Content about Cocktail
March 28, 2011
Or how to restore punch to its former glory
Until recently, my first thought upon hearing the word "punch" was a frat party, something electric red, and indiscriminate drinking--a concoction spiked with a slew of spirits that might be laying around and then covered in Koolaid. That seems to be the reputation punch has gotten—but if cocktail writer Dave Wondrich has anything to say about it, we are all missing the point. Punch is not the currency of undistinguishing...
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February 18, 2011
This kinda blew our minds: bartenders are now mixing up cocktails then letting them mellow out for a few weeks in barrels. The result? Smoother, more complex flavors. Anybody had an aged cocktail?
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February 10, 2011
A Variation on a Classic That Goes Down a Little Easier
Ah, gimlets. I've always been too much of a wuss to enjoy them. The gimlet is all harsh lime and bracing alcohol, befitting to manlier men like the British seaman who invented it, at some point in the 19th century, halfway across the Atlantic. They were looking for their allotment of vitamin C (scurvy sucks), had Rose's lime juice, and they were drinking a lot of gin. How's that for a cocktail history? Today, the gimlet is still...
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February 4, 2011
Pioneering bartenders are introducing cereal milk--yup, the multicolored stuff left over after your bowl of fruity pebbles--into pioneering cocktails. Would you drink one?
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December 31, 2010
With one secret ingredient
For the third year in a row, Nick and I will be spending our New Years Eve with friends eating tacos and drinking cocktails. It's become something of a tradition, fondly known as Cocktails and Carnitas, and I can hardly wait.
It's a given that the food is good. But we also believe in drinking very, very good cocktails. Cocktail. Rather than conjuring up images of sugary vodka-laced concoctions, the word cocktail evokes for us a...
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April 9, 2010
Substituting brandy in this variation on a classic cocktail.
Making cocktails is a tricky business. The balance--between sour and sweet, harsh and smooth--can easily be lost if one isn't careful; most recipes are so expertly calibrated that making any kind of substitution is a bad idea. A cocktail is often a significant investment that goes down the drain if you screw it up (or in my case, gulped down with a wince because I am incapable of admitting defeat). Some rarer cocktail ingredients are...
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March 18, 2010
Taking the balance in a whole new direction
Do they belong together?
Most cocktails have too much sugar in them. I'm not sure when the barrage of overly sweet cocktails began (not to mention the tradition of putting mini umbrellas in the glass), but it leaves me with a stomach ache. Unlike the bracing experience of an Old Fashioned, possibly the first cocktail to be invented in a dusty bar in the 19th century, a succinct, aromatic sip that slowly grows on you, most cocktails...
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February 25, 2010
What we did with an unwanted bottle of vodka
I cannot be fooled. If a bartender accidentally swaps vodka for some gin in my drink, I can tell. I'm not trying to be difficult, but I will send it back. Why?
Because I hate vodka. Hate hate hate hate it. I hate the way it smells, and how it makes me feel. While I can talk your ear off about every other spirit you throw at me (Gin, Rum, Tequila, and especially Bourbon), I don't really have anything nice to say about that clear...
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February 10, 2010
Welcome to Wednesday Links, our weekly collection of the most interesting food links we've discovered in the past week. Enjoy!
What's the Recipe?
Can you learn to cook from cookbooks? We linked to this article a few weeks ago and this week it's making the blog rounds. Adam Gopnick believes "you can only learn from watching someone in the kitchen."
On Cookbooks
Ruth Reichl does not agree. "We are constantly...
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[Photo by Basil Childers for The New York Times]
Welcome to Wednesday Links. This is our weekly collection of four of the most interesting food links we've discovered in the past week. Enjoy!
The Olive Oil Barons
Awesome story about growing olives and pressing them into oil from a couple of complete amateurs. Who knew that slightly less ripe olives are important for a peppery taste?
Exploring Tokyo Through its Ramen...
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February 2, 2010
Other uses for the unloved spirit.
I have this large bottle of vodka and I don't know what to do with it. It was lugged over by a friend (Blake) during a party as some kind of gift for the festivities, but I could see through his evil plan. He was trying to pawn this half finished bottle off on me because he didn't want to drink it. Sure enough, while the whiskey and gin were manhandled during the party, stirred and shaken into all manner of cocktails, that bottle of...
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January 27, 2010
Welcome to Wednesday Links. This is our weekly collection of four of the most interesting food links we've discovered in the past week. Enjoy!
Cocktail Techniques
Recently Gary Regan released his list of basic cocktail techniques, and the San Francisco Chronicle convinced Neyah White and Jackie Patterson to demonstrate them on camera. Of particularly note: how to correctly stir a cocktail.
Restaurant Critics State Into the...
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[Photographs: Evan Sung and Christopher Smith for The New York Times ]
Welcome to the first edition of Wednesday Links. This is our weekly collection of four of the most interesting food links we've discovered in the past week. Enjoy!
Nick:
Heston Blumenthal's Mad Scientist Christmas Dinner
This video showcases Heston's perfect Christmas meal...and I thought my Christmas dinner of fried chicken and grits was time...
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December 15, 2009
Our favorite drinks of 2009.
Obviously, this site is mostly devoted to cooking, and always has been. But watchful readers may have noticed over the years the occasional post slipped in about drinking. We've thankfully improved our recipes since the very first drinking post on this site, which involved mixing dark beer from New York's oldest pub, McSorley's, and some cheap vanilla ice cream. The result was the beer shake, which turned out bitter...
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December 9, 2009
It's pink, but manly
To stretch the metaphor, the essential DNA of the Daisy involves adding a little soda water to a Sour (spirit, citrus, sweetener). Beyond that, though, you can take some liberties.
- Imbibe Magazine
If you're not too careful, cocktails can swallow you into an alternative universe of reason where there are no right answers. The perfectly proportioned Negroni, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, is the exception to the rule--no...
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November 13, 2009
Perhaps the most perfect cocktail.
"A proper Negroni is as perfectly and tripodically balanced as, say, a water molecule. "
- Jonathan Miles
The Negroni is an incorruptible drink. While the martini can be perverted by nefarious substances like apple pucker and vodka and many places make Margaritas by simply drizzling a little tequila in a cup of sugary mix, a Negroni is a Negroni. It has three ingredients (gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari) and their...
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October 2, 2009
Whisky and sugar combine to make an unforgettable cocktail.
Recently Nick and I were in the gritty West Loop neighborhood of Chicago, after a long, pork-ridden meal at The Publican, where we fed on cracklins, rillettes, belly, shoulder, and all manner of sausages. We slipped out of the restaurant happy and stuffed into the long fluorescent shadows, in search of a good bar to aid all the oncoming digesting to be done.
We ended up at Matchbox, a slender little bar no more than 10 feet wide, but well...
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April 30, 2009
Nick throws a perfect Derby party.
The authentic Julep is a drink from the Heroic Age of American Tippling, and as such is not for novices. That's perhaps the chief reason it's fallen out of favor in these weak-livered times.
- David Wondrich
I'll get to the julep soon enough. But first I want to talk about the Kentucky Derby. Though I grew up on the Indiana side of the Ohio River, I don't care much about the Indy 500. I lived far...
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May 23, 2008
The perfection introduction to mixed drinks.
Over the past year or so, Nick and I have developed a kind of unhealthy obsession with cocktails -- some could argue literally. We've quietly stocked our cabinets with liquers, liquors, bitters; our fridge doors are weighed down with vermouths (yes, they should be refrigerated) and simple syrups; a regular supply of rye whiskey, bourbon and gin comes and goes, mixed with a recurring stockpile of freshly-squeezed citrus...
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February 27, 2008
I took a little break from food this past weekend, turning my back on all the pieces of meat curing in my stairwell (I’ll get to those later in the week), and set off for the rolling hills of Kentucky to sip the best bourbon I could. I’d been blabbering on and on to my brother-in-law about the stuff for well over six months now and it was about time to actually see where it all came from. What started as a simple trip...
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June 18, 2007
My drink of the summer so far has been the margarita, a fact that may leave most of you thinking, “so what?” And normally that's fine--nothing is that impressive about a cut-rate tequila mixed with a big bottle of margarita mix that’s dumped in a salt crusted glass the size of a punch bowl. But I’ve been messing with the holy trinity of lime, tequila and triple sec, thanks to one little product I just picked...
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December 7, 2006
Feeling a little bit under the weather and a bit perturbed with my job, I returned home last night needing some kind of a cure. Like hot chocolate made by your mother, I needed a home remedy with exactly zero medicinal value, which would warm me up and send me straight to bed. I didn't have any chocolate, but I did have a great big bottle of Bourbon and one idea.
I wanted a hot toddy, even if I wasn't sure what that was. I was...
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All content copyright Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer.
