"We're gonna make it the Las Vegas of Asia…"

I've been rewatching my DVDs of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" lately, and grumbling about how all the brilliant shows get cancelled…"Firefly," "Studio 60," "Sports Night," while the long-in-the-tooth shows that are seldom (if ever) funny last for-frakking-ever. Anyway, I digress.

Ed Asner's character in "Studio 60," the Chairman of the fictional NBS network, plans to get in on a deal with a consortium of companies and turn Macao (or "Macau" if you prefer, as Wikipedia seems to) into a fantastical destination. Already noted for gambling and tourism, I guess they would've installed a Universal Studios park and a Hard Rock Café and declared victory or something, I dunno. But…it got me thinking…

I wondered what a Manhattan would be like with a slew of disparate influences on it. I mean, Macao was a Portuguese colony in Chinese territory, a port for any number of exotic cargos…what would that have done to, or how would that translate to, a whiskey and vermouth based drink? And so, after jotting down some notes, I came up with this:

Macao Cocktail

2 oz blended whiskey (I used Canadian Club)
3/8 oz dry vermouth
1/4 oz Trader Tiki's Orgeat Syrup
1/8 oz Trader Tiki's Don's Spices #2
1 barspoon ginger liqueur
2 dashes Acid Phosphate
Dash of Donn's Tinc
Dash of Angostura Bitters
Dash of Bittermens Burlesque Bitters

Stir all ingredients smartly with ice, strain into cocktail glass, and garnish with a brandied cherry and a flamed orange zest.

So first thing to note is that this is going to start off sweet. The syrups and the ginger liqueur will guarantee that. Which is why I brought some things in to counter that: the acid phosphate for one. Made and sold by Darcy O'Neil from The Art of Drink, this brings sourness without any citrus juice. (I was going for a non-cloudy drink here.) Secondly, Bittermens new Burlesque bitters is a blend of açai berry (sweet), hibiscus (tart), and long pepper (long. I mean, 'hot') which further complicates things. Plus you've got the other bitters, the vanilla and allspice notes from Don's Spices #2, the almond of the orgeat, the grapefruit and cinnamon from Donn's Tinc, and the little bit of heat from the ginger liqueur.

It's a complicated drink. It's polyglot. It's multicultural. But it's sophisticated. And nuanced. And I think it's a fairly good invention.

Trying to sneak in under the wire...

Although by calling attention to the fact I'm trying to sneak in, I've just blown my cover. Ah, well...

I completely spaced, and lost track of time, and as a result, have technically missed May's Mixology Monday. The theme this month? Tom Waits.

I know, crazy, huh? But still, inextricably linked with liquor. Even after having laid off the sauce himself.

So I rummaged around in my memory banks, entertaining notions of creating a "Piano Has Been Drinking" cocktail, but no. Instead I went with another hoary old Waits tune (maybe not old, but definitely hoary) and have created:

Frank's Wild Years Cocktail

1 oz Rittenhouse 80° rye whiskey
1/4 oz Fernet Branca
1/4 oz orgeat syrup
1/4 oz sweet vermouth
1 dash Bittermens grapefruit bitters

Stir all well with ice, strain into scrupulously chilled shot glass

i started with that classic, the Franciuli Cocktail, and modified it a bit to make it suitable for Frank's Wild Years...the Fernet is scaled back a bit, and the sweetness quotient is upped a little, to better contrast with the bitter characters of the amaro that the Fernet brings to the party. The slight citrus tang of the grapefruit bitters counters the sweetness of the orgeat. All in all, a slightly off kilter flavor, with an aftertaste that somehow suggests the zen-likes notes of green tea, but one that's uniquely suited to pay tribute to Mr. Tom Waits.

Step into my office, baby...I'm big in Japan...

Pearls before swine?

No, I'm not calling you all swine. Please, put the baseball bat down, Mrs. Higginbotham.

Thank you.

There are very few funny quotes about pearls. I don't know why. But I needed something relevant to the drink, so you get that one up there.

Tonight's drink is one that I found on one of the many cocktail blogs I read...Bibulo.us featured it the other day, and pointed out it was one made by the inimitable David Wondrich, one of my all time cocktail heroes. I did, however, tinker with it, because that's what I do. The original used vodka, I swapped in gin for a little more complexity. The original used a strip of lemon peel, but I dashed in some of my Jamaican bitters. I like to think mine holds a candle to the original, but you be the judge.

The Pearlescent Cocktail

2 1/2 oz gin (originally vodka)
2 teaspoons orgeat syrup
1 teaspoon Maraschino liqueur
2 dashes Jamaican bitters (originally a strip of lemon peel)

Combine all with ice and shake viciously. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

It's sweet, but not cloying. It's vaguely vegetal, faintly citrusy, and it has a little bit of funk from the Maraschino. I like it! Plus it's this really cool color, the eponymous Pearlescent sheen. Tasty.

I love happy accidents in the lab.

Last night I was playing around with Tiki drinks, because I just got this nifty little iPod Touch app called Tiki+ (link opens in iTunes), which features more than 150 tiki drinks that Jeff "Beachbum" Berry has dug up over the years. So I was looking through them for inspiration, and, well, I wound up going a little "mad scientist," what with a dash of this and a little of that, and just generally experimenting. And I'll be frank, sometimes when I just mix stuff together, it really really sucks. But sometimes you can surprise yourself, and I'm delighted to report that this was one of those times.

And, since I made it up, I got to name it, which is one of my favorite parts of the process. So, since it's just some random thing, I went with the Hawaiian pidgin equivalent of "whatchamacallit," which is "da kine" (it's been described as "the word you use when you don't use the word")

Da Kine Cocktail

1/2 oz pimento dram
1/4 oz falernum
1/4 oz orgeat syrup
dash of vanilla extract
juice of 1/2 lime
slice of lemon
1 oz white Puerto Rican rum (I used Bacardi)
1 oz dark Barbados rum (I used Gosling's Black Seal)
dash of orange bitters

Combine all ingredients in shaker with lots of crushed ice, squeeze in the lemon juice and drop in the slice, and shake well. Pour, unstrained, over the juiced lime half, into a favorite Tiki mug, or boring old glass.

Brok'da mout*, da buggah is ono**! This turned out to be a great drink in the spirit of all the Tiki drinks it drew inspiration from...sweet, sour, full of spice, complex in character. Oooh, man. You gotta make this. Drink more than a couple of 'em, though, and you'll be pau***!

*"Brok'da mout" = "It's so good, it broke my mouth"
**"Da buggah is ono" = "This wicked little thing is delicious"
*** "pau" = "done" or "finished"

Strike, yer colors, ye brazen wench! No, not you, mom...

Ah, Mother's Day, when mom's everywhere endure crowded restaurants filled with grumpy children (of all ages), sub-par brunches, and mimosas made with cheap champagne. I know it's the thought that counts, but I just can't stand the thought of enduring all of that just to show mom that she's important to me...she might get the wrong idea and think that I harbor a secret desire to torture her. I'm sure the Geneva Convention prohibits some of the conditions you can find in many restaurants on Mother's Day. Then again, my mom just like sweet rolls, coffee, and the paper. Must be a Midwest thing.

And speaking of Midwest things (how's THAT for a segue?!), this latest drink is inspired by a recipe from a Milwaukee-based music journalist, one that I found in Beachbum Berry's Intoxica!, a great source for all sorts of exotic drinks. I just swapped in two different varieties of rum and added some orange bitters. The interesting thing is, in it's original incarnation, The Marlin, as it was called, was blue. However, with the rums I used, it darkened and tended rather more towards green. So since I changed the rums and changed the color, I figured I'd change the name, too.

El Pirata Y el Perico

1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz fresh lime juice
1/2 oz Maraschino liqueur
1/2 oz orgeat syrup
1/2 oz blue curaçao (or use a good triple sec and add a little blue food dye)
2 dashes orange bitters
1 oz Pyrat XO Reserve rum
1 oz Gosling's Black Seal rum

Shake all with ice, and strain into an Old-Fashioned glass or snifter filled with crushed ice.

I'll admit it, I geeked out a bit and named the drink after a spot at Walt Disney World, an eatery that's closed as often as not. But it's got a great name, and considering its meaning ("The Pirate and the Parrot") it fits with this drink, as well. I mean, rum and tiki elements and as green as a parrot? Yeah, that works!

In terms of flavor, the lemon and lime do a great job of balancing out the sweetness of the orgeat, the Maraschino similarly baffles the tastebuds (in a good way, of course) and the two different styles of rum really add a lot of depth. If you wanted to experiment a little more, you could add maybe an ounce and a half of a good strong ginger beer or ginger ale to it...might make things even more spicy and delicious. Really, half the fun of modifying recipes is trying variations on them.

"Anyone who says I didn't create the Mai Tai is a dirty rotten stinker."

Thus sayeth Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron. The Mai Tai is a classic, though sadly, much mistreated drink. The first problem with it was the base rum that Vic favored, a seventeen year old J. Wray and Nephew Jamaican, saw it's worldwide supply exhausted within a year of the 1944 debut of this drink. Then it saw it's orgeat switched from an imported brand to an easier to procure one. After that, it's seen one modification after another. Hell, even I modified it tonight (but I only try to change you because I love you, alcohol), and in the great scheme of things, my change isn't too egregious of one. So here's tonight's version of the drink!

Mai Tai

2 oz Pyrat XO rum
1/2 oz orange curacao
1/2 oz orgeat syrup
1/2 oz lime juice
1/4 oz Wray and Nephew White Overproof rum
1/8 oz simple syrup

Shake all ingredients well with tons of crushed ice and pour into your favorite Tiki mug (if you don't have a favorite Tiki mug, you really should get one. If you're pressed for time, though, you can use a Collins glass)

The name of this drink comes from the exclamation, in Tahitian, of the first people to taste Vic's concoction, Ham and Carrie Guld. On Carrie's first sip, she exclaimed (according to Trader Vic lore) "It's mai tai! It's mai tai roa áe!" She explained that it means "out of this world! The best!" And lo, the name stuck. And it should...it's a damned good drink. The original didn't use the overproof rum, and instead of simple syrup used 1/8 oz of "rock candy syrup" which is just simple syrup with some vanilla extract added to the mix. I opted to use the Wray and Nephew overproof to add a vanilla note, plus a little extra booze...the Pyrat is good, but it can underwhelm a bit in some mixes (though it's awesome to drink straight with a little lime). Contrast this to the Mai Tai served at your local TGI McTchotchke's GoodTime FoodDrinkery and you'll find there's a world of difference: the difference between expedience and craft. This little tipple, if consumed in the dog days of summer, just around sunset after a fun-filled day of yardwork, may just be the thing that saves your sanity and sends you, if only for a few minutes, "out of this world."