FrogPrincesse

I tried Maurin sweet vermouth for the first time a few days ago. It's very savory, with a lot of herbs such as thyme. Almost reminiscent of the seasonings in tomato sauce. Apparently it's a fairly new product made based on an old recipe. Maurin currently belongs to Anchor Distilling. I used it to make a Negroni.

Imperial Cocktail with Tanqueray London dry gin, Noilly Prat extra dry vermouth, Maraschino liqueur, Angostura bitters. I like this one and it's pretty too.

I found this article in Serious Eats to be very informative about the different styles of ramens and classification by seasoning (shio (salt), shoyu (soy sauce), miso (fermented bean paste), as well as broth type (tonkotsu, i.e., pork bone broth), discussion of toppings, etc. Here is an example of shio ramen I had just a couple of days ago at Yakyudori, a restaurant in San Diego. The pork belly topping was good and the egg had a nice texture. I am not a fan of the (canned?) corn but it seems very common. The noddle themselves were nothing special. Fermented bamboo shoots in the upper right corner, and plenty of scallions in the middle.

From the Little Italy Mercado farmers' market in San Diego: Ponderosa bitter lemon (50 cents a piece, I should have bought more than one!), Bouquet de Fleurs sour oranges (for marmalade but I was told they were sweet this year), passion fruit, Haas avocados, rhubarb, Perfection tangerines, sage + buckwheat & orange blossom honeys (this is my favorite honey vendor, Mikolich, and their sage & buckwheat honey just won a Good Foods award), Asian pears, bay leaves.

Neisson is nice, and so are La Favorite, St James, Clement, etc. I guess I like variety!

@JoNorvelleWalkerThe white one I assume? Have you tried the aged one too? It's rather good.

Spicy carrot soup from vegetable literacy with creme fraiche and sumac.

To honor Dick Bradsell, a variation on the Bramble with Tanqueray London dry gin, lemon juice, Briottet blackcurrant syrup, demerara syrup.

I love Eat Your Books. I've been using it for years now and have hundreds of notes in there! It's a fabulous ressource when you have a lot of cookbooks (and cocktail books).

Clint Eastwood (Mike Ryan) with Michter's rye whiskey, green Chartreuse, Angostura bitters, demerara syrup (I used half demerara syrup half gum syrup). The generous dose of bitters (1 bar spoon, as much as the Chartreuse) was fun and actually less in-your-face than I would have imagined. Very good Old Fashioned variation, and I am falling more and more in love with the Michter's rye.

How was it? Or are you taking a nap now maybe?

@lesliecPretty sure these are two different products. The Whisky Exchange, for example, sells both. https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/p/26653/picon-club-a-lorange-liqueur-bitters

I use an All Clad 3-quart saucier pan, or a pressure cooker if time is limited.

From the "Friends" section, a modern take on the Dark & Stormy, The Perfect Storm (Alastair Burgess) with dark rum (Lost Spirits Polynesian-inspired rum), vieille prune aged plum eau-de-vie (Etter), lemon juice, honey syrup, ginger juice (BG Reynolds ginger syrup). I had tried it before with El Dorado 8. It's wonderful with the Polynesian-inspired rum - you get pineapple and banana notes (the ginger blends really well with the other ingredients and isn't obvious at all), it's boozy and very complex.

Sipmith VJOP makes a fabulous juniper-bomb high-octane Martini. I really like Monkey 47 too; I've never had it in a Martini but I imagine it'd make an interesting one with its non-traditional flavor profile - a lot of interesting citrus notes (including bitter orange) and pine.

I thought it'd be fun to have a topic devoted to smoke in cocktails. Smoke can be introduced into cocktails via different means. Through ingredients is the obvious way, for example with the use of a smoky mezcal or peaty scotch (Laphroaig etc). Or indirectly with a smoked food item such as the bacon that is used to "fat-wash" whiskey in the Benton's Old Fashioned. Other cocktails involve setting herbs (rosemary works well for that purpose) or spices (cinnamon for example) on fire and capturing the aromatic smoke. Lastly, wood chips can also be used to impart a smoky flavor to a drink. Here is an example of that technique. Loves Rival (Tim Robinson via Gaz Regan) with Michter's US-1 single barrel straight rye whiskey, Martini Gran Lusso, Boy Drinks World grapefruit bitters, cherry & yuzu smoke (substituted for applewood & lemon rind). I don't own a smoking gun so I just set the wood chips on fire, grated the yuzu on top and captured the resulting smoke in my cocktail shaker before I shook the drink.

Pretty sure that's me! Thanks for the catch.

That looks intriguing, but $56 a bottle? Wow.

Liberal cocktail (George J. Kappeler, 1895, via Martin's index) with Michter's straight rye whiskey, Picon, gomme syrup. This version of the Liberal comes sans sweet vermouth.

From last night - I was in the mood for a Gibson. I didn't have any pickled onions so I used pickled fennel made with a recipe in Mario Batali's Babbo. Gibson variation (2:1) with Tanqueray London dry gin, Noilly Prat extra dry vermouth, pickled fennel.

Haha. I think I got my amari mixed up! It's Baulio I was thinking of when I made that comment, not Lucano.

I love this one; I've had it in my rotation for a while now. Almost too good to share. Warday's (Harry Craddock) with Tanqueray London dry gin, Martini Gran Lusso vermouth, Daron XO calvados, green Chartreuse. (I use the ratios from the Bartender's Choice app). It's a great winter-to-spring transition drink with the mix of gin and apple brandy (I used calvados) as the base. There is something great about the interplay of the botanicals in the juniper-forward gin with the Chartreuse, and then the sweet vermouth & calvados giving it depth and warmth.

Classics... A fabulous Vieux Carré (Walter Bergeron) with Willet 5-year rye whiskey, Pierre Ferrand 1840 cognac, Martini Gran Lusso vermouth, Benedictine, Angostura & Peychaud's bitters. There are hints of spring everywhere and I had to have a Ti Punch. La Favorite rhum agricole blanc, JM sugar cane syrup.

Mine was improvised with things I already had, but turned out great. Duck foie gras au torchon on toasted Hawaiian bread, fleur de sel, Albrecht pink sparkling wine from Alsace. The foie gras was from d'Artagnan. Escargots, green & red mustard frills salad. Dessert was soft chocolate cakes made with Valrohna chocolate, and served with whipped cream.

And here is the sweet vermouth version, created 4 years after the dry vermouth version. Byrrh Cocktail (Jacques Straub, 1914) with Byrrh grand quinquina, Martini Gran Lusso vermouth, Michter's straight rye. They are both good but I preferred the dry vermouth for the simple reason that there was more contrast between the dry vermouth and the Byrrh, and therefore the resulting flavors were more interesting. The Savoy Cocktail book has its own variation of this as well (Byrrh, sweet vermouth and Canadian Club whisky, in equal parts).