SAN FRANCISCO– New bar Gitane on Claude Lane has received delivery of a Kold Draft ice machine, according to reports to the Alcademics wire service.
—
The saddest part about this text message is not that it was sent, but that I was excited when I read it.
It's almost Thanksgiving, and that means all the booze news is full of stories on what to pair with your turkey. Phooey.
As you know, the entire staff here at Alcademics HQ (me) is vegetarian, so I don't play that game. But I do like Thanksgiving, as it's a holiday centered around pigging out and drinking, followed by loafing around until your stomach stops hurting.
I like to participate in my own special way, by enjoying a healthy vegetarian meal of Wild Turkey bourbon. And this year, I thought I would pair it with food, and then I thought, why not enjoy it as food?
I made three styles of Wild Turkey marinade for tofu, then cooked them all.
Marinade 1: A Bourbon Sazerac, dumped into a bowl
Marinade 2: An Old-Fashioned, dumped into a bowl
Marinade 3: Bourbon Marinade
Marinate pressed (water squeezed out) tofu overnight. Bake on lightly oiled cookie sheet at 300 degrees for 30-40 minutes, turning at least once. Remove from oven before it starts to look crispy or charred. If I had to do it again, I would make thicker slices and cook it on the lighter side, as the less it's cooked inside the more bourbon flavor is retained.
Results
The Sazerac Tofurkey was not so great. I didn't like the baked minty-ness that I think came from the absinthe. The Old Fashioned Tofurkey was delicious, as was the regular Bourbon Marinated Tofurkey.
I'd make this again in a heartbeat- and probably will tomorrow for actual Thanksgiving. I may also experiment with a Manhattan Marinade and a Bourbon Sour Marinade. Why not? The best part about this is that after you're finished, you can drink the leftover sauce.
I have a fondness for booze, as you may have realized, but also for shipwrecks and pirates. (Old pirates, not Somali pirates.)
So I am particularly thrilled by the story of the SS Politician, a ship carrying 260,000 bottles of whisky that sank off the Outer Hebrides (islands off Scotland) in 1941. The local islanders rowed out to the partially-submerged wreck at night and stole all the whisky they could get their hands on. But the government was not happy about that so they searched peoples' homes and jailed some of them, even though they were just going to let the whisky sink with the ship. For years, hidden bottles from the wreck would turn up when someone cleaned out their attic or dug up a shed.
The tale was made into the book Whisky Galore
by Compton Mackenzie, then a later books Scotch on the Rocks: The True Story Behind Whisky Galore
In 1970, the newspaper The Mirror led a diving expedition to the ship to find any bottles that were still on it. They did find them, and rewarded a diver Bob Pert with a few bottles for his efforts. He's auctioning off one of those (unopened but evaporating through the cork) bottles December 3rd. [Props to Lyke 2 Drink for finding news of the auction.]
This bottle would make an excellent holiday gift for someone obsessed with booze. Or shipwrecks. Or both.
Hey Look! It's my first story for Epicurious.com! Wahoo!
The Top Five Absinthe Cocktails
Now that absinthe is legal in America, what are you going to do with it?
I share some information about absinthe and suggest the five best cocktails in which to use it.
