Friday, November 22, 2013

Apple Pie Manhattan

Nick was kind enough to invite me to contribute to this site, but it took a while for me to feel like I had anything to contribute beyond "drinking good!" I haven’t been very adventurous lately, booze-wise. Unless you count putting a dash of bitters in some bourbon and calling it an Extra-Dry Manhattan, I'm not big on making up drink recipes; I spend too much money on liquor as it is, I don't want to risk wasting it on experiments. 

But I wanted to do something with some apple cider I'd bought for a recipe (I'm not a fan of apple juice or cider, but it's great for cooking with) and I remembered the bottle of cinnamon whiskey at the back of the bar we'd bought on a lark that was pretty undrinkable on its own. Apple pie! It worked.

Photo by Adam Grosswirth

4 oz bourbon
2 oz sweet apple cider
1 oz cinnamon whiskey
2-3 dashes cranberry bitters (optional)
cocktail cherries (optional)
candied ginger (optional)
tart apple, such as Granny Smith (optional)

Pour all liquid ingredients into a shaker. Shake with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass with cherries. Garnish with a piece of candied ginger and/or a slice of tart apple.

Photo by Adam Grosswirth

I used Maker’s Mark, which is my go-to bourbon, but if you want a stronger bourbon flavor you could use something like Knob or even a rye.

The cranberry bitters were another thing I happened to have in the house, an “ooh, neat!” impulse buy that I can’t really do much with. It seemed like a good Thanksgivingy touch, and it was.

I also tried this with a spoonful of ginger simple syrup, thinking a little sweetness would cut the harsh Fireball nicely, but I found it too syrupy. If you like a sweeter drink, though, that’s a good solution. If you want to get fancy, you could rim the glass with cinnamon sugar or maybe ground ginger and sugar. I am too lazy for that, so let me know how it turns out if you try it!

There’s really no reason for this drink to have cherries, except that I love them and I put them in basically anything with bourbon, including otherwise straight bourbon. I make my own, not because I’m a snob (I love me a classic bright red maraschino cherry) but because they’re so easy and awesome. I use this recipe, ideally with sour cherries (I hoard and freeze them during their very short season at the farmers’ market) but Dole frozen cherries from the grocery store are great too. Hmmm, maybe I should try to concoct a cherry pie Manhattan next? 

Monday, November 4, 2013

Holland Razor Blade

Last month I was in Seattle visiting my friends Rossanna and Tiago, and as usual, a good portion of our time was spent eating and drinking.  The thing I've realized of late is that cold-weather towns inevitably have the best bars.  Portland, Seattle, Boston... even Minneapolis -- which, if you saw my tweets, you know I wasn't altogether thrilled with in most respects -- definitely holds its own in the booze department.  And I'm not just talking about having two or three really fantastic bars; I'm talking about the average level of alcoholic intelligence across a broad spectrum of places.  (This is specifically where L.A. falls short -- sure, we have a few really fantastic bars, but you have to seek them out.  Mostly what we have are the kinds of joints that have one kind of bourbon, two kinds of gin, and fifty-eight varieties of flavored vodka.)

Anyway, I'm getting off track.  Point being: Seattle has many great bars, and according to many people (or at least my friends), Canon is the king of them all.  Having now been there three times, I am more than willing to believe this.  You could get a mild buzz just scanning the massive shelves behind the counter, reading off the names of every bottle of liquor known to man (as well as some that I think the bartenders might have invented themselves).

Since Canon is the type of place where you can literally just say, "Surprise me!" to the bartender and end up with an amazing drink in front of you, I decided to solicit a suggestion.  I've long been curious about Genever, the Dutch spirit that's kind of a cross between gin and bourbon, so I asked the bartender for a Genever-based recommendation.  And this is how I ended up sipping a Holland Razor Blade, and then, upon my return to L.A., buying myself a bottle of Bols Genever so I could whip one up myself.



This drink is definitely a case of -- well, if not "less is more," then at least "less is plenty."  It's about as simple as a cocktail can possibly get (I might not even have ordered it if I'd realized how few ingredients it has, given my strong inclination toward ridiculously complicated drinks), but it doesn't taste simple at all.  And what a name, right?

***

Recipe (from Food & Wine):

2 ounces Genever

0.75 ounce simple syrup

0.75 ounce lemon juice

pinch of cayenne pepper

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add the genever, simple syrup and lemon juice and shake well. Strain the drink into a coupe glass and sprinkle with the pinch of cayenne.

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Some notes:

- Bols Genever is not the easiest spirit to find.  They don't have it any of the BevMos in Greater Los Angeles (as far as I can tell), but K&L Wines in Hollywood and Bar Keeper in Silver Lake both carry it.  K&L also ships.

- The coupe glass is another great bar staple, and also one that's not easily found.  (In fact, I still have yet to acquire any -- the glass I used is similar but not quite it.)  Most standard martini glasses range from 5 to 7 ounces in capacity, which means that if you make a drink like this one that tops off in the vicinity of 3 ounces, you're going to have some awkward empty space at the top of the glass.  Coupes are usually more like 3-3.5 ounces, so they're perfect for little drinks that pack a punch.