Mother's Day Tipples

I was looking for something light that wouldn't trash my Greatest Generation mom this Sunday. It should be noted that Mom could probably still--in her late eighties--drink most people under the table. You'd expect someone of her venerable years to like the World War Two era highballs when she's indulging, but around the time she turned 80, one of my mom's old friends got her onto apple martinis--a total club-kid drink. She enjoyed them mightily for a few years--seldom more than one, but those things are quite strong. One is plenty. We still have a bottle of that neon-colored apple pucker stuff in the house. Fortunately, it's gathering dust. It's odd and fakey. More suited to the cocktail bar scene in Star Wars than anything else.

This Fall, when my Dad (who's 90 in a couple of months, and tack-sharp still) was briefly in the hospital, Mom stayed with us, and I introduced her to a cocktail called a Presbyterian that I think I've mentioned in this blog and on the show. It's essentially a highball: ginger ale, bourbon, and fresh lime juice. A little less extreme, and she found that one of them suited her end-of-the-day desires just fine. Dad's just fine, too, by the way. I know. I'm lucky.

I'm thinking she may want only a glass of champagne with her brunch on Mother's Day (Mom LOVES the bubbly), but if she wants a mixed drink, I found this recipe that is light, refreshing, and good if you're going to be bad and have a drink with a festive mid-day meal.

Gypsy Punch

1 and 1/2 oz. light rum

1/4 oz. real grenadine (make your own, or buy a brand that uses pomegranate juice and no corn syrup)

1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon bar sugar (to taste--or you could add a titch more granadine)

Shake the above ingredients in an iced shaker, strain into a highball glass filled with ice, and fill with seltzer. Grate a little fresh nutmeg on top. Serve with a straw.

Crushed ice is nice in the highball glass, if you have the patience.

Happy Mother's Day! See you at Randoradio.com at 4 Eastern--and stay tuned for our big switch to Area 24 Radio--SOON!

Memory Challenges

Of course the problem with being the resident cocktail nerd among your friends is that you can't travel with all your vintage and repro cocktail manuals--and it would be Very Bad to spill a Jupiter into your laptop after you'd used the 'puter to look up that recipe online. So although a good cocktail can make you FORGET the cares of the day, let's face it: there are some things you just have to memorize.

For me that's a couple of basic rules. Rule one: a shot equals about an ounce and a half (two if you're being generous). Ice, mixer and a highball glass, and you have a highball.

Rule two: a basic sour is an ounce and a half of booze, 3/4 of an ounce of a sweet liqueur(s), and 3/4 of an ounce of a tart citrus juice(s) of your choosing. Do it with tequila, cointreau and lime and you've got a (very simple) Margarita. Do it with vodka, cointreau, lime and a splash of cranberry juice and it's a Cosmo. Use lime and rum and you've got a Daiquiri. And an Aviation is a gin sour, using lemon juice, maraschino and creme de violette. Shake 'em up, and strain 'em into a chilled cocktail glass and there you go; the same formula more or less holds for them all. Goose the citrus up a bit and goose the sweet down a tad to your taste. It makes a smallish cocktail, but I'm not of the school that a drink needs to be served in a goldfish bowl. (A good cocktail is a strong drink. Too much of a good thing is not a good thing.)

There are plenty of other drinks that like irregular verbs, make the language of cocktail-age richer and more maddening. Those you will need your books for. But some other drinks are easy to remember because they call for equal parts of all their ingredients: a classic Negroni is equal parts of gin, red vermouth, and Campari--although I've had the drink mixed in somewhat different proportions and enjoyed it.

Here's a drink I found this week that fits into equal parts of all category:

The Cafe Royal Special

Equal parts: Gin, fresh lemon juice, white vermouth, and sloe gin. Shake hard, serve in a cocktail glass, up.

It's an interesting drink, brilliant red as sloe gin drinks usually are, and not stupid-strong. The trick to having it not be too cotton-candy-ish (and sloe gin drinks can be like that) is to use good sloe gin. I have some OK stuff that I got at the local booze shop, but what really works best in this or any sloe gin drink is Plymouth Sloe Gin. It's considerably more expensive than the garden-variety stuff, and absolutely worth it.

See you at Randoradio.com at 4 Eastern today!!

Gilroy Was Here

Another hectic week!

Darling goddaughter's 18th, celebrated high atop the Potter building, was a smash hit, thanks to Herr Potter elbowing out the kitchen staff and preparing some of his famed Indiana Fried Chicken. I guess it's not news to anyone who actually LIVES with high school seniors that they can eat like a plague of locusts in the Old Testament. As a couple who seem to have forgotten to produce offspring, we can only marvel.

Weather was mostly springy-perfect, if you like your days peppered with itchy eyes and prolonged sneeze-fits. I read somewhere that you need higher mathematics to express the pollen count that has been kicking up allergies we didn't even know we had in this swanky neighborhood near you.

Last spring and summer, I made a lot of Mai Tais and Singapore Slings. They were tropical and seemed like the thing, but this year, I'm a little bored with them. And yet, like the little girl I once was, the one who once loved the cherry life saver the best out of all the candies in the roll, I still crave something on the sweet side in this sweet in-between season. Mind you, nothing icky, but a nuanced application of Cherry Heering can be a pleasant thing.

I experimented a bit with a drink called a Gilroy this week. Don't know the precise history of it, but what it tastes like is a slightly more concentrated, slightly less sweet Singapore Sling. It's served up, in a cocktail glass. Here's where I'm at with the recipe:

The Gilroy

1/2 oz lemon juice (at least--you could go up to 3/4 oz)

1/2 oz good dry vermouth

3/4 oz Cherry Heering (or a little, wee bit less)

3/4 oz gin--I used Plymouth, but you could go a bit heavier with the aromatics in your choice of brand

a couple good dashes of orange bitters

Taste before you shake, for balance. There's a sweet/sour/herbal/bitter thing going on here, and it should all be present.

Shake HARD--you want this one cold--and serve in a chilled cocktail glass, up. I used a quarter of a lemon wheel, perched on the rim of the glass, as a garnish. Could also see, for folks who really like tart, running one of the spent lemons over the rim of the glass but NOT sugaring it.

It's an interesting drink, just the thing for a mild spring evening when the apple blossoms are just beginning to drift down like benign snow. I don't have it quite nailed yet, though, so feel free to play with the proportions. It absolutely doesn't have to be sweeter, but I don't think it should be too bracingly sour.

I read of an older version of this drink, that skips the lemon and orange bitters, and uses kirsch. Might be interesting, but it sounded wintery. Besides, any excuse to use orange bitters is a good thing, I think!

Drink up, and see you at 4 Eastern today on Randoradio.com!

Legalities, tax day--A Bacardi Cocktail

This will be short, because I'm on the fly today. My darling goddaughter is celebrating her 18th birthday tomorrow, so Cocktails with Chris is going on the air a day early--that's today, Tax Day, April 15th, at 4 Eastern.

And because it is Tax Day and a warm, springy one, I thought a cocktail with a legal history would be good today. Hence, The Bacardi Cocktail, which legally MUST be made with Bacardi rum. There was actually a court case back in the day. I went straight to their website, thinking it would be good to obey the law in all things today.

So sign your forms, drop 'em in the mail, and mix this one up:

The Bacardi Cocktail

2 parts Bacardi rum. Silver works best, I think, but you COULD use amber

2/3 part fresh lime juice

1/4 part real pomegranate grenadine (Bacardi suggests Monin, but you can make your own easily enough by simple syrup-izing some Pom)

Shake really, really hard with a mix of ice cubes and crushed ice (Bacardi specifies this, t00), and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish? They say "a preserved cherry" (could be good), but I'd rather a half a lime wheel.

Cheers! I'll see you at Rando at 4!

Another Cloudy Friday...

One forgets how deeply strange Spring can be from year to year, no matter how many times one (in this case yours truly) has been through it. Right now, I'm looking out the window high atop the Potter building at a sulky grey sky that's actually some sort of misty moisty thing trying to burn off, although it's almost noon and it should have done that by now. Maybe the weather is feeling as lazy as I've been. But it's cooler, at least...

COOLER at least, you say? You want COOLER in the spring? Yeah, I do. It was 91 degrees in our swanky neighborhood near you earlier this week, and we're talking full-bore Hudson River Valley 91 degrees: schweaty schweaty sweat. I staggered into a few shops in a fever dream in search of sleeveless girly tops that I hadn't worn to death last August. Decided I was too hot to try anything on, and staggered back out.

Today, it's 55 degrees, and it'll get a little warmer, but not much. It was warm enough on Sunday last to have Easter dinner outside--and to HAVE to grill the lamb because roasting it in the house would have made the folks gathered there to celebrate the Resurrection miserable. That is, if they hadn't all been outside, anyway. It's been so unseasonably hot here that I'm sort of lost in time. WAS last Sunday actually only Easter? It could be June...or early September...or late July. The ancient apple tree just outside my office, having miraculously cheated death once again despite the nasty winter storms of only about a month and a half ago (!!), is in bloom. We'll have apples again in the fall, but who knows what temperature it'll be by then?

The knee-jerk thing would be to make a blender drink with melons and rum and mint, but I'm resisting that for now. I've been into a lot of antique gin drinks lately, and I think we'll be enjoying this one today, in honor of Robyn Hitchcock's new CD, released just around the time the temperature started going nuts.

The English Rose

2 oz gin (I'm thinking Plymouth, nothing too funky. You could use Hendricks, I think, too)

1 oz dry vermouth

1 oz apricot-flavored brandy

1/2 oz lemon juice

1 tsp real grenadine

Shake hard, serve up, garnish with a brandied cherry.

The Internet Cocktail Database suggests a sugar rim for this drink, but I'm thinking that unless you pretty much doubled the amount of lemon juice, it would be too sweet that way. And you should ABSOLUTELY taste before you shake--a little less apricot brandy and a little more lemon juice might be more to your liking.

It sort of fits this week--a recipe I'm still playing with to see if it's going to be sweet or tart. Kinda like the weather.

See you at four Eastern on Randoradio.com!!

Falernum, again...

...and a gorgeous spring day on which to think about it.

The first time I tasted Falernum (I'd bought a bottle to experiment with some Tiki drinks, in which it's a sometimes ingredient), I figured that it was what the Captain Morgan people were really after--except that it was more like a liqueur than a plain old strong spirit. It's sweet. Wikipedia says there are non-alcoholic versions of it, but I've never seen one.

It improves many, many drinks, though, especially ones made with rum. And so I will celebrate this lovely spring day (after many days of soaking rain) with a Mai Tai, a very good example of a drink that you can make without Falernum, but is MUCH better with a bit thrown in.

There's a lot of back and forth over what is a true, historic, Don The Beachcomber kinda Mai Tai. I'm not Tiki enough to worry about that sort of thing, but here's the ICB recipe for the drink, which does include the golden potion in question:

Shake in iced cocktail shaker & strain

1 oz light rum (3 cl, 1/4 gills)

1 oz dark rum (3 cl, 1/4 gills)

1 1/2 oz fresh lime juice (4.5 cl, 3/8 gills)

1/2 oz orange curacao (1.5 cl, 1/8 gills)

1/4 oz grenadine (6 dashes, 1/16 gills)

1/2 oz orgeat syrup (1.5 cl, 1/8 gills)

1/4 oz falernum (6 dashes, 1/16 gills)

A Mai Tai is properly served in a tall glass filled with crushed ice, and sipped through a straw, I think. I like a mint leaf garnish. If you're making a bunch of these, taste before you shake for lime juice/sweet balance. You shouldn't have something as tart as--say--an Aviation--but you should be aware of the lime. And as I have found out lately, the better the curacao you use, the better the drink will be. Shop around and spend a few bucks. The stuff goes a long way.

In other news, I've finally got the new ROBYN HITCHCOCK! And so Cocktails with Chris goes forth live on the intertubes at www.randoradio.com today at 4 PM! We're on the air a day early to kick off the Easter weekend, and to allow a certain otherwise impossibly groovy radio host to sing in her husband's choir tomorrow...

Honeymoons and Spring Fake-outs...

It was warm enough last week, high atop the Potter building, to have all the windows open and to paint the yard furniture. But yesterday, the clouds rolled in again. Today, a nasty thin wind just turned over the garden umbrella we'd rather optimistically raised over two rocking chairs outside my study. The temperature is thirty seven degrees and the unchanging light is the dull, even sort of stuff you get during a snowstorm.

Ken bought me a couple of little azalea plants to put on the porch last week, and I'm going to have to remember to take them inside tonight. When the clouds blow away later, it's supposed to go down into the twenties.

Such is March, and an odd month it's been--health care reform finally passed, Alex Chilton and Fess Parker gone, a week of sunshine and balmy breezes dotting the ends of the bare tree branches with green...and today, murk and shuddery cold. After I do my radio show tonight, and Ken gets back from practicing, we'll probably light the first fire we've had since the big snowstorms of just a few weeks back.

One could spite the turn in the weather with a tropical drink, but I'm thinking something soothing might be more to the point. In my continued exploration of the Ted Haigh Cocktail book, I ran across The Honeymoon Cocktail last weekend. It's a good drink for a night like this: not too winter-heavy, a tad on the sweet side but not cloyingly so. It's a venerable drink, supposedly from The Brown Derby chain in LA. I swore I wasn't going to quote any more of Haigh's recipes in this blog, but after playing with his formula some, I simply can't beat it--with the caveat that although he calls for Calvados, I do use Applejack, which he says is OK. There are other formulations kicking around the web, but many of them call for far too much Benedictine, which will give you something that tastes too medicine-y for me.

Here's what I do:

2 oz applejack

1/2 oz Benedictine

1/2 oz orange curacao

1/2 oz lemon juice

Shake hard, serve up in a cocktail glass with a lemon twist. Haigh suggests flaming the lemon twist (putting a lighter to it while you're twisting it over the drink to spark up some of the oil that will emerge, a tricky fillip). That last thing is perhaps advisable to impress your guests or Significant Other on the first round, but if you make a second round, please don't do it. You'll burn your fingers for sure! A plain old lemon twist, while not as sexy as the flamed one, is just fine in this interesting drink.

Anything with applejack in it is bound to be tasty, and with the nicely balanced proportions of Haigh's recipe, the complex flavors of the Benedictine won't overwhelm any amateurs in your crowd. Cheers!

See you at 4 EDT on Randoradio.com!