Content about Whiskey
October 6, 2011
Forget about the hallucinations; one needs to dish this thing out in drops.
I'm not sure if there is a better drink to write about for the launch of an improved website design than my favorite cocktail of the moment — a drink so good it's literally called an "Improved Cocktail." (If only modern drinks had enough courage to pronounce their worth.) Think of it as a relaunched product's "new and improved" guarantee, except that this one was made back in 1876 and is alcoholic....
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July 12, 2011
Nick enjoys the comforts of a 100 year old recipe.
I have a thing for hotel bars. It helps if they are opulent old ones, designed to comfort the wealthy traveler from a 100 years ago. Sure, the drinks aren't necessarily the best, and the service can be uninspired and overly corporate, but I feel immediately relieved when I walk into some grand old space like Chicago's exquisite Palmer House in the Loop. Plus, I'm just not sure there is a better place to have a cocktail. Served...
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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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December 16, 2009
Well, guess we better throw our hats in the ring: it's the time of year for gift guides and we're not afraid to participate. We've avoided it for 4 years, but our streak is about to come to an end: we hereby present the first annual Paupered Chef gift guide.
We've got kitchen gear to recommend, and some awesome food products, too. From what we have learned, cooks really just need a few basic tools that can allow them to turn ingredients into...
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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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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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January 30, 2009
A recipe for Texas-style chili.
Diced instead of Ground Meat
I had stopped using ground beef a few years back, after watching a Good Eats episode. The reasoning makes sense. When ground beef is used, the fat either needs to be drained off immediately, or needs to be skimmed off the day after when all the fat has accumulated at the top. But if you use chunks a lot of the juices stay inside, leaving both the chili less greasy and the meat more...
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November 9, 2008
Oh, geez, where to begin. While Blake was off gallivanting around the eternal city sampling the finer things in life, I was once again down in Kentucky on another bourbon tour. I'm sure Blake spent his free time strolling along ancient streets admiring priceless art. Yet, here I was staring down a family - complete with dog - made from whiskey barrels (the one with a bow is obviously the wife). What has my obsession with...
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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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May 16, 2008
It's a tale of the old and the new. Of the high and the low. It's Wild Turkey and Maker's Mark, two bourbons I love, but couldn't be more different from each other. The Turkey is a high rye bourbon made to grip your taste buds and warm your insides, while smooth and seductive Maker's Mark is the gentleman's choice, somewhat conservative and much more expensive. Feeling guilty that I hadn't visited these two landmarks the...
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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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September 17, 2007
First was the rather easy substitution of bourbon for the cognac
I tend to spend way too much time researching what I'm going to eat. Nearly every recipe is cross-examined against other works I have, just to make sure I'm doing things correctly. But I was on to this recipe the moment I saw Alton pull out his steaks. I didn't check if this was the authentic way to make this, I just went for it.
What could cause me to go into such enthusiastic fits? Steak au...
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December 20, 2006
Let's say you're just not feeling the joy you need to properly celebrate a festive party. It's the holiday season, and you need a slightly alcoholic milk product to help you reach that next level of cheer. The store-bought stuff? Gluey and tasting of artificial thickeners. You need some true, homemade eggnog--that's been established. Perhaps you prepared for this situation and made the excellent looking nog from...
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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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November 15, 2006
Every weekend I quickly scan Fairway's specials to see what deal I'll get off with this week. This time, I thought it was a joke, because I saw this sucker staring back at me. Filet Mignon for $5.99, which is a minor miracle on par with shooting stars and finding a real pastrami sandwich. Considering this cut regularly fetches prices that stumble towards the $20 mark, something had to be wrong. This is the leanest...
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All content copyright Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer.
