Hot Cider, Fortified with Spiced Butter and Rum

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

Good size pats for hot rum

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

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

Mixed Spice

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

Blend together and store in an airtight container. 

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

Ready to roll

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

Mixed Spice Butter 

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

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

]Now, then. The drink.

Hot Cider with Rum and Spiced Butter

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

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

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

Goes well with:

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

A Bit of Seed Cake

Knock around old American and English cookbooks and household manuscripts for any length of time and you’ll come across recipe after recipe for seed cake. Not poppy seed cake, mind you; that still has adherents. Rather, I mean a decidedly more old-fashioned seed cake, dating to at least the 17th century, in which the nutty, musty, vaguely anise-like smack of caraway infuses the whole thing.

Yeah, yeah. You’ve had caraway in rye bread, maybe sauerkraut, goulash, or some cheeses. It’s integral to the taste of a Reuben sandwich, but those are all savory. It’s out of place in a sweet, right? Look, if you hate all those things, then skip seed cake; it might be caraway itself you don’t like. But if you do like them and just had never given any thought to sweetness and caraway, give it a try in cake.

Not just any cake, though. Not fancy, multi-tiered, extravagantly decorated cakes. Simple. In fact, the old recipes are essentially pound cakes with a small amount of caraway tossed in. I can’t quite emphasize that enough: a small amount. Poppy seed cakes sometimes call for so much of the blue-black seeds that they look as if someone dropped slices into a cinder pile. A caraway seed cake, on the other hand, should have a light scattering of seeds (fruits, really, but we call them seeds) peeking out of each slice. A teaspoon — at most one and a half — is enough to flavor a three-pound cake.

When I made a loaf yesterday, I overcooked it a bit when I was pulled away by a phone call from a UK distiller — the edges are a bit crusty, but the interior remains moist. Keep a closer eye on your cake than I did mine. And maybe turn off the phone.

Hundreds of recipes are available from the past several centuries, but contemporary chef Fergus Henderson of the London restaurant St. John has got a bit of reputation for his version which he pairs with a glass of Madeira. Me? I take mine with hot black tea.

Seed Cake 

9 oz/260g soft unsalted butter
9 oz/260g caster sugar
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
5 eggs, beaten
11 oz flour, sieved
1 Tbl baking powder
¼ tsp salt
5 oz/150ml full-fat milk (or use 4 parts whole milk, one part heavy cream) 

Grease a 16 x 10 x 8cm loaf tin with butter and line the base and sides with baking parchment. 

Cream the butter, sugar and caraways together either with an electric mixer or in a bowl with a wooden spoon until they are white and fluffy. Gradually mix in the beaten eggs, adding them little by little to prevent curdling. Then sift in the flour and mix until incorporated. Lastly add the milk. 

Transfer the mixture to the prepared tin and bake in an oven preheated to 350°F/180°C/ for 45-50 minutes or until it is golden brown and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out

~ From Fergus Henderson and Justin Piers Gallatly (2007) 

  Beyond Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking Part II

Goes well with:

• Nigel Slater, another British writer, has a number of books out now. I've got UK editions of all of them. He's worth tracking down. Here was my introduction to his writing (and a recipe for chicken liver pâté). Why UK editions? When possible, I prefer them, especially since I use a combination of eyeballing ingredients and weighing them on a kitchen scale. American editions of books by metric-using authors, on the other hand, have such clunky, bizarre measurements: 2/3 cups plus 1 and one-half tablespoon of flour. What? Did...did you mean 100 grams? Intolerance for making things harder and more complicated might be a carryover from my science background.

Basic Pork Rub: A Working Recipe

I am breaking myself — slowly — of the habit of making sauces, pickles, syrups, bitters, and the like...then not recording the steps and ingredients. Until this year, I was particularly lax labeling the jars and bottles in our cabinets. “This pork rub is excellent,” I once thought to myself. “There’s no way I’d forget how to make this.” Pfft. Best pork rub I ever made sits unlabeled in one of the spice cabinets, its contents a mystery. Oh, I know 90% of what’s in it between memory and taste...but that last 10% is what makes it so good.

Never mind the handwriting;
rub this on your ribs and smoke 'em

Until I can recreate what I did with that particular rub, there’s plenty remaining of an earlier iteration. The recipe gets tweaked often; sometimes, it will include toasted cumin, more mustard powder, different chiles, smoked paprika, or whatever. I learned from my mistake, though; I scribbled down the recipe and tucked it into the mix. When I get it exactly right, I’ll print it and affix to the jar.

Until then, this is the working recipe for a rub I make for pork ribs and shoulders destined for the smoker. The result is toothsome and tender with a crackling “bark” helped along by the brown sugar in the spice mix.

The powdered lemon peel is a California twist. It's not a common flavor in the Kansas City barbecue of my youth, but its sharp/musty zing plays well with the chiles and garlic here. Make your own either by drying and pulverizing pith-free lemon peel or grab a jar from Penzey's. Or simply omit it if the idea is too frou frou for you.

Basic Pork Rub 

¼ cup each: paprika and ground black pepper
3 Tbl each: light brown sugar and garlic powder
2 Tbl kosher salt
1 Tbl each: mustard powder, onion powder, and ancho chile powder
1½ tsp cayenne chile
1 tsp dried, powdered lemon peel 

Mix together in a jar, seal, shake until thoroughly mixed. Keep in a cool, dark, dry place.

To use the rub, scatter it generously over the surfaces of ribs or shoulder (trimmed, brined, cleaned, or however else you like to prepare them), then smoke as you usually would.

Goes well with:

• Recipes for chef's salt from Hungarian chef Louis Szathmary and for Donnie's Spice Mix, a blend from Louisiana Chef Donald Link — which we use so often, I've simply labeled the jar  "Kitchen Spice" (as opposed to, I don't know, yard spice or car spice).

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]

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. 

Root Beer Cake

Root beer cake. Yeah, I know. Sounds like something Ernest Matthew Mickler would've praised. But I stumbled across a recipe for just such a thing while reading Andrew Carmellini's new book American Flavor and it struck a nostalgic chord. I've also been on soda and baking kicks lately as well as preparing to move (we bought a house this week), so anything that reduces the number of cans, bottles, and boxes from the kitchen larder or the liquor closets get boosted to the top of the to-cook, -drink, -make list.

When I said I'd made a root beer cake, the looks at home could only be described as nonplussed. If  I had described it as a dark spice cake or a moist cousin of German lebkuchen, the initial response might've been more enthusiastic. Turns out that the cake is very much like a spice cake, spiked with star anise, cardamom, nutmeg, lemons, and pepper. The top is covered with with spiced glaze flavored with some of the same spices.

Like a spice cake, it gets better on the second day. And the third. I'd make this for kids and to bring along on picnics, but, man, the doughnut potential here is so, so tempting.

A word of warning; the batter is very liquid. You might think something is amiss (especially since the measurements for the cake are odd). Not to worry; it comes out just fine.

From Andrew Carmellini's American Flavor, here's...

Root Beer Cake

The Cake

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, at room temperature, for the pan
1.5 cups plus 1 Tbl all-purpose flour
One 12-ounce bottle (1.5 cups) root beer
½ cup molasses
½ tsp plus 1/8 tsp baking soda
¾ cup dark brown sugar
¼ cup plus 2 Tbl vegetable oil
3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
One 1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated on a microplane or on the finest side of a box grater (1 tsp)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 ¾ tsp baking powder
1 ¼ tsp ground star anise
1 ½ tsp ground cardamom
½ whole nutmeg, grated (or 2 tsp ground nutmeg)
Finely grated zest of 2 lemons
1 tsp kosher salt
½ tsp fresh-ground black pepper

The Root Beer Glaze
¾ cup heavy cream
1 Tbl sassafras bark (or ½ tsp sassafras extract; see Note)
2 cups powdered sugar
Pinch of ground star anise
Pinch of ground cardamom
¼ tsp kosher salt
¼ whole nutmeg, grated (or about 1 tsp ground nutmeg)
Finely grated zest of ½ lemon


To Make the Cake

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Grease the bottom and sides of a 10-inch cake pan with some of the butter.

Cut out a piece of parchment paper so it fits closely into the bottom of the cake pan. Line the bottom of the pan with the parchment, and then grease the parchment with more butter.

Shake 1 tablespoon of the flour into the cake pan, and shake it around so it sticks to the butter. Tap out any excess flour that doesn't stick to the parchment or to the sides of the pan.

Pour the root beer and molasses into a deep medium-sized pot, and bring the mixture to a boil over high heat. (You need those high sides because the baking soda will froth up very high, and you don't want it to spill over! So make sure there's some meaningful space between the liquid and the top of the pot.)

Pull the pot off the heat and whisk in all the baking soda, so it froths up. Then put the pot right in the fridge to cool down a little.

While the root beer mix is cooling down, whisk the brown sugar, vegetable oil, granulated sugar, ginger, and vanilla extract together in a mixing bowl. The mixture will be a little chunky at this point.

Crack the egg into the bowl and whisk well. The egg is what makes everything come together smoothly: you should have a thick paste. Set this aside.

In another mixing bowl, combine rest of the flour with the baking powder, star anise, and cardamom. Grate in the nutmeg and lemon zest, and add the salt and pepper. Whisk everything together so it's well combined. Take the root beer mixture out of the fridge. Pour a third of the flour mixture into a large mixing bowl; pour in one-third of the root beer mixture, then one-third of the sugar paste. Whisk everything together slowly (so it doesn't splash everywhere), and then add another one-third of the flour, another one-third of the root beer, and so forth, until everything is combined in the bowl. (The mix doesn't need to be completely and smoothly combined until the last of the wet and dry mixtures are in the bowl.) You should have wet, almost liquid batter.

Pour the batter into the cake pan, put the pan on a cookie sheet (to catch drips and splashes), and put on the middle oven rack.

Bake the cake for 45 minutes without opening the oven at all (this cake will sink if you shake it up while it's baking). Check it: the cake should be high and dark brown, with a little bit of spring-back when you touch it (but not too much-it's a very moist cake), if it's not quite ready, rotate the pan and put it back in the oven for another 5 minutes before checking it again. The whole baking process shouldn't take longer than 55 minutes, even in a slow oven.

While the Cake is Baking, Make the Glaze

Whisk the cream and sassafras together in a small pot, and bring it up to a boil over medium-high heat. As soon as it boils, pull the mixture off the heat, pour it into a glass or ceramic container (something that won't crack from the heat), and put it in the fridge. Let the mixture cool for about 30 minutes while the sassafras steeps into the cream, so you have a nice root beer flavor.

In a mixing bowl, combine the powdered sugar, star anise, cardamom, and salt. Grate in the nutmeg and lemon zest, and whisk everything together.

Strain the cooled cream through a fine-mesh strain into a small mixing bowl (so the sassafras pieces don’t end up in the glaze).

Gently whisk ½ cup of the cream into the powdered sugar mixture, holding back the last 2 tablespoons see if you need it. If the mixture is dry and not coming together as a glaze, add more cream. Whisk the mixture well, until you have a shiny, thick liquid.

To Finish the Cake

When the cake is ready, pull it out of the oven and let it rest for about 5 minutes.

Flip the cake out of the pan onto a serving plate. Spread the glaze thickly on top of the warm cake with a spoon. The glaze will melt and drip down the sides as you slather it on.

You can serve the cake as soon as it's cooled to room temperature-but like all spice cakes, it's even better the day after you make it. Store it covered at room temperature.


Andrew Carmellini (2011)
American Flavor
336 pages (hardback)
Ecco
ISBN: 0061963291
$34.99

Goes well with:

• Drinking Cheerwine Like It's My Job. Root beer's all well and good, but I swear that there will come a day when a Cheerwine cake will cool on our kitchen counter. 
• My review of Andrew Schloss' new book Homemade Soda — and how my mom came to think there was a drive-by shooting in her dining room.
• My take on Brad Thomas Parsons' new book Bitters. It's because I make my own bitters, infusions, and extracts that I happened to have everything on the ingredient list for this cake.

Bookshelf: Bitters

It has become a cliché of modern bartending that bitters are to cocktails as salt is to soup. They are the seasoning, the ingredient that can turn merely acceptable drinks into stellar ones. Or, as one Filipino friend explained to another in a turn close to my heart, “Bitters are to cocktails as bay leaves are to adobo.” You may or may not be able to pinpoint the taste, but without it, everything has a certain flatness.

If you already make your own cocktail bitters, chances are that Brad Thomas Parsons’ recent book on the subject holds little new for you. On the other hand, if you’re just starting to dabble or don’t know where to begin, Bitters conveniently brings together a lot of material in one place. With no other bitters manual in print, one might even call it indispensable for the DIY cocktail enthusiast.

After some introductory remarks and history, Parsons dives into the meat of the matter with short profiles of some two dozen players in today’s bitters boom: Fee Brothers, Bittermans, The Bitter Truth, Dr. Adam Elmegirab’s Bitters, Bar Keep Bitters, Scrappy’s, and more. Not a bad lineup considering that a decade ago, Angostura, Fee Brothers, and Peychaud’s were the three remaining bitters producers that survived Prohibition. He includes recipes for thirteen bitters such as apple, orange, rhubarb, coffee-pecan, and root beer bitters. A substantial collection of cocktail recipes using bitters — more than half the book — rounds out the pages.

Parsons clearly has spent much time obsessing over bitters; he interviews appropriate authorities and booze pundits, he includes the right companies and products, and he hits the high points of history. He’s done his homework. Yet there’s a clumsiness about his writing. After going on for some length about sassafras, for instance, Parsons calls for using it in a recipe — but what part of the plant? The powdered leaves he writes about? The root he mentions? They are as different as ham and bacon. Or consider this entry under Snake Oil Bitters: “Not much is known about this lineup of Brooklyn bitters or their creator...” Really? That’s either lazy or disingenuous.

The passage that prompted me to bark out in disbelief, though, is this:

Once I’ve sized up a joint, I’ll ask the bartender, “Do you make your own bitters?” More often than not, the answer is yes.

Oh, come on. Laudable as making bitters is, I guarantee you that the vast majority of American bartenders do no such thing. I can only imagine that this is a sampling error stemming from Parsons’ preference for places with what he deems “serious bar programs.” I like those places, too, but they're far from the only game in town.

While there are welcome lists of bittering and flavoring agents, there's no attempt to give them Linnaean names or even thumbnail descriptions. When plants' common names vary from place to place and related plants often parade under the same name, specifying genus and species is especially important, a convention one finds in the most useful gardening books and horticultural tomes. The lists entirely omit traditional bitters coloring agents such as sandalwood, Brazil wood, and cochineal. 

Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad to own a copy. If you’re into cocktails, you should get one, too, if only to understand this core ingredient better. Even if you have no intention to macerate, infuse, percolate, and use homemade bitters, there’s a wealth of recipes for cocktails using commercial examples. It's just that I would prefer to have seen a stronger editorial hand here, a more rigorous historical and scientific review before Bitters had gone to print. If I sound disappointed, it’s because the book is merely good; it could have been great.

From Brad Thomas Parsons’ Bitters, here’s his twist on cherry bitters, inspired by time in the Pacific Northwest. “Devil's club, sometimes known as Pacific ginseng,” he writes, “is a shrub that grows in North American forests with a cool, wet climate, and for me it instantly evokes memories of hiking the trails around Snoqualmie Falls. Rounded out with the addition of Oregon hazelnuts, this aromatic bitters takes me back to Seattle every time I add a dash or two to a drink.”

Cherry-Hazelnut Bitters

Makes about 20 ounces

½ cup lightly toasted and skinned hazelnuts
½ cup dried tart or sour cherries
2 tablespoons devil's club root
½ tsp schizandra [sic] berries [see note]
½ tsp wild cherry bark
½ tsp cinchona bark
½ tsp cassia chips
¼ tsp chopped dried orange peel
3 star anise
2 cups 101-proof bourbon, or more as needed
1 cup water
2 tablespoons rich [2:1] syrup

Place all of the ingredients except for the bourbon, water, and rich syrup in a quart-sized Mason jar or other large glass container with a lid. Pour in the 2 cups of bourbon, adding more if necessary so that all the ingredients are covered. Seal the jar and store at room temperature out of direct sunlight for 2 weeks, shaking the jar once a day.

After 2 weeks, strain the liquid through a cheesecloth-lined funnel into a clean quart-sized jar to remove the solids. Repeat until all of the sediment has been filtered out. Squeeze the cheesecloth over the jar to release any excess liquid and transfer the solids to a small saucepan. Cover the jar and set aside.

Cover the solids in the saucepan with the water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cover the saucepan, lower the heat, and simmer for 10 minutes.

Remove the saucepan from the heat and let cool completely. Once cooled, add the contents of the saucepan (both liquid and solids) to another quart-sized Mason jar. Cover the jar and store at room temperature out of direct sunlight for 1 week, shaking the jar daily.

After 1 week, strain the jar with the liquid and solids through a cheesecloth-lined funnel into a clean quart-sized Mason jar. Repeat until all of the sediment has been filtered out. Discard the solids. Add this liquid to the jar containing the original bourbon solution.

Add the rich syrup to the jar and stir to incorporate, then cover and shake to fully dissolve the syrup.

Allow the mixture to stand at room temperature for 3 days. At the end of the 3 days, skim off any debris that floats to the surface and pour the mixture through a cheesecloth-lined funnel one last time to remove any solids.

Using a funnel, decant the bitters into smaller jars and label. If there's any sediment left in the bottles, or if the liquid is cloudy, give the bottle a shake before using. The bitters will keep indefinitely, but for optimum flavor use within a year.

Note: The schizandra [sic] berries called for are from the plant Schisandra chinensis, widely used in traditional Chinese medicine. Look for deep red dried berries in health food stores, spice shops, online shops, and in Korean markets, where it is sold as an ingredient for tea under the name omija. Go for whole berries rather than powdered for an easier time filtering.

Brad Thomas Parsons (2011)
Photos by Ed Anderson
Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas
240 pages (hardback)
Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 1580083595
$24.99

Shake Dem Bones

This weekend, I stopped by Pigment, a neighborhood store specializing in...well, green hipness, perhaps. I drop in about once a month to paw through birthday cards, books, and design-heavy preciousness. Sometimes I buy things, sometimes not.

There are art tomes aplenty, a selection of cookbooks for  urban homesteader and DIY kitchen crowds (though, oddly, not even one DIY distilling book), whiskey rocks, thick felt drink coasters, letter press greeting cards, cool kids' toys, garden seedlings, ceramics, heirloom produce and flower seeds from Baker Creek, odd hand towels, and loads of eco-globes and wall-mounted terrariums.

Lots of knickknackery I may want, but nothing I truly need. In other words, it's fantastic place to find gifts for someone else.

This Sunday, a set of ceramic salt and pepper shakers shaped liked stylized bones caught my eye. With two salt cellars and a workhorse of an old pepper mill at home, I have no use for something like this, but the set of shakers (made by California designer Chris Stiles) called to the mischievous meat eater in me. I may just have to reconsider the salt cellars and slide back over there before the week is out.

Hang on, though. Now that I...yeah, now that I think about it, I may just need a cinnamon shaker for those tiki punches we make around here...

Pigment
3827 30th St
San Diego, CA 92104
(619) 501-6318
Mon-Sat 11-7, Sun 11-5

Stiles in Clay salt and pepper shakers: $32 for the set.

Goes well with:

• Should you find yourself with a batch of actual bones, I suggest you roast them and  feast on them.
• And if you're in San Diego, check out The Cookbook Store's going out of business sale. Word is, it'll all be gone before Christmas.

Donnie’s Spice Mix and Louis Szathmary’s Chef’s Salt

Cooks around the world — and companies that cater to them — create seasoning mixes to speed and streamline cooking. It’s so much easier to reach for a jar or a shaker holding a mix than to try to measure a teaspoon of this and a quarter-teaspoon of that while the stove is on and the pan spattering.

Donnie's, not yet mixed

Of course, there are foreign mixes with familiar names that aren’t necessarily part of our everyday cooking. Think of France’s quatre épices, Indian garam masala, ras al hanout from North Africa, or Chinese five-spice powder. Closer to home, we have Lowry’s and Mrs. Dash with their respective seasoning salts, while Tony Chachere spices Louisiana dishes in homes far beyond his own, and it seems that California serial restaurateur Juanita Musson barely knew a dish that couldn’t benefit from a dash of Vege-Sal.

Poke around my cabinets and you’ll find a few such mixes. I’m partial to several from Penzey’s, the Midwestern spice monger. Two jars in particular I never let go empty: chef’s salt from a recipe by Hungarian chef Louis Szathmary and — a recent addition to the larder and a bigger jar — Donald Link’s mixture he calls Donnie’s Spice Mix from his book Real Cajun.

This chef’s salt is one I’m likely to use to season roast beef, to strew on hot candied pecans, or to spike potatoes roasted in duck fat or (as my great-grandmother called it) goose grease.

Louis Szathmary’s Chef’s Salt

1 cup of salt
1 Tbl Spanish paprika
1 tsp black pepper, ground
¼ tsp white pepper, ground
¼ tsp celery salt
¼ tsp garlic salt

Mix and store in a dry place. In The Chef’s Secret Cook Book (1971), Szathmary notes: “Be sure to use garlic salt, not garlic powder. If you use garlic powder, a small pinch is enough.”

Link’s seasoning mix, on the other hand, has no salt at all. It’s a more pungent mix with a warm, mellow bite. If you use it, you’ve got to add salt separately. I tend to double the recipe each time I make it and it helps my budget that I buy spices in bulk at a nearby market with a substantial Middle Eastern customer base.

Donnie’s Spice Mix

4 tablespoons chili powder
2 tablespoons cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons paprika
1 tablespoon ground white pepper
1 tablespoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon garlic powder

Again, mix and store in a dry place. For the chili powder, I use pure ground New Mexican red chile rather than a commercial chili mix. It's your kitchen: use the powder you want. Just make sure it's long on flavor and has some oomph.

This one I use on eggs, in gumbos, in various soups, meats for the grill, and vegetable dishes. It’s the spice mix I reach for when I open the cabinet door and am not sure what I want. I’ve grilled great lamb chops by mixing this in equal measure with ground cumin then adding salt and a small dash of oil. Despite the cayenne, it’s not a blistering hot spice mix. I’m lavish with this stuff. When the paprika costs about $8 a pound, I can afford to be.

Goes well with:

• You rarely got what you wanted at Juanita’s Restaurant, but you got a lot of it, a reminiscence of muumuu-wearing, customer-beating, eat-it-or-wear-it restaurateur Juanita Musson.
• PDFs of many articles Szathmary wrote for Hungarian Heritage Review, most with recipes.
• My notes on Donald Link’s Real Cajun, including his recipe for smothered pork.