Alcademics

Category: recipes

  • The Perudriver: A Cocktail with Pisco, Orange Juice, and Orange Liqueur

    Perudriver cocktail pisco orange juice and orange liqueur

     

    I was trying to create a cocktail for my seminar at Tales of the Cocktail using an orange liqueur, a sponsor of my session. After attempts at an Orange Negroni and Orange Absinthe Frappe that both failed, I came up with this way-too-simple and drinkable-as-heck cocktail, perfect for summer days and morning cocktailing. I really don't like the screwdriver as a cocktail, but I *love* this. 

    The Perudriver
    by Camper English

    3.5 ounces fresh orange juice
    1 ounce pisco
    1/2 ounce orange liqueur (cognac-based)

    Add all ingredients to an ice-filled glass and stir. 

    Perudriver cocktail pisco orange juice and orange liqueur
     

  • Fine Cocktails in Fine Cooking Magazine

    I have a story in the new March/April issue of Fine Cooking magazine. It's about the variety of ways to sweeten cocktails with raw sugars, maple syrup, agave, honey, etc.

    FineCookingMarchAprilCover

    Pick up a copy to find a Mamie Taylor variation with evaporated organic cane sugar by Thad Vogler of Bar Agricole in San Francisco, an agave-sweetened refresher from Ted Kilgore of Taste by Niche in St. Louis, and a honey champagne bittered mojito variation from yours truly.  

    I hope to blog some more information on various types of raw sugars I learned about while researching the story, as it might be useful. I was on the phone to sugar scientists conducting interviews for a couple hours and it turns out it's pretty hard to describe exact differences in any meaningful way. But I'll try when I get the chance.

    In the meantime, run screaming to your local newsstand to pick up the new copy of Fine Cooking!

  • Montego Bay, By Way of Heaven’s Dog

    I can't stop thinking about the delicious drink I had during Tiki Week at Heaven's Dog. So I asked bar/general manger Erik Adkins for the recipe and he was nice enough to share.

    "The Montego Bay is listed in Beachbum Berry's 'Intoxica'.  He says that
    it is a Don the Beachcomber Drink from the Hotel Sahara in Las Vegas
    1940's."

    The version they made at Heaven's Dog is this:

    Montego Bay

    (adapted from Beachbum Berry's Intoxica by Erik Adkins of Heaven's Dog)
    1/2 oz lime
    1/2 oz grapefruit
    1 oz honey syrup (1 to 1 dilution with water)

    2 dashes Angostura bitters
    4 dashes absinthe
    1/4 oz all spice dram
    11/2 oz Smith & Cross Jamaican rum

    Shake all ingredients and strain over crushed ice.

    This is one of those drinks where Smith & Cross completely makes the drink. So funky.

  • Bartenders Hitting Their Hoes

    For some reason, the San Francisco Chronicle didn't choose the above title for my story that comes out Sunday August 30th. I can't think of why.

    More bars growing own cocktail ingredients

    Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

    Friday, August 28, 2009

     Victoria D'Amato-Moran grows tomatoes, Asian pears, Fuji apples, blackberries, roses and many herbs in her South San Francisco garden. Sooner or later, everything in it winds up in her cocktails.

    "Except the zucchinis," she says. "I haven't figured out how to use those yet."

    Gartenders2

    The Bay Area has long been home to the farm-forward cocktail movement – initially personified by Scott Beattie, then of Cyrus restaurant, who sourced produce from neighbors' fruit trees for his bar. Lately, more bartenders are doing the gardening work themselves, for the same reason that backyard gardeners seem to have appeared everywhere.

    The extra effort may not save money, and the drinks may not taste noticeably fresher to the customer, but you can bet they do to the proud garden tender who grew part of your gimlet from seed.

    Read the rest of my story in this Sunday's Chronicle about bartenders who also tend to gardens, including Duggan McDonnell, H. Joseph Ehrmann, Daniel Hyatt, Scott Stewart, Thad Vogler, and Lane Ford, and the bars Fairway Cocktail Lounge, Cyrus, Elixir, Alembic, Cantina, Fifth Floor, Bar Agricole, Starbelly, Sprcue, Brix, and Etoile. Gosh I'm thorough.

    Also: there's a recipe for Jacques Bezuidenhout's Sagerac, a version of the Sazerac made with fresh picked sage, and Scott Stewart's Lonsdale No. 3 made with fresh basil.

    Gartenders1

  • The Ultimate Test of your Liquor Cabinet

    Not only is the Laphroaig Project delicious and surprisingly tropical for its ingredients, it's a test of your liquor
    cabinet. If you have all of these ingredients at home you are a huuuuge cocktail geek.

    The Laphroaig Project was created by Owen Westman at Bourbon & Branch and it's
    also available at Rickhouse, both in San Francisco. It contains:

    • Green
      Chartreuse
    • Yellow Chartreuse
    • Laphroaig Islay Single Malt Whisky
    • Luxardo Maraschino liqueur
    • Peach bitters
    • Lemon juice

    What? Yes. The recipe is here.

    And if you can make it without shopping, I think you are cool. 

  • History of the El Diablo Cocktail in Trader Vic’s Books

    I was trying to find the first reference to the El Diablo cocktail recently.

    Mexican El Diablo



    1/2 lime

    1 ounce tequila

    1/2 crème de cassis

    Ginger Ale

    Squeeze lime juice into a 10-ounce glass; drop in spent shell. Add ice cubes, tequila, and crème de cassis. Fill glass with ginger ale.

    Searching the web, the earliest reference I read to it was from Trader Vic's books of 1946 and 1947.

    I asked tiki expert Martin Cate, who has these books, if he knew if the drink was a Trader Vic original. After his research it's still not entirely clear, but the research is interesting in itself.

    Martin says:

    IT IS in the 1946 TV Book of Food and Drink- It is
    called a "Mexican El Diablo" and it IS singled out as an original
    cocktail.
     
    IT IS in the 1947 TV Bartender's Guide again as a
    "Mexican El Diablo", but does not declare it an original- although that book
    does not specify.
     
    It's not in the TV Kitchen Kibitzer
    1952
     
    IT IS in the TV Pacific Island Cookbook of
    1968, but now called "El Diablo" only
     
    IT IS in the TV Bartender Guide Revised 1972 as an
    "El Diablo", but does not say it's his.  This edition DOES call out
    original drinks.

    Thanks Martin!

    If anyone finds an earlier reference to the El Diablo or Mexican El Diablo, please let me know.

  • A Camper Cocktail

    SeanMike over at Scofflaw's Den is making cocktails for mixologists, bloggers, and other folks, and naming them for those people.

    And now he's made one named The Camper, made with blanco tequila, grenadine, lemon juice, pineapple grapefruit soda, and Peychaud's bitters. Sounds tasty- I can't wait to try me.

  • Top 5 Beer Cocktails on Epicurious.com

    Happymich Hey look, I wrote another story for Epicurious.com!

    It's the Top 5 Beer Cocktails, including ones you know like the Shandy and Black Velvet, plus ones that are probably new to you:

    • The Stout Diplomat by Yanni Kehagiaras
    • The Happy Mich by the Tippling Brothers
    • The Cure by Gina Chersevani

    My previous story for Epicurious was the Top 5 Absinthe Cocktails.

  • Sharing the Sherry Shrub

    In Gary Regan's weekly cocktail newsletter, he shares with us Neyah White's recipe that won the Vinos de Jerez cocktail competition. The recipe is below. It sounds easy because it's only two ingredients, but naturally one of those two ingredients involves seven other ingredients and takes two weeks to make.

    To see the recipes for the runner-up winners by Nate Dumas of the Clover Club, Joel Baker of Bourbon and Branch, and Daniel Eun of PDT, you'll have to go to Gary's website. They're a pretty amazing variety of drinks.

    Sherry Shrub

    Adapted from a recipe by Neyah White, Nopa, San Francisco.

    Winner of the 2008 Vinos de Jerez Cocktail Competition

    22.5 ml (.75 oz) House-Made Shrub*
    60 ml (2 oz) La Gitana Manzanilla sherry
    1 lemon twist, as garnish

    Stir over ice and strain into a small sherry glass.  Add the garnish.


    *House-Made Shrub

    Adapted from a recipe by Neyah White, Nopa, San Francisco.

    1 quart fresh elderberries, trimmed from stems

    1 cup fresh huckleberries

    5 cups evaporated cane sugar

    1 quart cider vinegar

    1 oz kosher salt

    5 brown cardamon pods

    1 oz. jigger of white pepper corns

    In a large bowl, mildly press fruit with
    bottom of shaker tin till every berry is at least bruised.  Muddle
    spices in a mixing glass till all the corns are at least cracked.  Add
    sugar, cover and let sit 5 hours or until a good syrup has formed (this
    should happen in a cool place, refrigerate if not available.)  Add salt
    and vinegar and stir till salt has dissolved, cover and return to cool
    storage and let age for at least a week.  Then filter successively
    through a china cap then a cheesecloth.  Bottle in clean, sterile
    bottle leaving a few inches of air under the cap.  It is now ready to
    use, but another week of aging allows for a deeper, more lingering
    flavor.  The beauty of this cocktail is seasonality and custom
    flavors.  It must be stressed that this is a seasonal concept and it
    should be made with whatever produce is peaking the week you make it.

  • Party Tips from Esquire

    I think it's a little odd to put your New Year's party tips in the January issue of a magazine instead of December, then to give away all the content online before it's even January, but that's why I'm not a rich and famous magazine editor.

    Nor am I a David Wondrich, who wrote all the booze stories for the issue. They include:

    Esquire's Guide to Hosting

    A complaint about oversized Martini glasses

    And batch-sized recipes for party drinks: the Gin Daisy, Manhattan, and an original drink called the Saint Valentine (umm, wrong month again?) that includes rum, port, Grand Marnier, and lime juice.

    Esquirenye