True Maraschino cherries

In part of my adventures in mixology, I discovered that Maraschino cherries are somewhat of a necessity in old fashioned cocktails (including the Old-Fashioned).  But I was horrified to discover that those gross, bright red cherries which we call Maraschino cherries and put on sundaes for children are actually first treated to leach out all of the color, then soaked in dyes and sugar to put back whatever artificial qualities the manufacturers want.  The FDA even got a hand in this definition!  Here is the 'official' FDA modern Maraschino cherry definition:

"The term "Maraschino Cherries" is regarded as the common or usual name of an article consisting of cherries which have been dyed red, impregnated with sugar and packed in a sugar sirup [sic] flavored with oil of bitter almonds or a similar flavor."

Did you know that before chemists got a hold of this once delicious product, that Maraschino cherries were made by soaking them in a delicious liqueur named - gasp - Maraschino?!  Yup, there's a liqueur out there made with Marasca cherries and cherry pits, with a delicious nutty, fruity flavor, which used to be the sole way of making these bad boys.  And I highly recommend you try this out, stop eating once-whitened bright red cherries, and upgrade the quality of your drinks to impress your guests.  Because trust me, these will.

True Maraschino cherries - well worth the effort, mostly in finding Maraschino liqueur

True Maraschino Cherries
from Bill Norris of Fino Austin

• 1 pound sweet cherries (I used Rainier, but you should use Bing)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 1 cinnamon stick
• pinch freshly grated nutmeg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup Maraschino liqueur, preferably Luxardo

Okay, you probably looked at this, and thought - what the heck is Maraschino?  Well, here it is:

Luxardo, the original Maraschino liqueur

Go looking for it, and you will hopefully find it hiding in an upscale liquor store.  Once you've got it, wash and pit the cherries.  Invest in some form of cherry pitter, such as this guy:

Pit your cherries.  Keep the stems on if you like.

In a saucepan, combine all ingredients besides the cherries and the liqueur.  Bring all to a rolling boil.  When the liquid begins to boil, reduce the heat to medium, and simmer the cherries in the liquid for 5-7 minutes.

Remove from the heat, adding the liqueur (so as not to boil off the alcohol), stir, and let cool slightly.  Once cooled, transfer cherries and liquid to a clean jar and refrigerate, uncovered, until cool to the touch.  Now cap and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.

Pre-Prohibition Cocktails, Part 1: Martinez, Old Fashioned

One of my new obsessions is classic drinks.  I'm convinced that people forgot what drinking was like back in the good old days, the glory days.  Well, let's take a quick trip back to the good times.  Times like the "Gay Nineties" - the 1890s - when alcohol legends like Jack Daniels, Dewars, and Bacardi were in the process of gaining notoriety, alcohols could be safely transported around the world, and people all over Europe and North America were starting to experiment with classy cocktails without clubbing music and Jaeger bombs trying to horn their way in.  Vodka hadn't been introduced to the Western world much, and tequila was just starting to inch its way north and east.  This left gin, whiskies, brandies, liqueurs, and all kinds of interesting ingredients for bartenders to formulate various cocktails, often drank as either an aperitif, a morning eye-opener, or even for medicinal reasons.  Bartenders even used to place the bottle in front of the patron and let him pour out his own, measuring the results in how many 'fingers' he took and charging accordingly.

Gone are these days for the most part - the days of a well constructed drink, the days of a bartender who took his time and used quality ingredients such as house made bitters and garnishes like Maraschino cherries and cocktail onions, the days when people even knew to ask for these drinks and could tell a well made martini from a thrown together mix of bottom shelf gin, vodka, and a splash of vermouth.  Some would say that we lost a lot of this art with Prohibition in the 1920s, but I would argue that we really lost a lot of this over the last 20-30 years, as recreational drugs and flavored alcohols gained in popularity, and drinking became more of a sport or "pre-gaming" necessity than it was a pasttime.

Fortunately for us, bars that do remember these things are making a resurgence.  You can find pre-prohibition style bars in major cities all over the place - I've found them in San Francisco, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Austin, and New York City, and that's clearly just scratching the surface.  And the home bartender can still find the right ingredients with enough dedicated searching and a helpful liquor store owner.  Let me help you start re-exploring old-timey cocktails, in the hopes that maybe you'll take up drinking and mixology as a pasttime, like I'm trying to do.

Some of the crazy ingredients we're going to learn about

A gift basket someone awesome got me, with everything needed to make Old-Fashioneds, including homemade Maraschino cherries!

Martinez

For example, you may never have heard of this one - the Martinez.  Widely regarded as the precursor to the Martini, the Martinez is made with a very specific style of gin known as Old Tom Gin, sweeter than London Dry Gin such as Bombay, Tanqueray, and Beefeater, but less sweet than Dutch / Holland / Jenever Gin like the original product of Ketel One and a product sold by Bols, although odds are you've never tried either of those.  Anyway, there are a few stories about the name Martinez, but I like the version that goes that the drink was invented in San Francisco by "Professor" Jerry Thomas (who also invented the Blue Blazer, claimed to invent the Tom and Jerry, and helped popularize the hoax that led to the spread of the Tom Collins) for a traveler en route to Martinez, CA.  There are a few recipes for this floating around, mostly differing in their ratios, but I will post the one I made last night, which reminded me of the first one I had, and which I think is perfectly balanced - sweet, yet drying.

The Martinez, a slightly sweeter predecessor to the Martini, but oh so delicious and strangely dry afterwards

First, we'd better start with the ingredient list.  Odds are that you haven't had (or heard of) any of the four ingredients before.  Excited yet?  You should be, because these might change your life, or at least how you think about mixed drinks.  First, the gin.  You need a good Old Tom gin, so why not go for the grandfather of them, all, Hayman's.  Next, the vermouth, which, unlike a Martini, uses Italian-style, or sweet vermouth.  But not just any sweet vermouth - Carpano Antica, made by the company who claims to have invented vermouth.  This vermouth has notes of cocoa, cinnamon, licorice, orange peel, and tons of other complex flavors, and is so good you can drink it on its own.  I would not skimp on this, and would search it out - it comes in a metal can with the bottle inside, and is disgustingly overpriced for a vermouth, although well worth it.  Next, you need a Maraschino liqueur, notably Luxardo.  This is what real maraschino cherries used to be made with, and it is made with Marasca cherries and cherry pits, providing almost an almond-like flavor that's also incredible on its own.  Finally, orange bitters go in this - arguably the easiest of the four ingredients to find, as bitters have made the biggest resurgence of all pre-prohibition components these days.  I used Regan's, which is fairly easy to find.  So now, the actual recipe and process:

• 1.5 oz Old Tom gin, such as Hayman's
• 1.5 oz sweet vermouth, ideally Carpano Antica
• 2 tsp Maraschino liqueur, such as Luxardo
• 2 dashes (1/3 tsp) orange bitters, such as Regan's
• Ice
• Twist of lemon
• Maraschino cherries (my homemade recipe here)

A good close-up of our ingredient set, minus the cherries

Okay, process is important here.  To start, get out a Martini glass, and fill it with whole ice cubes to chill it.  Meanwhile, fill a large shaker with whole ice cubes.  Add the gin, vermouth, Maraschino, and bitters, and stir (do NOT shake) vigorously to chill.  You may note that I gave an actual measure for 2 dashes - that's because it actually has a volume!  There are 6 dashes in a teaspoon by official convention.  Want to know how much you're pouring?  Pour a teaspoon of water into a dish, and then shake out an equivalent amount of bitters into an identical dish.  Did it take 6 of your dashes?  Probably not.  So figure out what a 'dash' actually requires by your hand, and stick to it.  Shaking a bottle over your drink and hoping for magic just isn't going to work here; use the scientific method, come on.  Where did I learn this?  From David Embury's The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, widely considered to be the bible of mixology, and written in 1948.

Anyway, we should finish the drink.  Dump the ice out of the Martini glass.  Use a drink strainer to pour the drink into the glass, and twist the lemon peel over.  Garnish with one or two cherries, and enjoy!

Old Fashioned

Moving on, let's consider the Old Fashioned, which is much more well known.  I gather that this was popular on the show Mad Men, but can't confirm.  The Old Fashioned is a bourbon-based drink with some great ingredients, which are also much easier to find.  There's nothing crazy about this one, although it can lay you out if you don't take it seriously.  You'll also need a rocks glass or an Old-Fashioned glass, which is very different from a cocktail or Martini glass.

• 2 oz bourbon
• 2 tsp simple syrup (2:1 sugar:water, heated up to dissolve the sugar and then cooled)
• 2 dashes aromatic bitters, such as Angostura
• Slice of orange
• Ice
• Twist of orange
• Maraschino cherry (again, homemade recipe here.  Don't buy the terrible bright red ones, please)

Put the simple syrup and bitters at the bottom of an empty Old Fashioned glass, and stir with a spoon to combine.  You could alternatively muddle a sugar cube with the bitters, or try to dissolve the cube in warm water, then pour off the water, then muddle, but I prefer the easy method of the syrup.  Now add the bourbon and stir.  Put in the orange slice, and add cracked (not crushed) ice cubes to the glass.  Garnish with a twist of orange and a Maraschino cherry.  I like Esquire's write-up that says not to muddle fruit into the drink, which apparently was done during Prohibition to mask the taste of bad booze with sweet fruit, and which takes away from the purity of this drink.

A few Old-Fashioneds, without too much muddled fruit to ruin the clean taste of this drink

That's it for now, but hopefully you can try these out and get some Maraschino cherries ready while you wait for more drink recipes!

Alcohol Infusions 201: Chile Vodka in a Coconut Muddle

Infused alcohol #2 - chile vodka.  Goes great in a Bloody Mary, but another interesting idea is this crazy recipe I found in Bon Appetit.  The infusion is straightforward, while making the drink is a bit more complicated.  You have to muddle something.

If you're new to muddling, take a step and consider if you have the right equipment to make this drink.  You need either a muddler (a mallet with raised ridges at the base to better mash up the ingredients) or a mortar and pestle.  In a pinch you can use the back of a large spoon, but there's no fun in that.  This could finally be your opportunity to buy new barware!  Plus, you'll be able to make mojitos afterwards, which are always good.

One Night in Phuket

Bon Appetit, July 2012

Recipe by Lucky Strike in Portland

Makes 4

• 1 cup vodka
• 1 red or green Thai chile (I used a jalapeno but tried for a serrano), pierced with a knife
• Simple syrup from 4 tablespoons sugar, plus more sugar for glasses
• 4 limes, each cut into 4 wheels, plus 4 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
• 40 cilantro leaves (about 1/2 cup) plus more for garnish
• 3/4 cup sweetened cream of coconut (such as Coco López)

Combine vodka and chile in a jar and let stand, covered, for 2-24 hours (the longer it sits, the spicier it gets).  I went with 6 hours, and it was plenty spicy.  Discard chile.

Chile peppers + vodka = dangerously spicy drinks

Now make your simple syrup.  Don't worry - it's simple.  Combine equal amounts (by volume) of sugar and water in a saucepan, in this case 4 tbsp (1/4 cup) of each.  Heat over medium heat until dissolved, and allow to cool.  Store in a squeeze bottle, or use immediately, as in this recipe.  Once the sugar dissolves, you will have roughly 5 tbsp of mix total, but just assume that you should use 1/4 of the liquid for each drink you're making.

Place some sugar in a small flat dish.  Run 1 lime wheel around rims of coupe glasses to moisten; reserve wheel.  Dip rims into sugar to coat; set aside.

Run a lime wedge around the glass, then roll edge in sugar

The sugar will stick to the rim, but only when you use something sticky first, such as the lime

Using a muddler or the handle of a wooden spoon, muddle 4 lime wheels, 1 tbsp. simple syrup, and 10 cilantro leaves in a cocktail shaker.  Fill the shaker with ice.  Add 2 tbsp. chile vodka, 3 tbsp. cream of coconut, and 1 tbsp. lime juice.  Cover and shake vigorously 20 times.  Strain into a prepared glass.  Repeat with remaining ingredients to make 4 cocktails.  Garnish each glass with fresh cilantro leaves or lime wheels.

Muddle up all of the good stuff

Now add coconut cream, vodka, and shake

The drinks are rich and spicy, almost a meal in themselves

Alcohol Infusions 101: Bacon-Infused Bourbon in an Old-Fashioned

It's after noon somewhere, people - time to switch to hard liquor.  I can only post so many curry and stir-fry recipes, and figured you might want to see some of the more interesting drinks I've been trying to make.  So naturally, we have to start with a quintessential man-drink: bacon-infused booze.

Infused spirits seem to be hotter than that stupid song "Call Me Maybe" these days - everybody wants to have their alcohol taste like something else.  Now, whether this is because bars are trying to sell inferior alcohol or because it's a really interesting twist on making mixed drinks I can't say, but I do know this - infusions have been around for a long time, and they make awesome cocktails.  Typically you'll see herbs or fruit infused into an alcohol such as vodka or gin, but one of the more wild ideas that has come up has been to get the incredible healing powers of bacon somehow transferred into liquid form.  And since drinking bacon grease never took off, I'm all for this method instead.

Much like the underground city of Zion from the Matrix, this bacon infusion recipe is not the first, and probably not the last, that I will try.  We attempted this with vodka, and it was a dismal failure.  Then I tried following basic recipes for this bourbon online, and it didn't quite take.  This recipe is the third attempt, taken verbatim from the bar PDT's posting in New York magazine, although I made an adjustment to the bacon infusion process to make it more bacon-y.

Part One: Bacon-Infused Bourbon

• 3 or 4 slices bacon, or enough to render 1 ounce of fat (any extra-smoky variety will do)
• 750 ml of bourbon.  Something mellow - too harsh and no amount of bacon can save it

Always a good start to a recipe.  Or a Thursday.

Heat a pan over medium-low heat.  You're going to cook this bacon slower than you've ever cooked bacon before.  Why?  Because you don't want to burn any part of it, and you're trying to get the fat to drain out.  Now, cut the bacon into 1" squares or so.  Render down the bacon over this low heat, turning often, to convince the bacon to give you its tasty, tasty fat drippings, now in liquid form.  As the bacon cooks down, periodically remove the drippings from the pan until you have what you need.  If you start to see any black bits, you've cooked this too high, and I recommend starting over.  Run the fat through a coffee filter if you really want, but if you did this right you shouldn't need to.  Set the cooked bacon aside for your further pleasure.

Seriously, how can you do wrong when you've got the Gateway Meat in your corner?

The rendered fat should have no black bits floating in it

Now, let the fat cool slightly, and pour the bacon fat over the bourbon, which you've put in a clean mason jar.  Let the bacon fat sit with the bourbon for 24 hours at room temperature, then place in the freezer for up to a week.  The fat will rise to the surface and harden, and you can skim it off with a spoon.

Let the fat sit over the bourbon for a day or so at room temperature before freezing

After freezing for 1-7 days, the fat skims right off

I sampled my creation following this method and found that it didn't have enough bacon-y goodness, so I went and put some cooked, drained bacon in with the bourbon and let it sit for another week.  Then I ran everything through a coffee filter, and the finished product had what I would consider to be an appropriate amount of smoked bacon awesomeness.  In retrospect, I might have let the fat sit with the bourbon longer in the freezer, to see how much of a difference that makes.

Run through a filter at the end (if you used bacon pieces like I added later) to clean up the final product.  Enjoy!

What did I learn in this process?  Many things:

1. Low heat is key here.
2. If you don't cut up the bacon into small bits, too little of it will be in contact with the pan, which means it won't render down properly.
3. Thick-cut bacon may not make much of a difference, but high-quality, smoky bacon will.
4. Be sure to let the fat sit for a while with the bourbon, although room temperature for very long is probably a bad idea.
5. Adding more bacon to the recipe (say, a full pound of bacon) will not help make this any better.

Part Two: A Bacon Bourbon Old-Fashioned

from PDT recipe posted in New York magazine, April 2008

• 2 ounces bacon-infused bourbon
• 1/4 ounce Grade B maple syrup.  Yes, Grade B.  Go find it, it's more powerful than Grade A.
• 2 dashes Angostura or Regan's orange bitters
• Twist of orange

In a mixing glass, stir 2 ounces bacon-infused bourbon, maple syrup, and bitters with ice. Strain into chilled rocks glass filled with ice. Garnish with the orange twist after running around the rim of the glass.

The ingredient list is short, and does not include a cell phone

I need a better picture of this to capture just how awesome it is.  Goes down way too smooth

Agua Fresca de Pepino (Fresh Cucumber Water)

I made this recipe to go with my pollo asado con mojo, and it was great on a hot day.  A good use of cucumbers for a refreshing cocktail, which you can serve leaded or unleaded.  I went with leaded, of course.

Agua Fresca de Pepino
Cooking Light, June 2010

• 3 cups chopped seeded peeled cucumber (about 2 medium)
• ¼ cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1/4 serrano pepper, seeded
• 3 cups water
• Ice
• Lime slices (optional)
• Cucumber slices (optional)
• Vodka (optional, but recommended)

Combine first 4 ingredients in a blender, and process until smooth. Add 3 cups water; cover and refrigerate the mixture overnight.

Strain cucumber mixture through a fine sieve over a pitcher; discard solids. Serve over ice; garnish with lime or cucumber slices, if desired.  To make into an alcoholic drink, add 1.5 ounces vodka to each glass.  Or more - it's your party, drink like you mean it.