light fizz, well-balanced ginger taste and aroma, not overly sweet. A liter runs less than $3. No, Gosling's didn't send me any. We just like it a bunch. Get some.

Kentucky Mule 

2 oz good (but not your best) bourbon. Buffalo Trace is great here.
Half a small lime
4-5 oz ginger beer (Gosling's if you've got it; if not, use your favorite)
2 dashes aromatic bitters (Fee Brothers, Angostura, or dealer's choice) 

Build the drink on ice in a highball glass. Squeeze the lime into this and drop in the shell. Dash in the bitters and give it a quick stir. If you're a stickler for tradition, use copper mugs rather than glass. Some folks garnish with mint and lime wedges, but then some folks listen to Nickleback and dabble in crossdressing. To each his own.

Goes well with:

• The drink's versatility should be apparent and the template works with lots of iterations. Using pisco could result in a Peruvian (or Chilean) Mule. Applejack could yield a New Jersey (or an Orchard) Mule. You get the idea. Use gin, swap in tonic for the ginger beer, and lose the bitters...holy cow, it's a Gin & Tonic. 
• The truth of food and drink origin stories are so often obfuscated by good stories. Eric Felton takes a closer look at the origin of the Moscow Mule and Cock 'n Bull's head bartender, Wes Price. Felton's version putting Price as the originator feels like a better fit. 
• I like ginger. There's always some around. Here's what I do with it. 
• We did overindulge in mules last year. I'm pleased to be making them again, but one of the drinks we started making when we grew tired of so much ginger beer was the Punky Monkey cocktail with Buffalo Trace bourbon and Scarlet Ibis rum. Good, good stuff. 

Pumpkin and Ginger Doughnuts

I’ve been making booze since I was too young to buy it. But I’ve been making doughnuts and fritters even longer than that.

When I was very young, my mother taught me how to make a cheaty sort of doughnut (or, if that’s the way you roll, donut) from uncooked biscuit dough, the commercial stuff that came in a tube. Although I was barely able to tie my own shoes at that age, my siblings were all teenagers and slept in until unfathomable hours on weekends while my father golfed. If Mom was in the mood, we got doughnuts — all to ourselves.

While she handled the hot oil, it was my duty to lay out the dough, cut out shapes with an upturned glass, and then toss those sizzling fried gobs into a brown paper bag, coating them with sugar and cinnamon. They were still so hot when we tore into them that fingers of steam curled up from every bite.

With no kids of my own, it’s no longer the kind of cooking I’m likely to do. But homemade doughnuts have been a bit of an obsession ever since those early days. On a recent trip to Chicago, I idly picked up Allegra McEvedy's recent book Bought, Borrowed & Stolen where I found her recipe for pumpkin and ginger doughnuts.

With a fat ribbed pumpkin on the counter and a drive to eat up as much as is reasonable before we move, it was a simple matter of time before I succumbed to that Autumnal allure of hot pumpkin and spice. Do as you like, but swapping out an ounce of dark rum for an ounce of milk in the glaze is not the worst thing you could do this week.

From the Guardian UK, here’s McEvedy frying up a batch. Recipe follows the video.



Pumpkin and Ginger Doughnuts

150ml / ¼ pint whole milk
5 teaspoons (15g / ½oz) fast-acting dried yeast
100g / 3½oz sugar, plus 1 teaspoon extra
1kg / 2lb plain flour, plus extra for kneading and rolling
1 tin (460g / 14¾oz or thereabouts) of mashed pumpkin (or make your own by roasting 650g (1¼ lb) peeled pumpkin or squash, foiled, in a medium oven for 40 minutes, then mashing it)
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
4 tablespoons melted butter
2 tablespoons plain oil [peanut, vegetable, canola]
1-1.5 litres (1¾ – 2½ pints) oil, for frying

For the glaze:
a knob (around 1 teaspoon) butter
75ml / 3fl oz milk
175g / 6oz icing sugar
1½ teaspoons ground ginger
75g / 3oz ginger, washed and unpeeled
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Heat the milk gently until it's just warm to the touch, then whisk in the yeast and the 1 teaspoon of sugar and leave to stand for 20 minutes, until frothy.

In a large bowl mix the flour, pumpkin (or squash), cinnamon, salt and sugar, then pour in the yeast mixture, beaten egg, melted butter and the oil then bring it all together to make a soft dough. Turn out on to a well-floured surface and knead with floured hands for about 5 minutes, adding more flour as necessary so that it doesn't stick to you or the surface.

Roll out the dough to a thickness of about 2cm / ¾ inch and use two circular cutters, one with a diameter of 8cm / 3½ inches and one with a diameter of 4cm / 1¾ inches, to make your rings. Use the trimmings to re-roll, then leave them to rise for 30 minutes.
Knock up the glaze by melting the butter in the milk and whisking in the icing sugar, ground ginger and vanilla extract. Coarsely grate the ginger root and squeeze the juice into it too – you can re-use the fibres for tea / hot toddies.

Pour the oil into a wide, thick-bottomed pan to a depth of about 2.5-3cm / 1–1¼ inches. Heat it up until hot but not nearly smoking, then turn the heat down to medium. Slide one of the doughnuts in first, just to check the temperature is right: it should fizzle and float up to the surface, very gently bubbling away. Cook them in batches for 5-7 minutes total, turning halfway through so they are evenly golden brown all over, then take them out with tongs or a slotted spoon and put them on a wire rack.

When they're cool enough to pick up, dip them into the glaze on both sides and tuck in not long after: there's not many ills in the world that can't be cured with a warm doughnut.

Allegra McEvedy (2011)
Bought, Borrowed & Stolen: Recipes and Knives from a Traveling Chef
224 pages (hardback)
Conran
ISBN: 1840915773
$24.99

Goes well with:

• Ginger pie. I can't help it. I'm a sucker for ginger in all forms and ginger pie in particular.
• We often have pumpkins around the house. Sometimes, they even get turned into tiki-style jack o'lanterns.
• Half-Slab Pumpkin, a recipe I outright stole from British writer Nigel Slater and then let mutate into something entirely new.
• Doughnuts aren't the only fritters on offer. How about some lovely brain fritters or the New Orleans rice cakes called calas?

Salted Ginger Cookies

Every year around Christmas, we make batches of pliable, chewy ginger cookies. In addition to fresh and powdered ginger, the cookies are spiked with white pepper and coarse sea salt, then covered in sugar before baking. When they come out of the oven, they’ve spread from jaw-breaker sized balls to 2-3” flat discs. They keep well enough, but freeze whatever’s not eaten within four days.

We’re on day No. 3 and I don’t think there will be any call for a freezer.

Salted Ginger Cookies

½ cup/110g brown sugar
½ cup/100g white sugar
½ lb/226 g unsalted butter
1 egg
1/3 cup/80ml molasses
2 ¼ cup/280g all purpose white flour
1 Tbl fresh ginger, grated
2 tsp powdered ginger
1 tsp powdered cinnamon
½ tsp powdered allspice
¼ tsp white pepper
½ tsp coarse sea salt, mounded*
2 tsp baking soda
Additional sugar for rolling dough balls*

Cream the butter and sugars together in a stand mixer. Mix in the egg, then the molasses. Then add the remaining ingredients (except rolling sugar) and blend thoroughly until it forms a stiff dough.

Preheat the oven to 325°F/165°C/Gas mark 3.

Chill at least half an hour, then roll pieces of dough in your hands to form into 1” balls. Roll these in granulated sugar, then arrange on a greased sheet pan (or, as we do, one lined with a silicone mat). Bake about 12 minutes. Cool on a rack.

* Note on the salt and sugar: Free-flowing table salt isn’t what you want here. Part of this cookie's appeal is its random distribution of small, irregular chunks of grey sea salt. If it’s too large, crush it a bit, but you don’t want the salt completely pulverized. We usually use white table sugar for rolling the dough balls, but demerara would be nice and possibly even large-grained German hagelzucker (though I use that one for other cookies, I haven't tried it with these). 

Don't feel like making ginger cookies? Make ginger pie. 

Lost Abbey Gingerbread Cake

Serpent’s Stout is out now. Drink some now, eat some later.

Last year, I spent the better part of a Friday night with brewer Tomme Arthur of Lost Abbey just north of San Diego. Before that, cheesemonger Zeke Ferguson, photographer John Schulz, and I began with lunch under the hop vines at Stone Brewing’s beer garden. We ended up at Lost Abbey among racks of oak barrels, eating cheese, breaking out funky chocolates, and sampling a load of Tomme’s specials, including some vintage bottles he pulled out so we could taste the variations over years. All in all, it was a great night.

It also made me more appreciative of Lost Abbey beers, so I’ve been scoring more of them since then. This week, I grabbed a stout. At 11% abv, Serpent’s Stout is a seasonally available beer (early winter) in a 750ml corked bottle. It’s a very dark, malty beer, light on the carbonation, with an almost creamy texture. Given its notes of chocolate, molasses, and even coffee, I immediately realized how well it would work in baking.

After lightly chilling the bottle, I poured out 8 ounces, then savored the rest as Tomme intended. The portion I set aside went into a dense, dark, moist gingerbread cake that carried over the lingering taste of Serpent’s Stout with undertones of molasses and racy ginger. Photo to the left courtesy of StudioSchulz.com.

Adapted from Claudia Fleming’s Guinness Stout Ginger Cake in The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern, this version contains slightly more ginger and double the cardamom of the original.

Lost Abbey Gingerbread Cake

1 cup Lost Abbey Serpent Stout
1 cup molasses
½ Tbl baking soda
3 large eggs
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
¾ cup canola oil
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 ½ Tbl ground ginger
1 ½ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground cloves
¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
¼ tsp ground cardamom
1 ½ Tbl peeled fresh gingerroot, grated or finely minced

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter a 9- X 5-inch loaf pan, line the bottom and sides with parchment, and grease the parchment. Alternatively, butter and flour a 6-cup Bundt pan or ring mold.

(1) In a large and deep saucepan over high heat, combine the stout and molasses and bring just to a boil. Turn off the heat immediately, stir to mix thoroughly, and add the baking soda. The resulting foam will subside after a few beats.

(2) Meanwhile, whisk together the eggs and both sugars in a bowl, then whisk in the oil.

(3) In a separate bowl, sift the flour, then whisk in ground ginger, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cardamom.

Combine the stout mixture (1) with the egg mixture (2), then whisk this liquid into the flour mixture (3), half at a time. Add the fresh ginger and stir to combine.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake for about 1 hour, or until the top springs back when gently pressed and a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Do not open the oven until the gingerbread is almost done, or the center may fall slightly. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Because of the canola oil, this cake keeps at room temperature for several days. Serve with whipped cream, ice cream, or just plain with a cup of coffee or tea.

Goes well with:

Friday, Saturday, or Sunday nights at The Lost Abbey’s tasting room.

Port Brewing / The Lost Abbey
155 Mata Way, Suite 104
San Marcos, CA 92069
(800) 918-6816

Bookshelf: Joanne Weir’s Tequila

First in my roundup of summertime cocktail books is Joanne Weir’s enthusiastic primer Tequila: A Guide to Types, Flights, Cocktails, and Bites. In case you should miss it, the James Beard award-winning writer has become an evangelist for 100% agave spirits. Don’t bother her with the golden mixto tequila one usually finds in happy hour margaritas. “Only a fool,” she insists, “would drink mixto.” Mixto, made from almost half sugar, is the common stuff that has helped bestow tequila with its race-to-the-bottom-of-the-bottle, girls-gone-wild, I-don’t-remember-how-I-got-here reputation.

Tequila is a solid introduction for drinkers who want to expand their understanding of how to enjoy this Mexican spirit. It’s not the last word in tequila or even history, but the book primes the conversation by outlining the production and characteristics of blanco (or plata), reposado, añejo, and extra añejo tequilas, suggesting ways to enjoy them as flights, and then diving into recipes.

To that end, Weir has enlisted some of today’s better-known bartenders to present tequila cocktails. Now, a tequila cocktail isn’t as easy as it sounds. Gin is a fantastic mixer, as is rum. And vodka? Making tasty vodka drinks is no harder than combing your hair. But tequila can be troublesome, its big flavors prone to shouldering into and overwhelming a drink. Other than margaritas and shots, most drinkers aren’t sure what to do with it. Why fix, the thinking goes, what ain’t broke?

Well, because the world is tastier than frozen margs.

Enter mixologists such as Lucy Brennan (Mint) Audrey Saunders (Pegu Club), James Meehan (PDT), and Philip Brady (Death & Co.). In all, almost two dozen well-known enthusiasts step up to the challenge of crafting tasty tequila cocktails. Herein you’ll find the Aperol Sunset, la Chupparosa, the Chartreuse-spiked Kama Sutra, and the Surly Temple (ok, perhaps the girls still go just a little wild). Duggan McDonnell of San Francisco’s Cantina, offers his

All the King’s Men
1 ½ oz reposado tequila
½ oz Averna
½ oz ruby port
1 tsp agave nectar
1 oz freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 to 2 oz ginger beer
1 paper-thin ginger slice, for garnish

Combine tequila, Averna, port, agave nectar, and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Cover and shake for five seconds. Simultaneously strain the mixture and pour the ginger beer into a Collins glass filled with fresh ice. Garnish with the ginger slice.

And because this isn’t a one-tequila-two-tequila-three-tequila-floor celebration, but an introduction to more sophisticated drinking, Weir offers cooking recipes. Gonna drink? Gotta eat. All her recipes—from red chile pepper pickles and chorizo hand pies to carnitas and, yes, even cupcakes—include 100% agave tequila, sometimes at multiple stages. I’ll pass on the tequilamisu, but with recipes for ceviche, grilled steak, and chilled melon soup that won’t heat up the kitchen, Tequila makes for some inspirational summer reading.


Goes well with:

• Tequila: A Natural and Cultural History by Ana G. Valenzuela-Zapata & Gary Paul Nabhan.
• Tequila: A Traditional Art of Mexico edited by Alberto Ruy-Sanchez
• Dianne Kennedy’s The Art of Mexican Cooking
• Patricia Quintana’s El Gran Libro de los Antojitos Mexicanos (in Spanish)

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Winners of The Drunken Botanist (with Five Recipes)

“Do you know of this?” my friend EJ emailed. 

“I just stumbled upon it and think I am going to pick one up.” 

The link in his note was for Amy Stewart’s new book 

The Drunken Botanist. 

Within seconds I typed back: 

“Buy it immediately.”

Last week, I heaped a bunch of plaudits on Amy Stewart's new book The Drunken Botanist. Her publisher, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, offered to send five copies of the cook to readers of the Whiskey Forge. Rather than simply send a copy to random commenters like those who flock to any and all online giveaways, I put a twist on the rules and stipulated that those who wanted to throw their hats in the ring must also provide recipe in the comments to qualify. To keep it, in other words, among us booze geeks. I want to read about, I wrote,

...your favorite alcoholic drink that relies on plants to give it some distinguishing character — a cocktail, a homemade cordial or bitters recipe, your grandmother's amaro or your college roommate's homemade absinthe. Whatever. But it's got to have booze, beer, or wine (nothing against tea, but tea hardly makes botanists drunk) and it's got to demonstrate some distinctive plant characteristic. What that means is up to you: I want to see what you've got.

The results are in. Thank you everyone who sent in recipes — I'm working all weekend, but my mind keeps coming back to the new drinks I want to make. Five comments (selected using The Randomizer) came up winners. Those five should email me (moonshinearchives at gmail dot com) with mailing addresses ASAP.

First up is Sam K with his recipe for the Pennsylvanian/Lithuanian specialty, Boilo:

Always served warm, it is a soothing companion on a cold winter's night.

4 oranges, peeled
2 lemons, peeled
1 cup honey
4 cups water
1 cup raisins
1/2 tsp cloves
1 Tbsp caraway seed
1 Tbsp anise seed
4 cinnamon sticks
2 750 ml bottles decent blended American whiskey (Four Queens if you can find it)

Take all ingredients except whiskey and bring to a slow simmer for about a half hour. I prefer to peel the citrus to avoid leaching the more bitter oils into the potion. Allow to cool slightly and strain. Add the blended whiskey just before serving.

This will keep for some time. The blended whiskey is the main traditional ingredient here, really, and though I've read that the cheaper it is, the better, that's crap. There really is a substantial difference between, say, Fleischmann's and Four Queens (which has a slightly higher percentage of actual whiskey and is bottled at 100 proof). I know...I've ruined en entire batch by using Fleischmann's.

I suppose you could do even better by using three parts vodka and one part bourbon, but the miners always called for blended, and who am I to argue with tradition? That, plus they'd kick my ass! Second, Nick in Chapel Hill gives his take on a jalapeno honey-spiced Brown Derby:

1.5 oz rye (Knob Creek rye)
1.5 oz of fresh grapefruit juice
.5 oz jalapeno honey (To make: combine 14 oz local NC honey with fresh sliced jalapenos (2) - lightly sauté to release oils. Combine seed and fruit into honey in mason jar; let sit for 5 days prior to use)
.25 oz simple syrup
Splash soda water (or more, depending on tolerance for spice!)

Add rye and honey. Stir to loosen. Add grapefruit. Shake. Serve with crushed ice in rocks glass OR in chilled champagne coupe. 

From the cane fields of south Louisiana, John Couchot contributes his Rum Rickey Gone Local. the flavors of US sugarcane, he writes, "truly shine in this combination."

1 shot Rhum Agricole
1/2 shot of Louisiana made small batch cane syrup
fresh squeezed lime juice
splash of soda
garnish with a lime twist

Sylvan presents a slight twist on Sam Ross' new classic, the Penicillin Cocktail. This is my variation on Sam Ross' wonderful 'cold Scotch toddy'. "I never have 'ginger-honey syrup,'" he writes, "so I usually make honey syrup to order (no need to let it cool) and muddle fresh ginger."

Fresh ginger
2 ounces blended scotch (typ. Famous Grouse or Ballantine)
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
3/4 ounce honey syrup (1:1 honey/water)
1/4 ounce smoky Scotch (such as Laphroaig)

Slice a few (to taste) 1/8" slices of ginger and muddle in a mixing glass. Add blended Scotch, lemon juice and syrup, fill with ice and shake well. Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass or a chilled cocktail glass and float Islay scotch on top.

Finally, Lucas chimes in from snowy Toronto with his Garden Caesar (that's a Bloody Mary with a dose of oyster liquor or clam juice to us Yanks). He eyeballs the proportions.

Homemade vodka infused with Persimmon Tomatoes (using ISI Whipper)
Tomato juice (boughten is fine)
Oyster liquor
dash or two celery bitters
Fresh grated horseradish from the garden.
a couple of drops of homemade chili oil.
Rim the glass with lime and serve with a plate of oysters.

Setting aside the ambiguity of whether the vodka itself is homemade or just the final infused product is, I like the way you think, Lucas. Not just that ambiguity and the plate of oysters, but the nitrous-charged tomato vodka. This is a technique that didn't start getting traction until the last year or so, although it's been known for several years. Lucas uses the technique laid out in the Cooking Issues blog, but explains further:

I do a rough dice with the tomato, making sure to add the juice to the whipper as well. Seal it up, pressurize with two cartridges, wait a minute, depressurize and strain. I like the persimmon tomatoes because they have tons of flavour and live about ten steps away from the bar.

Cheers! Remember, you five, to email me with a shipping address for your copy of The Drunken Botanist and I'll pass it on to the publisher.

For the rest of you, a lot more recipes (worthy entries, one and all) are here in the comments section. Although the giveaway is closed, feel free to chime in with your own, even if they involve frozen squid swizzle sticks (ahem, Greg).

White Dog and Pink Shrimp

For years, I've been a fan of Indonesia's sweet soy sauce called kecap manis, distant cousin to America's ubiquitous tomato ketchup. Even though it's practically a staple in grocery stores catering to Asian customers in the US, Westerners don't often know the molasses-like sauce. And that's a shame—because a bottle keeps forever in the larder and in a pinch when guests arrive, it lends itself to a lot of different on-the-fly marinades, dips, and even sneaky barbecue sauce.

In particular, I like a simple marinade that's little more than the kecap, melted butter, and lime. Sometimes I doctor it up with ginger or red chiles. And if I happen to have a supply of straight-from-the-still white dog, a dose of moonshine whiskey is liable to go in the sauce, too. No moonshine? That's ok: You could leave it out entirely or, if you have some overproof rum such as J. Wray & Nephew or Lemon Hart 151, use a dose of that instead.

With a few tweaks and optional ingredients, this is my recipe as Fred Thompson used it in his Barbecue Nation (The Taunton Press, 2007).

Bootleg Shrimp

2 lbs 24-26 count shrimp
4 oz unsalted butter
4 oz fresh lime juice
4 oz kecap manis (Heinz ABC brand)
2 oz white dog or overproof rum
1 Tbl fresh ginger, grated (optional)
1-2 tsp crushed red pepper (optional)

Clean the shrimp, but leave the shells on, rinse them, and set them aside.

Melt the butter in a small pan or skillet. If using, add the red pepper and ginger. Simmer briefly to extract their flavor. Remove from heat (remember, kids: high-proof liquor is flammable) and add the remaining ingredients. Stir to combine.

Add half this marinade to the shrimp, toss to coat, and set aside for 20-30 minutes while heating the grill. Grill the marinated shrimp 2-3 minutes per side (in two batches if necessary) until pink and showing a little char on their shells. Dump them in a large communal bowl and serve with the remaining half of the sauce (heated) for dipping on the side.

Lots of towels. Make some rice or bread to go with.

Nah, I'm not shilling Heinz products. It's just that ABC is good and—at less than a cup of Starbucks coffee—the 21-oz bottles are cheap. According to Business Week ("The Ketchup King Prospers" by Matthew Boyle, 8 Sept 2008), ABC is the second-largest soy sauce company in the world, second only to Japanese behemoth Kikkoman. With over $200 million in sales (2007), it's a good bet there's some in your neighborhood. If not, you could swap out sorghum or cane syrup such as Steen's. Won't be the same, but I'm happy to come over and try the results.

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MxMo XXXVI: Hard Drinks for Hard Times—The Round Up

RULE #1:
Skip anything packaged in plastic.

These aren’t the desperate times of college.

~ Hanky Panky
LUPEC-Boston

The proposal before us for MxMo XXXVI:

If your 401(k) has taken a beating, or if you or a spouse or friend have been laid off, or if you’re simply hanging on to your wallet for dear life, you’ve probably given some thought to how the economy is affecting your basic expenditures—such as those you make for booze. Here’s a chance to share how you’re drinking during the downturn; whether it’s affordable booze, ways you’re cutting corners, or things you’ve figured out how to mix or make on the cheap, we need to hear it.

The results are in. Mixology Monday has drawn to another successful close. No pruno (barely). No Canned Heat Cocktails, no toilet merlot. Lots of wisdom and insight on saving, scrimping, and otherwise adjusting one's drinking habits as we come to grips with this unfolding recession (and a few jackass remarks because, after all, we're liquor writers and we enjoy heckling each other).

If I've missed your post, if it's somehow slipped between the cracks, please shoot me an email with a link and a photo and we'll get your post up.

With no further preamble, here's the rundown of all the contributions submitted to date for MxMo XXXVI: Hard Drinks for Hard Times:

Out of alphabetical order because he was first out of the gate, I give you Ben Carter who—23.7 seconds after I announced the rules to Mixology Monday XXXVI—threw down Benito's Original Meyer Lansky Cocktail over at Benito's Wine Reviews. I don't mean to glorify criminal activity, Carter writes, but then goes on to suggest the ideal garnish would be a poker chip with a slot sawed into it so you can stick it on the rim of the glass. I bet it is. I just bet it is.

Now, on to the Round Up:


Nat Harry (that's the Alpha Cook to you) rustles up The Bailout. Like a lot of savvy shoppers, Nat's been hitting the Trader Joe's. "A lot of savvy shoppers" = "rowley." The 80/20 rule seems to apply to TJ's product quality: 80% of it is decent-to-great while 20% is just gawd awful. I've seen the same Rear Admiral Joseph’s London Dry Gin recently and have been tempted. Really? $7.99 for 750ml? At that price, I could almost wash my car with it...Once I start buying liquor again, that is.

Kevin at Beers in the Shower (and, come on, who among us hasn't enjoyed a refreshing barley pop in the shower after a harrowing day/night?) gives us the Cheap Bastard with glassware from the Old Spaghetti Factory. Snicker all you like, but Kevin makes serious points in offering tips for drinking on less and concludes with a heartfelt plea not to abandon the bartenders who are so good to us: please continue to go out and support your bars. Tip well and enjoy the bar experience for what it is. Hear, hear.

I've been seeing more mentions of the SodaStream in the last few months. Bibulo.us pings it again and gets clever with Soft Drinks for Hard Times. When you live in a town with great tap water, carbonating your own is smart savings (sorry Philly and Boston, just keep buying the bottled stuff). Adding fancy homemade syrups? Very tempting...

Steve Schul and Paul Zablocki over at Cocktail Buzz share tips for getting through hard times (hint: it involves paper towel squeezin’s, highballs, and arriving at their pad with a bottle of booze). Boys, next time I’m back in Brooklyn, I’ll be happy to bring the booze. Is whiskey ok? I’ll even bring the engarnishments.

Irish diplomacy has been defined as the ability to tell a man to go to hell so that he looks forward to the trip. Paul Clarke may well have studied statesmanship of an Irish tenor when coming up with this month's Cheapskate Cocktail ($4.70 per serving) for himself while plying visitors with an Unwelcome Houseguest (a paltry $1.76) at the Cocktail Chronicles. Kingsley Amis would have been delighted at the subterfuge. Take Amis' notions for stiffing guests in the Swiftian Modest Proposal sense they were meant and there's some damn good ideas for entertaining, regardless of one's financial situation.

Reese Lloyd breaks out the dollar menu G&T at Cocktail Hacker. A dollar, you ask, for a gin & tonic? Not value enough for you? How'd you like 17¢ back? That's right, Reese reckons he can crank out 83¢ Recession G&Ts. He asks: So how hard is this cocktail going to hit your wallet?...It’s going to be like a kitten falling on a pile of pillows.

Frederic reports that the gang over at Cocktail Virgin Slut broke out the Tanqueray and Heinies for beer-inspired takes on not one, but four champagne cocktails: the Dutch (fomerly French) 75, the Air Mail, the Sea Captain's Special, and the Black Cherry Champagne Cocktail. I’m not 100% sold on the Heineken Light (didn’t Dennis Hopper murmur something about that in Blue Velvet?), but for a willingness to experiment and good humor, I award 350 points to the sluts. Ya’ll’ve been very bad. Now go straight to my bar.

Cocktailwelten: Ein Blog uber Neuigkeiten in der Welt der Cocktails, Barkultur, und Spirituosen: Chris, a longtime MxMo contributor, laughs off the current international economic slump from the comfort of Germany with sloe gin, rum, and apricot brandy in a deliciously contrarian Millionaire Cocktail. Darauf erhebe ich mein Glas: Prost!

Colonel Tiki's Drinks & Indigo Firmaments. Babies...ain’t cheap, Craig admits. With the arrival of Sebastian Milton Felix, we have all the more reason to celebrate, recession be damned. Seems like Colonel Tiki is laying in a supply of homemade Southern Comfort...er, uh, Home Comfort Liqueur...for when Sebastian reaches his majority. Oh, who are we kidding? It'll be gone long before that. But the recipe will be around for all of posterity. Well, done, sir. Now go make your lovely wife a cocktail.

Michael Dietsch is about to start his fourth year publishing the blog A Dash of Bitters. Good on you, man. I've had a soft spot for Dietsch since he interviewed me as part of the leadup to Tales of the Cocktail last year and I realized what kindred spirits we are. And now our work situations are looking eerily similar since his freelance gigs dried up. Ever resourceful, he's cobbled together his Recession Sling (using whatever the fuck I had on hand already). Turns out we mix the same, too, even down to the Bulleit. And the potty mouth.

UPDATE 2/20: Drink of the Week. Jonas! I'm so sorry to have missed your post the first time around. Mea culpa—It seems the more blogs I tried to capture, the most just slipped through my fingers. I blame lack of sleep and a penchant for lame Star Wars references. Your sensible comments on frugal shopping are well-taken. Shopping at Costco, BevMo, and the supermarket are all fantastic notions. I'd add drugstores to that. Few rare bottles show up, but midrange spirits can sometimes go on sale at startlingly low prices. And this: Staying home doesn’t need to mean drinking alone, invite friends over...a perfect sentiment. It's easy to forget that our friends are some of our dearest assets. Cheers.

ednbrg: Jon has me thinking of blended Scotch before breakfast Monday morning. Those of you who know me know that’s about as likely as my idly musing over Margaret Thatcher’s Sunday knickers. Since I haven't got a single bottle of Scotch whisky around the house, I’m taking notes on his Highland Bramble with me when I head out next to the local spot most likely to have crème de mure. And, Jon? Points for combining egg whites and Monkey Shoulder…

Felicia’s Speakeasy. A post that stopped me in my tracks with a single quote: when we are forced to return to a simpler, self-sufficient life, who is going to make our booze? You, baby, you. And Leah. Must be something about upstate New York that incites my friends there to work on homemade hooch and hard cider. The homemade airlocks, the gallon jugs—the mother!—all look so strangely familiar. John Chapman would be proud.

Jacob Grier's vodka bar is shovel-ready and, as he boldly claims, he is ready to stimulate the shit out of this economy. Go, go, go! And hats off for posting the Horatio, the first contribution calling for aquavit, and made entirely from on-hand ingredients.

Hey, mistah! Throw me a cocktail! Chuck Taggart gives us the $1.19 Mardi Gras Sour over at the Gumbo Pages, a whiskey sour using Old Grand-Dad and—gasp—falernum. Here it is Tuesday morning, the sun's not even up and I'm letting the tastes play in my mind already. It's distractingly tempting. I just happen to have some OGD and falernum (values both), but I bet that if I wait just a few more days I can order one at the Swizzle Stick. Just in time for Mardi Gras in situ.

Jimmy's Cocktail Hour proprietor Jimmy Patrick emailed me a note: Hi Matt, I've got a $1.25 cocktail. Well I'll be damned and so he does. Jimmy's become a fan of ultra-affordable Pikesville Rye Whiskey and uses it to create The "$1.25" Old Fashioned ($1.26 really, but who's counting?). Think of it, he writes, as a small stimulus package. And so we shall.


Liquor is Quicker (but channeling Edward G. Robinson is more funner) gets all academic with a discussion of rye whiskey, then breaks out the Rittenhouse Bonded 100 proof for a Tombstone #2 (with Apologies to Dave Wondrich). No apologies necessary in my book. I’m sure the fictional instance of Wondrich would agree...and might even be your huckleberry.

God bless those ladies at LUPEC-Boston. With a simplicity that makes me beam, Pink Lady emailed me to throw down the tastiest gauntlet I can spy directly from the temporary office of my Heywood Wakefield coffee table: Hanky Panky's suggestion of 12-year Old Fitzgerald bourbon. [I]n honor of hard times and salty broads, they suggest we grab a bottle, pour a shot, and raise our glasses to Helen "Dirty Helen" Cromwell. Look it up. She deserves it.

Now, I'm not married (hey, thanks, Salt Lake!), but I am a big fan of dinner. And so, when Anita over at Married...with Dinner cranks out a batch of Ward 8 cocktails in her post Recession Proof, I pay heed. Her tips for drinking smart in these times—switch your allegiance, share the love, think small and several more—tap a vein of common sense that seems to run through the hard-times theme. Making your own grenadine and home-preserved cherries helps, too.

Michael (My Aching Head) reminds me what what it was like being a student with a limited budget in the first place: drinking cheap is something I’ve become pretty accustomed to. There were undergraduate days (mostly Wednesdays) when my entire caloric intake was a pound of fettucine alfredo and a bottle of chardonnay. Couldn't have been more than $4 total. Must be why I favor red wines now. Michael turns to Europe and proposes both rough-knuckled calimocho (red wine and cola) and that Dijonaise hometown favorite, the kir. Wicked hangovers are a'brewing, but not bad choices on a student's budget.

Morsels & Musings: From Sydney, Australia (where summer is in high gear), Anna kicks in Peach & Ginger Punch, all redolent with ginger beer, ginger syrup, peach nectar, and rum. Watch out, Anna ~ those innocuous peach slices brimming with health-giving properties should pack a sneaky wallop after sufficient rest.

A Mountain of Crushed Ice: As there are some tunes you can hear while reading music, there are some tastes you can savor by reading a recipe. Just so with Tiare’s Jamaican-inspired Life Saver that breaks out the Ting and J. Wray & Nephew (its cheap, its gooood and tasty! she taunts). I know this tune. Meet me at Tales this summer and I’ll hum in a few bars for you…

I was waiting—just waiting—for someone to bring up that champagne of beers, Miller High Life. Lance Mayhew, the only free market capitalist left, is in need of a drink and does not disappoint. In Philly, the $3 special was a PBR and shot of Jack. Mayhew sweetens it up and mellows it out a bit, inspired by nostalgia for Sacramento's Torch Club by calling for a shot of vanilla-infused Jack Daniel's with a MHL back while contemplating the turndown over at My Life on the Rocks. It might not solve my problems, he writes, but for a few minutes at least, a beer and a shot is exactly what I need during hard times.

RumDood breaks out the Sailor Jerry spiced rum for his Shortfall Punch. [W]hen times are tough, the Dood tells us, if can get a full handle of superior rum for only a dollar more than the market leader, then you have to do that. Though he didn't use the entire handle in one drink, it sounds like a bunch of it went into developing this one. I don't trust everyone's cocktails (not even my own), but I like the Dood's style and if I had any Sailor Jerry's around, the Shortfall Punch would soar to the top of my must-try column.

Scofflaw's Den, Marshall and SeanMike's paean to the drink, is always a good read. It's got cigars, cocktails, and musings on food that keep me coming back. Did I mention cigars? For MxMo XXXVI, Marshall posted two cocktails: The Gloom Chaser and the CEO Cocktail. I've often opined that if one cannot obtain good things (cream, butter, bacon, fine spirits, and Cohibas), one ought to just do without their wan doppelgängers (skim milk, margarine, turkey bacon, bottom-shelf spirits, and "It's a Boy!" stogies). The CEO sounds lovely. Does it come with a golden parachute?

Holy dueling bangos! Two authors, two posts, and two cute cats (Master Shake? Seriously? Love it). Unable to leave well enough alone, SeanMike at Scofflaw's Den throws his hat in the ring with Orangin and Tonic. Home-carbonated diet tonic water, Jacquin’s Orange Flavored Gin (his review: It’s orange-y, it’s about 66 proof, and you know what, it was like $3 for a pint of it) and Angostura orange bitters.

Oh, Sloshed! Can we ever have enough of your boozy ways? Come sit next to me on the hooch wagon. As an unrepentant kitchen DIYer myself, Marleigh's four homemade syrups (Cold-Process Grenadine, Lillikoi, Ginger, and Vanilla) struck an immediate chord. The only one I don't have is the Lillikoi, but once back from New Orleans, I'm on it. Plus, bulk cheapo vanilla pods is a nice touch to the overall money-saving scheme.

Our favorite Tipsy Texan discovered a way to refuel one tired-ass krewe by retooling his Matagalpa Cocktail (at $3.90 per serving) into a Manchaca Cocktail for a mere $1.08. With all due respect to my friends in Louisiana and Pennsylvania, Texans know a thing or two about drinking. And if one is so kind as to recommend Flor de Caña, Paula's Texas Orange, and lime, then, partner, I'm in.

Trader Tiki cuts to the chase with his Chauncey Cocktail: This is an all-boozer; time is money and I haven’t the time to waste on mixers when spirits are in need of lifting. Muchos Mahalos, Blair! Rye, Gin, Brandy, Vermouth—sounds like WC Fields' shopping list. On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia...with one of these in my hand.

Triddlywinks, a home distiller I’m pleased to know and whose malt whiskey is just a fine addition to any liquor cabinet, nonetheless horrified me with his Absinthe Spork from the Wormwood Society thread “If Rednecks Drank Absinthe.” I’d never really wondered what absinthe in a go-cup would look like until Trid peeled the louche from my eyes. T, one assume the absinthe is homemade as well?

Stevi Deter at Two at the Most rolls out the big guns. Well, the 75mm canon anyway. Check that, the gin-and-champagne drink named for the French 75mm (or is that ml?) canon which she deems infinitely drinkable. Squeezing 10-12 cocktails per bottle of bubbly lands this one smack dab in the affordable category, despite its chi-chi reputation. Like its ballastic namesake, this champagne cocktail could leave devastation in the aftermath of its application, but with only two—at most—what's the harm?

The Wild Drink Blog has gotten into the spirit of evolution, inspired undoubtedly by the recent 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birthday. It seems Tristan got gotten bitten by the homebrew bug. While his novice batch of home-brewed beer is not cocktail mixology, it's in the right spirit and gives me hope. Beer, as many a home distiller knows, is the gateway beverage to stouter beverages. Once one has down the hang of grains and yeast and sparging, whiskey is not far behind. When that day comes, Tristan, you come track me down. Meanwhile, relax, don't worry ~ and have a homebrew.

And, finally...there's me. Yeah, so I got laid off. As a former museum curator and unrepentant collector, I'd accumulated a liquor cabinet that was gettin' too big anyway. Commingling frugality and a little (probably misunderstood) zen, I came up with a scheme to drink only liquor we already had in the house and to know that liquor very well. Turns out this is a fantastic way to manage the liquor cabinet and the fridge. This week's pantry raid yields The North Park Cocktail.

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