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. 

Bookshelf: Pitt Cue Co.: The Cookbook

“Can I ask you,” the clerk pressed, “as one American to another, why on Earth would you buy a British barbecue book?” For the past thirty minutes, I’d been pulling down books from the shelves of the Notting Hill bookstore where she worked and had set aside the lurid orange/red cookbook from the local Pitt Cue Co. on my ‘maybe’ stack. “Why waste your money? I mean, how are the Brits going to do barbecue better than anything than we can get back home?”

She had a point. When one thinks of the great barbecue centers of the world, Kansas City comes to mind. Austin. Memphis. Charlotte. American places, all. Pitt Cue, on the other hand, is a thirty-seat joint smack dab in central London; seat of an erstwhile Empire, sure, but cultural backwoods when it comes to barbecue.

Yet here’s the thing; you can find some good ‘cue in the backwoods.

Pickled Hot Dogs

The authors of the book — restaurateurs Tom Adams, Jamie Berger, Simon Anderson and Richard Turner — capture the spirit of barbecue better than some places I’ve sampled it in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and, yes, even places like Texas, Georgia, and Kentucky where they know good ‘cue. The reason the book interested me — and why I bought it a few days later at another store — is that they start with a strong framework and adapt it to local tastes and ingredients. These guys know full well that good barbecue involves smoke and long, low cooking.

Recipes include pulled pig’s head crubeens (normally made only pigs’ trotters and not smoked or nearly so spiced), Buffalo pigs’ tails with Stilton sauce, porger sausage (made with bacon, pork belly, dry-aged beef rib-eye, and pork shoulder), duck giblet sausages, mutton ribs, crumbed pigs’ cheeks, habanero pigs’ ears, mashed potatoes tricked out various ways (with whipped bone marrow, burnt ends, or lardo and rosemary), and plenty of pickles, slaws, and sides.

The recipes in the Pitt Cue Co. cookbook may not be what old-timers expect of smoked meats in the bastions of American barbecue, but many techniques and flavors will be familiar to Americans, even if the details are not quite what we’d expect. Avid eaters will find a lot to like — and you boozers will notice that the boys aren’t shy about lashing whiskey and other spirits around with someone approaching abandon. The drinks chapter alone is 37 pages. Recipes for ‘sweet stuff’ call for bourbon, Pimm’s No. 1 (used both in a sorbet and in a meringue-and-fruit Pimm’s Mess), and Grand Marnier. In a nod to the wine jellies once so popular in the UK — but sticking with the pig and whiskey themes — there’s an old-fashioned jelly, made old-fashioned not with wine but with the ingredients one would find in an Old Fashioned cocktail.

Fennel Cured Scratchings

The only caveat — and this is not a negative, just a bit of a heads up — is that the Pitt Cue Co. book, while drafted for home cooks, is very much a product of a kitchen geared for commercial cooking. Many recipes link to each other and rely on precursor sauces, condiments, or other preparations. What looks like a fairly straightforward recipe may, in fact, call for prunes soaked in whiskey for a month or brine from pomegranate pickles or for chicken, hot sauces, deviled pigs’ trotters, barbecue rubs and sauces, etc.. All it means is that you’ll want to read each recipe all the way through before starting it…but you do that anyway, right?

The next time you tackle a pork shoulder for sausage making, don't you dare toss out that skin. Use it in the sausage, drop chunks of it into baked beans, or season it and roll it into a tight cylinder, cook it, slice it, and deep-fry it for a quick bar snack or appetizer. From Pitt Cue Co.: The Cookbook, here’s crunchy, salted pork skin with the faint Italian-sausage nip of fennel. The only change I'd make it to include a bit of crushed red pepper (such as Aleppo) in the dry cure.

Fennel Cured Scratchings

250 g pork skin, from a whole skinned pork shoulder
15 g Dry Cure (see below)
Oil for deep-frying 

Sprinkle both sides of the skin with the dry cure, then roll up the skin into a sausage (like an Arctic roll) so that the fat side remains on the inside. Place the sausage on a long length of clingfilm and roll it up very tightly. Tie off each end so that the roll is watertight and leave in the fridge for at least 24 hours. 

Bring a medium pan of water to a gentle simmer and add the roll of skin. Weight it down with a heatproof plate and simmer over a low heat for 1 hour, until the roll is squidgy and soft to touch. Remove from the pan and leave to cool, then refrigerate until you are ready to cook. 

Unwrap the skin from the clingfilm and slice the roll of skin into 5mm rings. Heat the oil to 180°C in a deep-fat fryer or large saucepan and fry the rings for 4-5 minutes, or until golden and crispy. The scratchings should not need seasoning.

For the dry rub, the authors suggest a 50:50 mix of Maldon sea salt and smoked Maldon sea salt. While we like using flaky Maldon salt, there’s no particular need to search out that and only that salt if it means paying exorbitant import prices. In the US, plain kosher salt is fine — and if you can get your hands on good smoked salt, do as they say and work it in as half the quantity. This version omits the 150 grams of brown/molasses sugar called for in their regular dry rub.

Pitt Cue Co. Dry Cure 

1 kilo/2.2 lbs salt
10g cracked black pepper
1 star anise, finely ground

10 g fennel seeds, toasted and crushed

Mix all ingredients in a bowl until they are thoroughly combined.

Tom Adams, Jamie Berger, Simon Anderson and Richard H. Turner (2013)
Pitt Cue Co.: The Cookbook
288 pages (hardback)
Mitchell Beazley
ISBN: 1845337565
£20.00

Available from Amazon.co.uk, Waterstones, or Books for Cooks.

Bookshelf: Lunch with the FT

Yuko Tojo,
granddaughter of
executed war criminal
General Hideki Tojo

The first inkling Yuko Tojo 
had of what really happened to her grandfather 
was when she was in fifth grade at school. 
Gripping her small white hands around her neck, 
the 65-year-old re-enacts the classroom scene of more 
than half a century ago when a boy stood on a chair 
before leaping to the ground with the cry: 
"Tojo hanged." 

The young girl looked up the strange word, 
kohshukei, in the dictionary 
and found a description next to the picture of 
a hooded man with a rope around his neck. 
'Then I knew the meaning,' she nods, 
releasing her grip 
to continue the dissection 
of her lamb fillet. 

~ David Pilling

'Let sleeping gods lie' reprinted in

Lunch with the FT: 52 Classic Interviews 

You might never guess it from the newspapers's terse Twitter feed, but London's Financial Times publishes great articles on art, literature, movies, music...and food. Some of the most enjoyable weekend writing tackle each week arrives on those peach-colored pages. Honestly, it's mystifying that the vibrant Weekend section gets such short shrift when it's one of the better reasons to read the paper.

Watson (minus Crick)

Financial updates aside, one of the best reasons to read the paper is the Lunch with the FT column, a regular piece with a simple premise: different journalists interview some well-known person over lunch. The Financial Times picks up the tab, except when a few feisty subjects simply refuse to let another pick up the bill. Subjects include politicians, actors, industrialists, musicians, writers, artists, war criminals, and their family members. Some are profiled early in their careers, others toward the end...and then there's the poet whose lunch with interviewer Nigel Spivey was among his very last. "Gavin Ewert is dead," wrote Spivey in one of the reprinted interviews.

The poet's death, last week, was hardly the consequence of lunch with the Financial Times. But, with hindsight, we gave him a grand send-off. 

He had just recovered from a prostate operation when we met in high summer. But intimations of mortality were not apparent. Far from it. 

Aiming to arrive on good time at the Cafe Royal, I found him already settled at the bar, fondling a large pink drink. Ah,' he said, without guilt. 'There you are.' 

'I say,' I said, with anguish. 'That can only be a Negroni.' It was indeed a Negroni, the gin and Campari mixture with a velocity of intoxication that is both feared and loved by those who know it. This lunch would be, in the poet's own phrase, 'a thick one'.

Diddy: "If I endorse a candidate right now,
I mean the race would probably be over."

And so is the book. I rarely board planes with printed books these days, but on flights in the last few weeks to Denver and Kansas City, I made an exception for Lunch with the FT, a birthday present. The articles are revealing and engaging, the subject a mix of those I recognize, some I'd never known existed, and others who could rise the ire of some readers.

There's a young(ish) Angela Merkel interviewed years before she became Germany's chancellor; Chinese novelist Yu Hua; painter David Hockney; Sean "P. Diddy" Combs (who refused to endorse a candidate during a 2004 interview because "It would sway people. If I endorse a candidate right now, I mean the race would probably be over."); Stephen Green, executive chairman of HSBC and an Anglican priest; Jennifer Paterson, one of the Two Fat Ladies cookery program; and the famously demanding British chef Marco Pierre White.

Others include George Soros, Twiggy, Queen Rania of Jordan, F. W. de Klerk, Dolce and Gabbana, Paul Krugman, Michael Caine, Jeff Bezos, Saif Gaddafi, Martin Amis, Steve Woziak, Martin McGuinness, Donald Rumsfeld....52 in all.

In a volume packed with fantastic one-liners and bons mots, one that sticks with me is from James Watson who, along with Francis Crick, discovered the structure of DNA in 1953. Nearly every high schooler knows the name, but few could pick him out of a lineup. When interviewer Christopher Swann asked back in 2004 whether a lack of public recognition ever bothered him, the scientist gave a rueful smith and admitted that "discovering the structure of DNA did little to help him propagate his own genes. 'There were no groupies,' he says. 'Well, I suppose there were two but you wouldn't have wanted to get too close to either of them.'" Of course, the co-father of modern genetics goes on to say that if technology permits it, women ought to be able to abort homosexual fetuses.

Jimmy Carter mulls political torture
over iced tea in Plains, Georgia.

Revealing and engaging, I said. Didn't say it was always palatable.

Through them all, there's food, cocktail, and wine. Whether it's Watson slicing into veal or Jimmy Carter hunkering down over a bowl of green tomato soup, food and drink are the excuse to conduct all the interviews. Some of these subjects are dead, some restaurants undoubtedly closed, but the prose remains. Cheers to Lionel Barber for pulling them together and James Ferguson for his illustrations.


Lionel Barber (2013)
Illustrations by James Ferguson
Lunch with the FT: 52 Classic Interviews
352 pages (hard cover)
Portfolio
ISBN: 1591846498
$35.00

Back from Berlin, Trouble with the Language

Lili Von Shtupp: Would you like another schnitzengruben? 

Sheriff Bart: No, thank you. Fifteen is my limit on schnitzengruben.

~ Blazing Saddles (1974)

I've been away for a bit in Germany and Holland where I ate, drank, and hit up old bookstores. More on that later. On our first day in Berlin, the boys were exhausted after an overnight train from Munich left everyone considerably less rested than we had hoped we'd be. While they trundled off to bed, I bundled up and headed into the rain to hunt for liquor and sausage-making books.

On returning to the hotel, one of them asked me whether I'd found anything good. "Oh, yeah," I enthused, pulling out a few old books from their rain-flecked paper wrappers. "Check it out. Bowlen und Pünsche, Die Fabrikation feiner Fleisch- und Wurstwaren, and a nice copy of Das Getränkebuch by Franz Josef Beutel and Hans Krönlein."

He blinked, propped up on one elbow and still freighted with sleep. Blinked again. "All I heard was 'Blau, blau, blau, bitte schön, gau, gau, Schnitzengruben."

German, it seems, falls harshly on some ears. The recipes will go into rotation this summer. Let's hope they are better received.

Goes well with:

• Cooking with Lard, Potash, and Hartshorn: 1932 Lebkuchen in which I use an old recipe and some odd ingredients to make traditional German Christmas cookies. 
• Kinderheim Gritz: Prohibition-era Pork Belly Charcuterie
• Elise Hanneman's 1904 Leberwurst could be translated as "liverwurst," but many Americans would recognize her recipe as Braunschweiger. 
• Summertime is coming. A big bowl of German potato salad is just the thing for cookouts and picnics. 

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).

Bookshelf: The Drunken Botanist (and a giveaway)

“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.”

Scroll down for a chance to score a free copy

The last decade has witnessed an avalanche of drinks books: encyclopedic cocktail guides; histories of various liquors; reproductions of early bartending manuals; buying guides; essay collections; paeans to bars from New Orleans to Wisconsin. Most are undistinguished. Many cocktail manuals in particular are interchangeable. Some released only in the last few years have begun to feel like remnants of trends not yet played out, already dated. Not Stewart’s.

The Drunken Botanist is the most useful and entertaining drinks book of the year and one of the most engaging of the last several years.

I've been to liquor stores with distillers, bartenders, and go-go boys but never a botanist. Until I manage that, this little green tome can serve as a crash course in what's actually in those thousands of bottles. Sure, cocktail recipes — good ones, too — are scattered throughout the book but those are not the reason I've been heaping plaudits on it. Rather, it's the unrelenting thoroughness of Stewart's writing that's so impressive. The book is an exploration of plants (and a few bugs and fungi) that contribute flavors, aromas, colors, tactile sensations, and base materials for fermentation and distillation.

Stewart frames the scope in her introduction:

Around the world, it seems, there's not a tree or shrub or delicate wildflower that has not been harvested, brewed, and bottled. Every advance and botanical exploration or horticultural science brought with it a corresponding uptick in the quality of our spirituous liquors. Drunken botanists? Given the role they play in creating the world's greatest drinks, it's a wonder there are any sober botanists at all.

Bartenders beware.

Since Caesar famously divided Gaul into three, authors have followed suit. Stewart breaks down over 150 plants we drink into three sections. First come plants that, when fermented (and sometimes distilled) yield beer, wine, ales, and various spirits. These include obvious selections like corn, apples, grapes, sugarcane, wheat, and barley as well as fermentable bases less often seen in the North America or western Europe such as tamarind, sweet potato, jackfruit, banana, and marula. Next are those used to flavor those spirits and low-alcohol brews: coriander, anise, meadowsweet, hyssop, wormword, fenugreek, vanilla, cinnamon, elderflowers, saffron, Douglas fir, oak, mastic, and dozens more. Finally, flowers, berries, herbs, and others added a la minute to drinks — think celery stalks in a bloody mary, cucumber in a Pimm's cup, and tiki drinks garnished with endless pineapple, mint, and cherries. They are all here, each backed up with horticultural, chemical, medical, historical, anthropological, and ethnnobotanical research.

The Drunken Botanist covers much of the same ground Brad Thomas Parsons reached for in his Bitters, but where Parsons stumbled, Stewart soars. Her graceful, easy style belies the sheer amount of facts and data packed into nearly 400 pages. Line drawings accompany many of the entries. Each plant entry starts with the common name immediately followed by its Linnean taxonomic designation and the family to which it belongs and then a page or more on its use in alcoholic drinks.

Take myrrh, for instance. Commiphora myrrha to botanists, it's in the torchwood family, more properly known as Burseraceae. Wait. WAIT. Do not let your eyes glaze over. Myrrh was one of the gifts of the biblical wise men. If Jesus was down with myrrh, you can give it a minute. Stewart writes:

Myrrh is an ugly little tree: scrawny, covered in thorns, and nearly bereft of leaves. It grows in the poor, shallow soils of Somalia and Ethiopia, where it is a gloomy gray figure in a barren landscape. If it weren't for the rich and fragrant resin that drips from the trunk, no one would give it a second look.

The rest of the entry concerns its use among ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, including the Roman practice of blending it with wine to offer during crucifixions. Well, ok, maybe Jesus wasn't always a fan. We learn that in modern times it is a common ingredient in vermouth, bitters, aromatized wines, and cordials such as Royal Combier and that bartenders' favorite, Fernet Branca. The Fernet mention leads us to a discussion of aloe (also found in Fernet Branca), which is related to agave, and that brings us to tequila, and from there to Damiana whose supposed aphrodisiac qualities led one doctor to write in 1879 that it could be given to female patients "to produce in her the very important yet not absolutely essential orgasm." On and on they go, these analog hyperlinks, each entry suggesting another, like a Choose Your Own Adventure book for drinkers.

Boozehounds, brewers, distillers, oenologists, sommeliers, bitters-makers, bartenders — even tea freaks and soda makers — will find this a timeless reference work for understanding not only what's in the spirits we drink, but perhaps ways to craft new ones. Her engaging prose and attention to detail all but assures that Stewart's latest book will remain a useful tool even a century from now for those who make drinks at home or work.

Amy Stewart (2013)
The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World’s Great Drinks 
400 pages (hardback)
Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1616200464
$24.95

Goes well with:

• My review of C. Anne Wilson's Water of Life, an exhaustive examination of the origins and progress of spiritous distillation. 
• A look at Brad Thomas Parsons' Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas. A qualified success, but still worth buying. 
• Volodimir Pavliuchuk's 2008 recipe book Cordial Waters: A Compleat Guide to Ardent Spirits of the World. 
• Do It to Julia! A look at pink cloves and gin as Winston Smith's habitual (I'll refrain from calling it his "favorite") tipple in Orwell's 1984.

How About That Free Copy?

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, the publisher of  The Drunken Botanist, has offered to send a free copy of the book to five Whiskey Forge readers. There are only two rules: (1) winners must have a US or Canadian mailing address and (2) readers must leave a recipe in the comments below to qualify.

A recipe? What? Hell, yes. I want to read about 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.

Next Friday (April 26th), I'll post the names of five randomly chosen winners here.  Each will have until Friday, May 3rd to email me a shipping address.

NOTE: The giveaway is now closed and the winners (plus their recipes) are announced here. The comments, however, are still open. Please feel free to chime in with your own recipes. [edit 27 April 2013]

Sucking Weisswurst

Well, I'm not dumb

but I can't understand

why she walked like a woman 

but talked like a man.

Ray Davies 

Lola (1970)

This Spring, I'm spending time in Munich, Berlin, and Amsterdam. Preparation for that trip includes reading daily news from Germany and the Netherlands; watching Dutch and German films to get the rhythm of the languages again; and drawing up lists of specific spirits, foods, and antiquarian distilling and charcuterie books to track down. It was while reading Culinaria: Germany, though, that I was brought up short by a claim that simply strains credulity.

The entry concerns that Bavarian specialty weisswurst, a  sausage made of veal and typically eaten mid-morning with soft pretzels, mild mustard, and beer — not sauerkraut, as one might encounter in other parts of the world or even other regions of Germany. Should some tourist fail to ask for traditional accompaniments and order sauerkraut, the editor maintains,

A native Bavarian sitting nearby will either turn away in horror, or be quick to offer advice when, in addition, he sees the "foreigner" wielding a knife and fork, cutting the sausage up into small pieces. He will explain that the correct way to eat this sausage is to zuzeln it — a verb for which the foreigner, even if he is a German citizen, will search his dictionary in vain. It is a Bavarian dialect word meaning "suck," and describes the proper way to eat Weisswurst: you cut it in half with a knife, pick it up in your fingers, dip it in sweet mustard — no other kind will do — and suck it out of its skin. The experience is primeval and sensuous; it is no coincidence that "sucking" the sausage suggests associations with breast-feeding.

Now, I'm an historian and retired museum curator, not an eminent psychoanalist, but even I understand that international and cross-lingual jokes concerning sausages' phallic shape had been worked pretty hard long before the 19th-century supposed invention of weisswurst. Nor, it must be admitted, am I thoroughly versed in all the ins and outs of Bavarian culture, but to suggest that anyone happily sucking away at a juicy, fat white sausage is reliving infantile experiences of breast-feeding...well.

Sucking a weisswurst is primeval, as the text notes. It is sensuous. But ignoring an elephant of that magnitude in the room takes a special kind of denial.

Goes well with:

• Christine Metzger (2008) Culinaria: Germany. f. h. ullman. ISBN: 978-3-8331-1030-6. Amazon vendors sell the paperback for over $300. That's ridiculous; the hardback sells for under $30 here. 
• If you'd like to take a run at making your own weisswurst, Bernhard Gahm's 1998 German language book Würste, Sülzen, Pasteten selbstgemacht will set you right. If you prefer English-language instructions, try Rytek Kutas' cornerstone sausage-making book, Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing. Finally (and it's a bit pricey), multiple French versions of white sausage — boudin blanc —are presented in volume one of the Professional Charcuterie series by Marcel Cottenceau et al (Van Nostrand Reinland, 1991).

The One That Undoes You

From the back of the dust jacket:
Hassoldt Davis

As we slide into the weekend — for what is Thursday, if not the beginning of the weekend? — and begin planning the whiskeys, tequilas, beer, gins, amari, and the other drams and tipples that help us get our swerve on, we would all do well to bear in mind Hassoldt Davis' admonition from his 1958 handbook, Bonjour, Hangover! The thin little tome is a collection of maxims, aphorism, and personal observations on the painful mornings one endures after nights of intemperance.

Don't drink that last drink, 
the one-for-the-road, 
that nightcap. 
That's the one that undoes you.

Perfectly sound advice...with which I almost never agree after a night of drinking. "Irish whiskey," I'm bound to think around 2am, "is exactly what I need right now."

Invariably, that's the one that undoes me.

The Wu of Maker's Mark

For what shall it profit a man 

if he shall gain the whole world, 

 and lose his own soul? 

 ~ Mark 8:36

Never mind whiskey aficionados; tongues on even vodka lovers were wagging earlier this month over a rare public relations stumble in Kentucky. Rob Samuels, COO of Maker's Mark, announced that the alcoholic strength of the company's signature bourbon was to be lowered from 90 proof to 84 proof.

The company had announced, quite literally, that it was watering down the product.

The ensuing uproar was immediate, vocal, and sustained. On Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, indignant fans deplored the decision and excoriated the firm. Bartenders who prefer overproof spirits that can stand up to the dilution of mixers and ice in cocktails bemoaned the new direction. Users howled indignation and pundits prognosticated the future of the brand (opinions ranged from “I’ll never buy Maker's again” to “In a year, who will even remember?”). It became a national story. Up in Vermont, WhistlePig vowed to increase the proof of its rye whiskey. I stayed mostly mum on the topic. Regardless of what others recalled next February, I would remember who did this.

I was struck immediately by the resonance of Samuels' announcement with Philip K. Dick's 1962 novel The Man in the High Castle. The book depicts a world in which Germany and Japan emerge victorious in World War II. Between them, they conquer and divide a disgraced former United States. I must have been ten when I read it first, but Dick's depiction of wu — a slippery concept applied to handcrafted jewelry in the book, but applicable to whiskey here — has stayed with me for more than thirty years.

It wasn’t indignation over the decision to dilute the whiskey or even anger, really, I felt. Rather, it was sadness. Another layer on our ever-thickening patina of loss. True, Americans have experienced great gains in recent decades in fields such as medicine, technology, and publishing. But we have suffered a concomitant erosion of our greatness. Heroes once idolized have been exposed as flawed — sometimes deeply flawed — humans; OJ Simpson, Lance Armstrong, Joe Paterno, John F. Kennedy, Michael Vick. Endless obstructionist caviling among our politicians have led many to despair that we will ever be better off than our parents.

Our entertainment has grown recursive; witness the remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Arthur, The Karate Kid, or Gus Van Sant's scene-by-scene reshoot of Pyscho, movies that did not need to be remade, that arguably should not have been remade, that do not leave the world a better place in their passing. Our homes, by and large, are not built as well as those of a hundred years ago. On it goes. NASA's space program: gutted. New Orleans: flooded and nearly lost to us. The lunacy of creationism taught as fact to defenseless children who will be unable to compete for jobs as adults because they simply will not understand how the natural world works as well as their grandparents did.

Into this morass steps Maker's Mark with another assault on our faith in the goodness of humanity. And why? Why reduce the proof of this iconic whiskey? Profit. Global thirst for American whiskey has grown steadily in recent years and supply has not consistently kept pace with demand. Maker's in particular has experienced shortages, despite a 2012 expansion that increased production capacity by some 45%. Watering the whiskey was seen as a way to increase almost instantaneously the available inventory by 6%.

Deplorable things happen. Every day. Drove my Chevy to the levee and all that. But it's not all odious Kardashians, pedophile priests, and watered down whiskey. Not even close. There are good things as well. Whether it's the residuum of my midwest upbringing or a Catholic education that drives me to be what the Jesuits dubbed a man for others, I choose to spend time making and pursuing things that make the world better. As the California designer Mike Monteiro writes in Design in a Job, "[Y]ou are responsible for what you put into the world...and you can only stand as proud of the work as its benefit to society entitles you to." Amen, brother. Whether it's websites or whiskey, we shoulder a moral responsibility for what we bring into the world.

For the past twenty years or so, there's usually been a bottle of Maker's knocking around the house, but when Samuels made his initial announcement, my thought simply was to abandon the label quietly. No point in making a fuss. I'd never tasted the lower-proof version and the erosion of quality is arguable. We were assured the taste was nearly identical. That was beside the point. For decades, Maker's has presented itself using the language of heritage, tradition, and craftsmanship, a brand — a family — hitched to the yoke of history. Through it all, that squat bottle with its red wax top remained unchanged. The trope of Maker's as custodian to an unbroken legacy of quality suffuses marketing materials, bottle design, and even the grounds of the distillery itself which in 1980 was declared a National Historic Landmark. Your haircut, your president, and your wife may change, but Maker's would always be Maker's.

Until the day it wasn't, the day we were told it was to be cheapened for the masses. And that brings us back to Dick's novel. In The Man in the High Castle, Robert Childan, a dealer in historic Americana — Colt revolvers, Buffalo Bill's head in a jar, Civil War recruitment posters and the like — has presented a piece of modern American jewelry to Paul Kasoura, a wealthy young Japanese civilian newly stationed in occupied San Francisco. Kasoura secretly laughs at Childan for presuming to present such a piece, but soon develops an unexpected attraction to it.

"Here is a piece of metal which has been melted until it has become shapeless. It represents nothing. Nor does it have design, of any intentional sort. It is merely amorphous. One might say, it is mere content, deprived of form.”

 He goes on.

“Yet,” Paul said, “I have for several days now inspected it, and for no logical reason I feel a certain emotional fondness. Why is that? I may ask. I do not even now project into this blob, as in psychological German tests, my own psyche. I still see no shapes or forms. But it somehow partakes of Tao. You see?” He motioned Childan over. “It is balanced. The forces within this piece are stabilized. At rest. So to speak, this object has made its peace with the universe. It has separated from it and hence has managed to come to homeostasis.”

“It does not have wabi,” Paul said, “nor could it ever. But—” He touched the pin with his nail. “Robert, this object has wu.”

Wu, Dick tells us though Kasoura, is a quality that allows us to experience a tranquility associated with holy things. It is not necessarily apparent, even to its maker who may recognize only that the object satisfies, that it is complete. By contemplating such things, we gain wu ourselves. Kasoura is profoundly moved by it. With subtle discomfort, he informs Childan that an associate wishes to replicate the piece in plastic or base metal — tens of thousands of units — for sale to the poor and superstitious in Latin America and Asia. The deal, he confirms, would be worth a great deal of money. “What about wu?” Childan asks. “Will that remain in the pieces?”

Kasoura is silent, but we know the answer. It will not.

Childan could take one of two paths. One could make him immensely wealthy. The other is less clear. He seizes the decision to meet the exporter. Then, in a moment of clarity, he realizes the trap.

Whole affair a cruel dismissal of American efforts, taking place before his eyes. Cynicism, but God forbid, he had swallowed hook, line and sinker. Got me to agree, step by step, led me along the garden path to this conclusion: products of American hands good for nothing but to be models for junky good-luck charms.

Which path does Childan take? Read the book.

Maker's Mark, however, made the honorable choice. Chairman emeritus Bill Samuels, Jr. joined Rob Samuels in a conference call to confirm that fans' protestations were heard loud and clear. Geoffrey Kleinman relates their conversation here at DrinkSpirits.com and confirms that, after just a few days of online furore, the whisky will return at 90 proof.

Well, I'll be damned. Turns out there's room on my shelf for Maker's after all. And if, from time to time, it's not available, that's ok.

Goes well with:

• Mike Monteiro's 2012 Design is a Job is ostensibly selling design for web designers, but it's a practical little manual for creative types of all stripes — and those of us who work with them.
• We also disdain watered down bacon. Maynard Davies aims to show how bacon was done the old way. 
• Don't know Dick? You may know more than you think. His stories have been made into movies such as Minority Report, Blade Runner, Total Recall, and A Scanner Darkly. Pick up a copy of The Man in the High Castle at your neighborhood bookstore or online here. 
• Got a thing for Dick? You may also enjoy these Charles Bukowski postal stamps. 
• David Toczko's 2012 book, The Ambassador of Bourbon: Maker's Mark and the Rebirth of America's Native Spirit, presents over 250 photos of the Maker's Mark distillery, including fermenting mash, barrels in the rickhouse, hand-dipping of the those red wax seals, and some archival material. Introduction by Bill Samuels, Jr. and foreword by Rob Samuels. Pick up a copy here. 

Haggis Recipes

A 2003 survey suggested 

that a third of US visitors to Scotland 

believed the haggis 

was an animal. 

Nearly a quarter thought 

they could 
catch 
one.

 ~ Jon Kelly

BBC News Magazine

“Of all offal,” writes Anissa Helou, “lungs are perhaps the least interesting gastronomically.” Helou’s Offal: The Fifth Quarter, is devoted to preparations of those “variety” meats such as lamb’s tongue, pig trotters, oxtail, and, yes, sheep and pig lungs now coming back to vogue, as they do in times of economic turmoil. Well. Lungs may take a bit more getting used to than some other cuts.

Not, however, for legions of Scots and Scottish Americans who mark Burns Night — January 25th — as one of the primary occasions for dishing forth haggis, the lead into any proper Burns Supper celebrating the life and poetry of the 18th century poet Robert Burns. Haggis is an unusual bit of Scots charcuterie that is both a bit of a joke among outsiders and a point of national pride. Traditionally, sheep’s lungs provide the bulk of protein, though heart and liver are also in the mix. Mixed with onions, oatmeal, and spices, the ground meats are stuffed into a stomach and simmered for hours.

While it enjoys a degree of popularity in Scotland (and, increasingly, England and Wales), authentic Scottish haggis is banned in the United States. It’s the lungs, you see. According to a recent piece in BBC News Magazine, US food safety officials regard lungs as “inedible.” Americans craving a bit of haggis can either try smuggling some in (not advised), opt for a domestic lung-free version (see below), or take a DIY approach and make it at home.

For those who want to tackle this "great chieftain o' the pudding-race" themselves, here are two haggis recipes. The first is from Anissa Helou who lifts it from F. Marian McNeill’s The Scots Kitchen. Helou reports that one could use bone marrow rather than suet but advises that doing so requires the cooking time to be doubled.

Haggis #1

 1 sheep's pluck (heart, lungs and liver)
250g minced beef suet
2 medium onions, finely chopped
250g coarse oatmeal, toasted in a moderate oven for about 30 minutes
Good pinch cayenne pepper
¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg
2 teaspoons dried herbs
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 large sheep's stomach, cleaned very well
300ml milk 

Prepare the lungs (see below) and discard the windpipe. Place in a large saucepan, together with the heart and liver. Cover with water and place over medium heat. As the water comes to the boil, skim it clean and boil gently for 1½ hours, or until completely tender. Remove the pluck from the pan. Trim away all gristle and nerves and chop them very fine. Strain and reserve the cooking liquid. 

Put the chopped pluck in a large mixing bowl. Add the suet (or chopped bone marrow, if you are using it, chopped onions and toasted oatmeal. Add the cayenne pepper, nutmeg and dried herbs. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Mix well, adding enough of the pluck's cooking liquid to have a smooth mixture. The mixture should be highly seasoned.  

Spoon the mixture into the sheep's stomach until it is three-quarters full. Sew the opening and place in a large pot. Cover with water. Add the milk. Place over a medium heat. As soon as the stomach swells up, prick it in several places, then reduce the hear and simmer for 3 hours, adding boiling water to cover if the water level goes below the stomach.
Serve very hot.

Helou’s method for preparing lungs: Rinse the lungs well under cold water. Put in a saucepan and cover with water. Add a 4" cinnamon stick and salt to taste and place over a medium-high heat. As the water comes to the boil, skim it clean. Then cover and cook for 40-45 minutes, or until the meat is done.

The second haggis version is one of two offered by British bacon curer Maynard Davies in his essential Manual of a Traditional BaconCurer. Although Davies’ recipe also calls for a sheep’s pluck (its combined heart, lungs, and liver), he suggests preparing it without the lungs. “Some manufacturers,” he reports, “put lights [lungs] and rinds into haggis but I am not a big believer in that. I say, put the best in and get the best price.” Lungs, no lungs: your call. 

Haggis #2 

Ingredients 

5 lb sheep's liver, hearts and tongues
1 lb beef suet
3 lb oatmeal
2 Spanish onions 

Seasoning 

3oz fine salt
1 oz white pepper
1½ pints of stock
Juice of one lemon 

Method

Put a sheep's or lamb's stomach in a strong solution of salt water to cleanse. Turn inside out and make sure it is very clean. After 30 minutes throw the water away and repeat the process — cleanliness must be paramount in these preparations. Clean the liver by placing it in a strong solution of salt water; this will remove any blood clots and debris. When clean, take out the liver and remove all the sinews; repeat this process with the tongue. 

Boil the liver, tongues and other oddments. Keep the water from the boiler for your stock. When cooked, mince all the meat ingredients on a medium grid. Mince the suet on a fine grid: add a small amount of flour so that the suet does not stick to the grid. 

Now put the oatmeal into a large container. Mix the oatmeal with the stock left from the cooked meat; mix into a fine paste and place in your bowl chopper. 

Add the minced meats and finely minced onions. Add the suet and spread this evenly in the bowl chopper. Lastly, add the seasoning, spreading this evenly over the surface. Turn in the bowl chopper until the mix is of a fine consistency; add more seasoning if necessary until the desired taste is reached. 

Check the stomach before stuffing to make sure it is well cleaned. Do not over-fill — fill three-quarters full to take into account expansion. Make sure the top is tied with a good knot; sometimes it is necessary to sew the stomach to close it. 

Now place the haggis in the boiler and cook gently for 21/2-3 hours, at no hotter than 180°F. Any hotter and the haggis will burst. To check that they are adequately cooked, use a needle and prick one of them — the needle should come out clean if the haggis is well cooked.

It is best to remove the haggis from the boiler using a sieve. Place the haggis on trays, leaving a space between them to cool. Place in the fridge when cooled.

Goes well with:

• The offal truth about American haggis, Jon Kelly’s piece for BBC News Magazine
• Craving a bit of haggis for Burns Night or the next hogmanay? W.A. Beans of Bangor, Maine makes a domestic, lung-free, version for the American market in 1-, 2-, and 5-pound doses. 
• A revised, expanded edition of Offal: The Fifth Quarter is available here. 
• How about some Scotch whisky to go with that?

Crispy Moonshine Onion Rings

In Charred & Scruffed, his 2012 book on otherwise new grilling techniques, restaurateur and barbecue enthusiast Adam Perry Lang leverages an old trick — folding liquor into flour-based batter or dough — to yield flaky pastries and batters. After our recent turkey deep-frying, we had plenty of peanut oil around, so I decided to put his recipe for "moonshine" onion rings to the test.

Alcohol in pastries is nothing new. We’ve seen, for instance, that Polish Mardi Gras doughnuts known as paczki are sometimes made with vodka and pie crust recipes using vodka have been floating around for years. It’s not there as a flavoring or to get eaters drunk; vodka can discourage gluten formation in pastries, lending a crisp and flaky texture.

Lang is co-owner of the Original Moonshine brand which is why he specifies it but, as we all know, isn't actual moonshine. Not a value judgement; just a statement of fact. If you have some, use it. If not, you can easily substitute vodka, genuine moonshine, home-distilled neutral spirits, or any one of the lighter "white" whiskeys on the market. You can use mature whiskeys or even brandies — just be aware that they'll impart flavor you may not want in your onion rings.

The verdict? Yep; they are crispy and tasty. Break out the ketchup, malt vinegar, and aioli. Just be sure to eat these little buggers while they're hot because even when they're crispy, cold onion rings are best left for dogs and stoners.

Crispy Moonshine Onion Rings 

8 cups peanut oil
3 large Spanish onions cut into ½”-thick slices and separated into rings
1 cup milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons sea or kosher salt
plus more for sprinkling
2 teaspoons freshly ground
black pepper

Batter
4 large egg whites
1 c Original Moonshine, clear corn whiskey, or vodka
2 c cornstarch
2 tsp sea or kosher salt
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp cayenne pepper
About 4 cups panko crumbs

Heat the oil to 350°F in an 8-quart pot. Meanwhile, put the onions in a large bowl and pour the milk over them to moisten them; drain.

Put the flour in a large sealable plastic bag, add the salt and pepper, and shake to mix. Working in batches, add the drained onion slices to the flour, seal the bag, and shake vigorously to coat the slices, then spread on a baking sheet.

For the batter, whip the egg whites to soft peaks in a large bowl. Fold in the moonshine. Sift the cornstarch, salt, black pepper, and cayenne over the egg whites and fold in gently.
Spread the panko crumbs evenly on a baking sheet. Line another baking sheet with paper towels. 

Working in batches, add the onion rings to the batter, then, one at a time, toss onto the panko crumbs and flip over to coat with crumbs; repeat until you have filled the baking sheet with a generously spaced layer of onions. 

One by one, drop the coated onions into the hot oil, without crowding, and cook until golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove with a spider or slotted spoon, transfer to the lined baking sheet to drain briefly, and sprinkle with salt, then transfer to a mesh cooling rack (this will prevent the onion rings from becoming soggy). Repeat with the remaining onion rings and serve.

Adam Perry Lang (2012)
Charred & Scruffed: Bold New Techniques for Explosive Flavor on and off the Grill
280 pages (paperback)
Artisan
ISBN: 1579654657
$24.95

Goes well with:

• Even the Ten Dollar Whore Sneered at Me — make-believe moonshines and white whiskeys have become darlings of distillers and drinkers alike in the last six years, but it wasn't that long ago in New Orleans that they could raise another response entirely.
• It's a Nice Day for a White Whiskey — including video of newbies trying to drink the stuff
• Just Some Ice Cubes, My Good Man — white whiskey at New York's 21 Club.

Bad Design is Everywhere, Even Cookbooks

You know, I hear they was really tiny guys.

~  Napoleon Bonapart (Ian Holm)

Time Bandits

Lebanese rice; once you find it, it's not there

This morning, I had to break out an old dome magnifier to read the tiny font on Salma Hage's The Lebanese Kitchen (Phaidon, 2012). Partly this is my middle-aged eyes needing a boost to read, but partly it's just ridiculously tiny font. How tiny? That "a" in "Lebanese rice" on the photo of the book's index is 1 millimeter high — about a 3-point font for you designers. To put it in perspective, that's smaller than a single, tiny coriander seed. Maybe the small font is a diversion from lax indexing (Lebanese rice is actually on page 332, not 334 as indicated).

Lilliputian font wouldn't be an issue on a tablet like the iPad or its competitors. Reading on a tablet can be a great experience for so many reasons. A mundane point I particularly like is the ability to change font size as desired; quite literally, font size there is as arbitrary as it is irrelevant. Too small? Make it big. Too big? Make it small. Don't like that font? Change it to another style entirely. But books — printed books — are ancient technology; one cannot double-tap the page to bring up a definition or shrink the image by squeezing together thumb and forefinger. Once it's printed, it's printed and there's no changing it. One does not simply make the font bigger or re-flow the copy on a printed page; it's locked.

Kona Stout Ice Cream ingredients

Jeni Britton Bauer's editing and design team, you're all culpable here, too. The content of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home (Artisan 2011) is fine, but its design is among the worst of otherwise serious contemporary cookbooks in my collection. The light hues of blue, green, tangerine, purple, and pink of the ingredient lists bleed into light backgrounds. Cute? Arguably. It's clean and light, almost hygienically precise — weighty subliminal elements when dealing with dairy. More to the point, those ingredient lists are all but illegible compared to larger, darker words on the same page. The subtext here is that ice cream doesn't matter; stories about ice cream do. Before I thought to use the dome magnifier on this one as well, I had to take a picture of a recipe with my smart phone, access the photo on my iPad's photo stream, use a photo editing app to sharpen the photo, increase the contrast, and enlarge it right up to the point where the letters started to pixilate — then back off a hair — simply so I could read each one. Understand: I've never had to do with with another book and I really like ice cream.

A plea, then, for book designers and publishers; if something is worth putting in the book, it's worth doing it right. Not everyone has fancy glass magnifying domes or the gimlet eyes of a 23-year old designer. Don't give the mechanics such short shrift; make indicies, instructions, and ingredients lists as legible as head notes, introductions, and forewords.

Goes well with:

• Know who has a great index? C. Anne Wilson in her distilling history, Water of Life.
• The dome magnifier above came with my copy of The Compact Oxford English Dictionary. Decent models can be found online for under $50. Here's a sampling. 
• Speaking of short shrift and completely off-topic: one of the best lines about ugly kids remains "I was so ugly as a child that my parents put me in dark corner and fed me with a slingshot." 

Truffled Rum and (Fine) Champagne Punch

[Edit later that same morning: see Said's answer (a painfully obvious one) to my question in the comments section below. In this case, "fine" Champagne is not sparkling wine, but brandy.] 

At nearly 1,300 pages and weighing over six pounds, my copy of Ali-Bab’s Gastronomie Pratique is a beast. Despite the author’s name, it is not a Persian text; it’s French. Ali-Bab was the pseudonym of Henri Babinski (1855-1931), a French mining engineer who was an amateur avid cook as well. His culinary encyclopedia was first published in 1907 with a modest 314 pages, but was expanded over subsequent editions. My beastly edition is the 9th from 1981. Sometime between the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, a recipe for truffled rum and Champagne punch — punch truffé — slipped in.

The recipe is problematic and I’m giving it here partly as a curiosity. I use truffles when they are in season, but I’m not as lavish in my use of them as Babinski seems to have been. More to the point, I think the recipe is promising but doesn’t work as written; in particular, the order of adding rum and Champagne seems inverted. My French is self-taught and I’d like someone else to take a run at a translation.

The problem, as I see it, is that a mix of sugar, sparkling wine, and nutmeg won't catch fire. BUT — as anyone who's been around my house for Thanksgiving can attest — a mix of rum, sugar, and nutmeg will, when warmed, catch alight. I think the way to fix this is simply that: change the position of rum and Champagne, then proceed as directed.

Or am I missing something? Here’s the original followed by my translation. Anyone — francophiles, French bartenders, punch enthusiasts — want to have a go at it? [See comments section]

Punch truffé (Babinski)

Pour six à huit personnes, prenez:  

350 grammes de fine champagne,
350 grammes de vieux rhum,
250 grammes de sucre,
120 grammes de vin de Malaga,
1 belle trufle noire du Périgord,
1 citron,
¼ noix muscade. 

Mettez dans un bol à punch la fine champagne, la muscade et le sucre, faites flamber, mélangez bien. Lorsque le sucre sera dissous, ajoutez le rhum et le jus du citron ; activez la flamme. En meme temps, faites cuire la truffe dans le malaga, retirez-la, puis ajoutez le malaga au melange rhum et fine champagne.

Coupez la truffe en tranches minces, metiez une tranche dans chaque verre de punch et servez chaud.

 And mine:

Truffled Punch (Rowley)

For six to eight people, take:

350 grams of fine champagne,
350 grams of old rum,
250 grams of sugar, 120 grams of Malaga wine,
One beautiful black Périgord truffle,
1 lemon,
¼ nutmeg.

Put the fine champagne [see comments section], nutmeg, and sugar in a punch bowl, set alight, mix well. When the sugar has dissolved, add the rum and lemon juice; activate the flame. At the same time, cook the truffle in Malaga, remove it, then add the rum mixture to the Malaga and champagne.

Cut the truffle into thin slices, put a slice in each glass punch, and serve hot.

Goes well with: 

• More about Babinski and his book. An English version of Gastronomie Pratique was printed in 1974 as The Encyclopedia of Practical Gastronomy. Peter Herzmann has several copies of this book, but doesn’t care for that one.
• Another Henri — this one Henri Charpentier — gave a recipe for Eggs, William S. Burroughs in his privately published 1945 Food and Finesse: The Bride's Bible. Here's the recipe.
• Speaking of flames and punch, San Francisco barman Martin Cate made a hell of a show at Tiki Oasis a few years back with fire and rum. The tale of the punch so big it had to be made in a koi pond is here. 

Jesus Juice Sorbet

For decades, Spaniards have indulged in iced calimocha, a simple drink that is about as easy as an on-the-go drinker could want: equal parts red wine and Coca Cola. Nobody is about to win any bartending awards with this thing, but what it lacks in sophistication, it makes up for in tastiness — sweet, slightly bitter, and about 7% alcohol, but it's easy to take along to the beach, a picnic, or a fútbol game.

The drink is not unique to Spain and it travels under a number of names wherever one finds wine and soda. American wine coolers, for instance, clearly are in the same family. In fact, if you think of it as a sort of bare-bones, stripped-down, single-chromosome sangria, calimocha's flexibility becomes manifest.

Jake Godby and Sean Vahey, founders of Humphrey Slocombe ice cream shop in San Francisco, seem to have recognized this and have given the wine-and-cola combo a Neverland twist as a sorbet. "Michael Jackson died suddenly on the afternoon of Thursday, June 25, 2009," they write in Humphrey Slocombe Ice Cream Book. "Before his corpse was cold and the Botox wore off, we were working on a new flavor to pay tribute to the fallen icon." Jesus Juice — reports vary on the variety of wine and how, precisely, soda was incorporated — was Jackson's name for the concoction of wine and soda he favored around the ranch.

For the end of summer when nights are cool enough for blankets, but the days are hot as blazes, here's Godby and Vahey's recipe for Jesus Juice sorbet. The duo caution, however, that it may cause inappropriate touching.

Jesus Juice Sorbet

1 cup sugar 
1 cup water 
1 cinnamon stick 
2 cups cola [Mexican Coke]
1 cup good-quality dry red wine 
2 Tbl red wine vinegar 
1 tsp salt  

In a large, heavy-bottomed, nonreactive saucepan over medium heat, combine the sugar and water and stir to dissolve the sugar. Drop in the cinnamon stick and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

Stir in the cola, wine, vinegar, and salt and remove from the heat. Let cool completely, then cover the bowl tightly and chill in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour or preferably overnight. When you are ready to freeze the mixture, take out the cinnamon stick, transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker, and spin according to the manufacturer's instructions. Finish freezing in freezer. Stare approvingly at the Man in the Mirror. Eat immediately, or transfer to an airtight container, cover, and freeze for up to 1 week.

Jake Godby and Sean Vahey (2012)
Humphrey Slocombe Ice Cream Book
144 pages (paperback)
Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1452104689
$19.95

Goes well with:

• Gift of the Negi. Wine-and-cola is not unlike the 19th-century port wine concoction known as the Negus. Recipes here include one for children's parties from Isabella Beeton (Jackson would approve, I'm sure), a 38-gallon Negus made for England's King George IV, and (no surprise) an effervescing Negus made with soda water. Some things never get old...