Cider Week 2012

I don't go for bullshit holidays. Nobody in my house has time for No Socks Day, National High Five Day, or Absinthe Drip Day. That's not to say I always wear socks or would snub anyone who was kind enough to offer me an absinthe drip. It's just that devoting a whole day for made-up, marketing-driven advertising and awareness campaigns is, well, bullshit.

A whole week for cider, though? That's a different story.

Next month's Cider Week gets a preview at New York's Astor Center with Cider Salon tomorrow evening, September 18. The event — with over a dozen producers offering their hard ciders — is a benefit for Glynwood’s Apple Project and Cider Week NY. Details for the salon are here, but if one day is too short a notice, check out the rest of the schedule for October 12-21, 2012.

Goes well with:

• Where one finds hard cider, apple spirits can't be far away. America's current apple spirits scene is a lot more lively than applejack. From absinthe to cider royal, check out what today's distillers are doing with apples.
• It's not fermented, but boiled cider is a great old-fashioned syrup to have around. The recipe is: apple cider. Oh, and cooking. Here's how. 
• Once you've made a batch of boiled cider, slip it some rum and brandy for a tiki Halloween punch.

A Mikey Wild Easter

An austere morning here at the Forge: hot tea, a single small biscuit, and catching up on the news of the world while the rest of the house slumbers. There will be no egg hunt, no chocolate bunnies, no jelly beans, no squeals of young children. It's perfect.

While reading the latest from Germany, I suddenly remembered (for this is how my parenthetical mind works) a box of drawings I have from Philadelphia's punk rock legend, Mikey Wild. When I wrote about his death almost a year ago, I wrote about his drawings in particular:

Almost childlike in their simplicity, Mikey's drawings could be also dark and revealed an impish sense of humor. He sold the drawings on paper for as little as a dollar each or as much as ten. I have a folder stuffed with them.

Turns out that I have not merely a folder stuffed with them. When moving to our new house, I discovered a box labeled Michel Sauvage. What the hell was this? On opening the box, I was faced with a drawing of Jesus drinking moonshine and realized, as I flipped through all the loose pages underneath, that I'd come across a forgotten trove of his drawings.

For this Easter morn, I offer two additional Mikey Wild drawings: The White Jesus Fighting the Black Jesus and The White Easter Bunny Fighting the White Easter Bunny. Hey, that's how Mikey titled them. I like that there may be multiple Easter bunnies duking it out for supremacy. Likewise, a multiplicity of pugilistic Jesuses opens entirely new vistas of possibility. And why are they fighting? No idea. Knowing Mikey, though, I wouldn't read any racist angles into it. I'd venture that black/white, good/bad, and, yes, even white/white are simple binary oppositions — why wouldn't they fight?

Goes well with:
Rabbit à l’Epicurienne, an Easter Treat— from last Easter, a Victorian bunny treat from Agnes B. Marshall. Who's Marshall? She's just the one who was writing about making and using ice cream cones almost two decades before their supposed invention at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and who suggested using liquid oxygen at making ice cream at the table generations before anyone heard the term molecular gastronomy. 

Fastest Thanksgiving Shopping Ever

Home cooks and caterers know any number of tricks to sidestepping grocery crowds on the days leading up to Thanksgiving. They may, for instance, make sure all the staples are stocked well before the week of gluttony. They might get their goods delivered. Or they'll shop early in the morning while shelves are freshly stocked. But my favorite, no-fail method to get in and out of a market in the shortest time possible around Thanksgiving is less obvious. 

Shop where people don't celebrate Thanksgiving.

What the French toast? Who doesn't celebrate Turkey Day? That's downright anti-American...

Well, no. Not hardly.

In my rounds of San Diego food shopping, I hit several markets regularly that serve immigrant communities: Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, North African, Polish, German, Korean, Middle Eastern, and more. Turns out, around here, anyway, that recent immigrants simply haven't quite gotten the hang of Thanksgiving yet. Especially if the regular clientele's native language isn't English, German, or some other European tongue, the fourth Thursday of November is these markets is just...Thursday.

And what better time than a weekday to slip into a store, grab a few things you need, and get on your way quickly? Parking is no problem and crowds are practically non-existent. Produce and spices in particular can be very cheap. Who knows? You might be inspired to make something you hadn't considered before.

I've already got everything we need for tomorrow. There will be punch, pie, and a huge pot of short rib chili. Not traditional, but, then, I've never been a stickler for tradition.

Caveat: don't rely on this scheme at Christmastime. Even non-Christians come out in force to shop and eat for that one.

Dispatching Zombies for Halloween

They might not seem like much one at a time.

But in a group, all riled up and hungry?

Man, you 

watch 

your

ass.

~ Morgan to Rick Grimes

The Walking Dead

Halloween candles from Chicago's P.O.S.H.

Last Thursday, I bought candy — bags of candy — for tonight’s trick or treaters. We won’t get very many visitors, I know (there just aren’t that many young kids in our neighborhood), so I expected to have leftovers. What I didn’t expect was that the boys would devour nearly half the stash before Halloween. Yeah, ok, I may’ve helped.

Treats the neighborhood kids won’t be getting tonight, though, are our zombies. Seriously, now; it’s Halloween. What else are we gonna drink? After the recipe, check out Blair Reynolds of the Oregon Bartenders' Guild crank out a slightly tweaked version.

First, though, from Beachbum Berry’s Tiki+ app, here’s Don the Beachcomber’s midcentury version of this potent tiki classic. And a parting word of warning. As Morgan says above, these might not seem like much one at a time, but a bunch of them? Watch your ass.

Don the Beachcomber’s 1950 Zombie

1 oz lime juice
1 oz lemon juice
1 oz unsweetened pineapple juice
1 oz passion fruit syrup
1 oz gold Puerto Rican rum
1 oz white Puerto Rican rum
1 oz 151 Demerara rum
1 teaspoon brown sugar syrup
dash Angostura bitters
sprig of mint

Shake well with lots of crushed ice, pour into a tall glass. Garnish with mint sprig.

Kruidnoten Liqueur, A Genever Recipe

Hiram Walker makes a gingerbread liqueur, biscotti-flavored cordial is not unheard of, and in his The Joy of Mixology Gaz Regan gives a recipe for a Jägermeister-spiked Oatmeal Cookie cocktail. Americans, though, simply don’t make cookie-flavored cocktails and cordials at home. Not often, anyway.

Fitting then, that the Dutch — who, after all, ran the first commercial still in America in the 17th century and gave us our word cookie — have a recipe combining the two. In a post last month, Lizet Kruyff relates a recipe for kruidnotenlikeur from Maak van de noot een deugd (roughly “Make a virtue out of nothing”), a new Dutch cookbook devoted entirely to cooking with kruidnoten.

Kruidnoten are tiny gingerbread cookies, cousins to the Christmastime specialty peppernuts. A direct translation is "spice nuts" but "nuts" refers to their diminutive size; they are no more likely to contain nuts than are peppernuts (or doughnuts, for that matter). Typical spices in the little cookies include ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, white pepper, cloves, and coriander, but such things vary with the baker.

With the help of Renée de Vries, an internet specialist at the University of Amsterdam, I tracked down online excerpts from the book. Why? Well, because Kruyff’s blog calls for 12 liters of genever, a Dutch spirit enjoying a modest renaissance in the US. Even counting my personal stash of current and vintage bottlings, there are probably not 12 liters of the stuff in our entire neighborhood. Plus only 500 grams of sugar to make a cordial with that much liquor? Something is not right. A look at the original reveals that her "12" liters is actually "1/2" liter. Big difference.

My somewhat loose and streamlined translation follows. For sticklers, see the original recipe below. Kruyff suggests both using white rum as an optional base spirit and, if you're so inclined, adding a splash of cream after the maceration. The original recipe notes that you can use cane sugar for a "warmer" taste and darker color.

Kruidnoten Liqueur

1/2 liter jonge genever or vodka
3 handsful of kruidnoten
200ml water
500 grams of cane sugar

Push the kruidnoten through the bottle's opening. Put the bottle away for about six weeks in a dark closet. Give the bottle a shake now and then to show it who's boss and so that the flavors can blend. Do not worry if it looks nasty.

After six or seven weeks, strain through cheesecloth or a clean tea towel into another bottle. Do this again if you doubt whether particles remain.

Make the syrup. Put the sugar and water in a saucepan with a thick bottom. Bring to the boil, stirring. Stir until all sugar is dissolved. Let cool, mix with the kruidnoten infusion and pour into a pretty bottle.

Proost!

Karin Sitalsing, Marije Sietsma en Helga de Graaf (2011)
Maak van de noot een deugd: koken met kruidnoten
120 pages (hardback)
Loopvis
ISBN: 9081764802
€ 17,95

Plugged For Your Pleasure: The Melon-Aged Cocktail

Barrel-aged cocktails are all the rage these days in certain circles and I can attest that some of them are hands-down delicious. But consider for a moment the melon-aged cocktail. Or is it the cocktail-aged melon? Either way, it's a winner.

From the highbrow (Charentais melons splashed with port wine) to the low (tailgate watermelons spiked with whatever liquor is handy), alcohol and melons have long enjoyed cozy relations. Since by trade and inclination, I travel in both rarefied and more earthy circles, I combined them recently in the form of a simple backyard watermelon infused with fancy punch. Admittedly, the aging in this case is simply overnight, but it's enough to give the alcohol a smoother, vaguely sweeter, edge.

And not just any punch: arrack punch, a funky, rum-heavy concoction once common in the flowing bowls of previous centuries, but little seen in the last 80 years. There's no reason, however, that you couldn't spike a watermelon with a pre-made cocktail: say, 8-12 ounces for a 10-pound melon. An enormous margarita, perhaps, or if you favor tarter tastes, a massive Negroni.

Until recently, the primary ingredient for the punch I chose — Batavia arrack — was no longer available in the United States. However, thanks to importer Eric Seed at Haus Alpenz, the 100 proof Indonesian spirit made of fermented rice and molasses is once more available. Combined with Jamaican rum, lime, sugar, and tea, it's just the thing to add a lightly boozy and slightly Baroque touch to Independence Day cookouts.

Arrack Punched Watermelon

One 10-11lb watermelon
6-10 oz of arrack punch

For this preparation, cut a round hole in the top of a chilled watermelon. Why round? Because a square hole may sometimes lead to cracks spreading out from its corners. Gently remove the plug and trim away most of the red flesh from its interior. Next, remove a small amount of flesh from the melon itself: just a small amount, enough to make a small cavity to hold liquor as it seeps into the flesh.

Then slowly pour liquor into the hole. My 11-lb melon easily absorbed one cup (250ml) of punch. It may help to pour in 2 ounces at a time, wait until that is absorbed, then add more until the melon just can't take any more. You may also speed the process by gently inserting a bamboo skewer at various angles into the flash — though be careful not to puncture the rind at any point. It seems obvious, but: leaks. Replace the round plug and keep in the refrigerator until you're ready to serve.

Note that the purpose of this particular melon is not to get you staggeringly drunk, but rather to showcase complementary tastes. After all, it's less than an ounce of punch for each pound of melon. If the staggers is what you after, consider straight rum, vodka, tequila, or Confederate chloroform. Any way you slice it, you're on your own.

Confederate chloroform? Why, it's just moonshine. We get that around here, too.

Happy Halloween!

I'm not what you'd call a tiki carver by any stretch of the imagination. But with Halloween here and a load of pumpkins begging for the knife, I couldn't resist bringing a little South Seas fantasy to the traditional Jack-O-Lanterns.


Happy Halloween, ya'll.

With a tip of the hat to Trader Vic's Scorpion Bowl, here's a punch for just such a carving.

Skellington Bowl

6 oz fresh orange juice
5 ounces lemon juice
2 oz boiled cider
1 oz orgeat
.5 oz cinnamon syrup
6 ounces of light rum
1 oz brandy

Blend with two cups of crushed ice. Pour into the hollowed out pumpkin. Add ice cubes to fill, and insert 2 or 3 straws.

.