Can't get theah from heah...

This was another libation I served at Thanksgiving, and again, it will require a little prep for one of the ingredients. However, it's non-alcoholic, so little Johnny and Susie can have one, as well as Mabel, your tee-totaling great aunt, thrice removed on your mother's side. I got this recipe from the November/December 2009 issue of Imbibe Magazine, and they built it thus:

New England Buck (mocktail)

4 oz apple cider
1 oz lemon juice
1 oz sage and juniper syrup (recipe follows)
2 dashes orange bitters
ginger beer (I used mostly ginger ale and a splash of ginger beer base I had sitting around)

Combine all but ginger beer with ice in a cocktail shaker and shake to mix. Strain into an ice-filled double old-fashioned glass and top with ginger beer. Gently stir and serve.

Sage and Juniper Syrup

1 cup water
1 cup sugar
5 fresh sage leaves
10 juniper berries, cracked in mortar and pestle

Heat ingredients in saucepan until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat, let stand 10 minutes, then strain into a clean squeeze bottle or glass container. Keeps for up to a month in the fridge.

The cider's natural tartness plays with the really fresh flavors of the sage and juniper and makes something that's really unique and crisp-tasting. The ginger gives it a little warmth, too. It's really an appealing drink, and a good one to serve at any fall or winter family gatherings. It would also work well for, say, a brunch with certain family members who don't believe in mimosas before noon.

Oh my god! Social interaction! This is something entirely new!

Every month, a bunch of lushes cocktail aficionados band together and do a little something called "Mixology Monday," centering around a theme. This month's theme is "Ginger," and we know how much I love ginger. So I'm marking my participation in my first ever Mixology Monday with this drink that I just made up in my kitchen.

Koro Koola

1 1/4 oz homemade ginger beer base (I use Paul Clarke's recipe)
1/4 oz falernum
1/4 oz pimento dram
1/4 oz fresh key lime juice
1/4 oz Grand Marnier
1 oz Coruba Jamaican rum
2 dashes Angostura orange bitters
good quality ginger ale to top

shake all but the ginger ale with ice, strain into a good sized Old Fashioned glass, top up with an equal measure (about 3 1/4 oz) of ginger ale.

Koro was a tiki god who was sometimes referred to as the Midnight Dancer...sort of the party animal of the tiki gods, so he seemed a good fit for a drink that got my taste buds dancing the tango (ok, so it's not a Polynesian dance, so sue me). The nice thing about this is that the ginger, while definitely present, is happy to share the limelight with some of the other flavors, and the (relatively) low alcohol content (the pimento dram, falernum, Grand Marnier, and orange bitters are present in such small volumes that they're really pretty negligible, and there's only an ounce of straight spirit) means that you can knock back a few of these before you hit the dance floor and start to hula out of your pants (not advised in mixed company).

I will readily admit that I'm addicted to ginger.

There, I said it. I love ginger. I love the sinus-clearing zing of it, I love the tingle in my mouth as I eat it, I love the fact that it can calm an upset stomach. I even eat ginger candy, for cryin' out loud. I love it. It's my most favoritest rhizome. Anytime I get to use ginger in a food or beverage, I'm there.

So tonight's drink is one that relies on having a good ginger ale at hand. Normally I'd suggest Vernor's, as it's chock full of nose-searing ginger flavor, but...BUT, dear readers...it's got high fructose corn syrup, and I avoid that crap at all costs. So. I will instead steer you towards Boylan's Ginger Ale...it's a little more conventional in its strength, and it won't make you cough if you get a whiff straight from the bottle like Vernor's, but it's got a true ginger flavor, and it's made with cane sugar, not that corn crap. Alternately, Reed's Ginger Brew is another good one. So, go get yourself a highball glass, and mix up a Gin Gin Highball.

Gin Gin Cocktail

1 1/2 oz gin
5 oz ginger ale
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Build over ice in a highball glass. Garnish if you so choose with a lemon peel.

This is just a nice, simple drink, full of botanicals running around and playing tag with the ginger, frolicking on the green fields of your tastebuds (assuming you never ever brush your teeth), and generally pleasing everyone. This is also a good one to use with some of your more untraditional gins, the kind that have all sorts of wacky botanicals in them. Ginger is in so many different cuisines and types of food (main course, dessert, etc.) that it can interact well with all sorts of flavors. This is definitely one to try.

You just can't leave well enough alone, can you?

I've got a fun tale to relate about this drink; I made it before I went on vacation last summer, and I think Nature decided to punish my hubris. My trip to Florida coincided with the arrival and subsequent quadruple-landfall of Tropical Storm Fay, and my entire vacation was spent dodging downbursts. The drink's name: Dark N' Stormy. The Atlantic has a cruel sense of humor.

Despite that, it's a wonderful, and very simple drink. Despite that, you all know I can't leave well enough alone, and I've doctored it a little bit. I'll give you the original, and then my take.

Dark N' Stormy (original version)

2 oz Gosling's Black Seal rum (or any dark/blackstrap rum, but Gosling's is traditional)
5 oz ginger beer (or as strong a ginger ale as you can find)
Large lime wedge (1/4 lime, or so)

Build over ice (rum first) in a highball glass, then squeeze in the lime

It's great as is, but I tinkered with it a touch and made this:

Dark N' Stormy (my version)

Juice of 1/4 lime
1/2 oz ginger beer base (recipe follows)
1/4 oz falernum
2 oz Gosling's Black Seal rum
5 oz ginger ale

Pour first four ingredients over ice, stirring to combine, then add the ginger ale, stirring gently to integrate everything.

The ginger beer base is more or less a homemade ginger juice, but one that doesn't require any juicer. It does require a bit of patience, however. I'm using the recipe from The Cocktail Chronicles, but I've scaled it down by about 1/3, just to keep it from going to waste:

3 1/3 cups water
4 oz ginger, finely chopped or sliced as thin as possible on a mandoline
2 oz light brown sugar (processed as minimally as possible)
juice of 1/4 lime
1/3 bay leaf

Boil the water, remove from heat and add the ginger and bay leaf. Cover and let steep for at least four hours but preferably overnight. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth, squeezing out all the liquid you can. Add the sugar and lime juice, stir/shake to combine, bottle and refrigerate.

You can use this to make your own ginger beer, mixing with club soda at about a 1:1 ratio of base to soda, or for ginger ale, at about a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio. It's wonderfully spicy.

Anyway, as for my variant on it, I think it's a great take on the original, if I do say so myself. The ginger and spice in the falernum really meld with the ginger beer base and ginger ale to make a deep, satisfying drink, and the fresh lime juice notes really make it pop. This is a fantastic summer drink...you could probably even serve it with a brunch (if you must. I hate brunch, but that's just a personal neurosis) as it's light and crisp. Plus, ginger is an excellent digestive aid, so it might even help you eat more. Just please, don't tempt the fates like I did and drink it before leaving for a vacation in the middle of hurricane season. It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

Elect-ile Dysfunction

West Palm Beach. Election. Troubles deciphering ballots. Trying to sex chads. Swinging? Hanging? Pregnant? Tri-chad? Oh, those crazy November days of...1960?!

Yep.

Seems that 40 years before the big dust-up in Florida electoral history, there was another sorry-ass chapter. In the aftermath of all that deciphering, a precinct captain in Palm Beach Lakes decided to create a drink to help unwind at the end of the day, and lo, the Swinging Chad was born.

Swinging Chad

2 oz golden Puerto Rican rum (or Cuban, if you know a guy who knows a guy)
2 oz unsweetened pineapple juice
2 dashes Angostura bitters
1 dash Pernod

Stir well with cracked ice and pour, unstrained, into a Collins glass. Top up with ginger ale, add a straw, and garnish it with a paper umbrella with little rectangles cut out of it.

It's a silly looking thing, but it's not too bad. As long as you don't go too heavy with the Pernod, this is a pretty well balanced, interestingly spicy concoction, one that's got enough magic going on that it's hard to pick out individual flavors. I'd say it's more of an occasional drink, though, rather than a twice or thrice a week tipple...as the Emperor said to Mozart..."too many notes."

an ode to unusual beverages...

I'm participating in a round table discussion at my local library about the future of food in the United States, looking at how farming and raising livestock has shifted from family run endeavors to huge, vertically integrated agribusinesses. One of the discussion points is the notion of eating locally-produced foods, and one of the things I plan to bring up at our next meeting tomorrow, replete with samples (non-alcoholic, sadly. I can't imagine the library would want booze on the premises) is the notion of preserving food. Now most people think of preserving food as either salting, smoking, canning or making jellies. There is another route, however, and it's one that was tremendously popular in the American Colonies...you can preserve the bounty of summer's fruit harvest by making a fruit shrub. No, not "shrub" in the sense of a small plant...the name actually comes from Arabic, and the word "sharab," which simply means "to drink". A fruit shrub is just a liquid that's produced by boiling together water, sugar, the fruit who's essence you want to keep on hand, and vinegar. In my recipe, I use white wine vinegar, just to keep it palatable, although I'd imagine apple cider vinegar could work as well. In either case, the acidity of the vinegar plus the simple syrup base combined to keep the liquid from spoiling in the fall and winter months in the Colonies, and could then be used to add a touch of summer's color and flavor to the bone-chilling bleakness of, say, January in New Hampshire. In my experience, this works best with berries, small stone fruits like cherries, and cranberries. Tonight's drink, which will also be tomorrow's drink at my "Menu for the Future" session only without the liquor, was made with four berries; raspberries, blueberries, marionberries and strawberries. Here's how to make the shrub.

In a medium-sized pot, whisk together 1 cup of sugar and one cup of water. Once combined, add 2 pints of the fruit of your choice and reduce the heat, simmering for 10 minutes. Then add two cups of white wine vinegar and return to a boil for two minutes. Strain through a cheesecloth-lined mesh strainer, pressing on the solids to get out as much of the liquid as possible; this should result in about a liter of syrupy liquid. Bottle and chill before using.

Then for your drink, all you've got to do is add 2 to 2 1/2 ounces of rum to 1 ounce of your shrub mixture, building over ice, and top up with ginger ale.

A lot of people, on learning what's in this drink, invariably pull a face at the mention of vinegar. In truth, it adds a tang to the beverage, but it's flavor is so muted by the sweetness of the fruit (not to mention the sugar) that it's really more like the flavor a bit of lemon juice might add than anything else. It's really a fun drink to spring on people...and you can make it with a ton of different fruits. I've even heard of a ginger shrub, which must look a lot like a chutney before straining. And, of course, like so many specialty foods and beverages, if you don't feel like making your own shrub base (which means you'll lose out on half the fun and all of the feeling of accomplishment) you can buy it online, most notably, from Tait Farm Foods in Pennsylvania. One of my favorite aspects of this is the feeling that I've refined something, that I've taken these simple ingredients and rendered them down and made this beautiful, fragrant, jewel-colored liquid from them. It's a simple process, but it produces a great, and long-lasting result; that batch of shrub will make more than 30 drinks. It may be a good idea to share...