MxMo XXIV--Variations

[eje]

If any of you read (or write) blogs which cover cocktails, you might know that Paul over at Cocktail Chronicles has been organizing a monthly online cocktail event he calls Mixology Mondays.

This month's event is being hosted by Jimmy over on his blog Jimmy's Cocktail Hour The theme is Variations.

To quote Jimmy from his explanation of the topic:

The theme this time around is "Variations." You can present your variation of a classic recipe, or compare several variations of the same recipe, or anything really. I'm keeping the theme open to anything so get creative.

If you would like to participate, please write up a cocktail in this topic before Monday, February 11th at midnight. I will compile a list of cocktails posted and email them to the organizer.

[KatieLoeb]

Here's my latest twist on a Moscow Mule.

Mumbai Mule

1.5 oz. Pearl Pomegranate Vodka (or other Pomegranate vodka)

1 oz. pomegranate juice

1 oz. homemade ginger beer

.5 oz fresh lime juice

.75 oz. spiced simple syrup

Shake over ice and drop into a Collins glass. Add a splash each of soda and ginger ale. Stir and garnish with a lime wedge.

[JAZ]

We've been making a variation on the Last Word -- same ingredients, different proportions.

The Closing Remark

2 oz. gin

.25 oz green Chartreuse

.25 Maraschino

.5 oz. lime juice

[Mike S.]

This is my first time at this game, so here goes...

One of my all-time favorite drinks is the Rusty Nail -- that gentle mix of smoky scotch whisky and heather-honey Drambuie works very, very well for me. I like it so much, in fact, that I've been known to have one (or two) at Cocktail Hour before dinner, especially on cold nights.

Recognizing the impropriety of consuming so sweet a libation before supper (and having already been widely ridiculed for it, so you're too late ), I've often wondered how to convert this classic after-dinner sipper into a lively pre-dinner cocktail. A few years ago, I picked up a copy of Food & Wine Magazine's "Cocktails 2006" book and found, on page 107, the solution to my problem: A fantastic variation on the Rusty Nail called...

The Silver Nail Cocktail

1 oz blended scotch (I used Johnnie Walker Black Label)

1 oz Drambuie

1 oz gin (Plymouth works perfectly here; Martin Miller's Westbourne Strength is also very good)

.25 oz fresh lemon juice

Dash Fee Bros. Lemon Bitters (optional; my addition)

Lemon twist garnish

Preparation is up to you. The original recipe calls for building over ice in a rocks glass and garnishing with a lemon twist. That works great (and is obviously more in line with the original) but I like it even better stirred well over ice and strained into a chilled cocktail glass. You could, of course, shake it given the lemon juice but I think it works better stirred in this proportion. And a final note on that lemon juice: Meyer lemons are in season just now, and I love them for just about anything (try a wedge in your G&T in place of the lime; awesome). This drink, however, remains quite sweet and thus really needs the more sour cut of true lemon juice (you could, indeed, up the juice quantity if you like, or lower the amount of Drambuie). No harm in using the Meyer lemon peel for the twist, however!

Food & Wine Magazine credits this drink to a joint called Indebleu in Washington, D.C. I've never been there, but I'm already a big fan.

Cheers!

Mike

[eje]

It's been a while since I last tortured you with a culinarily inspired original cocktail with at least one difficult or nearly impossible to obtain ingredient.

Seemed like a MxMo about "Variations" would be a fine excuse.

I was paging through the February, 2008, Gourmet magazine. You know, looking for recipes that wouldn't involve a million steps, a million dollars, or a trip to the gourmet grocery store. I ran across a dessert topping (or is it a floor wax?) which involved Clementines in a Spiced Ginger Syrup.

I had clementines and all the spices required.

But, then, I thought, hey! if that's not a drink, I don't know what is. And, hey! that's a variation!

So in the original recipe we've got a syrup spiced with ginger, star anise, and cardamom. Sliced Clementines. And a pomegranate seed garnish.

How to parse that out and translate it into drink-i-ness.

The easiest way would be to simply make the syrup as the recipe calls for, pick a spirit, add clementine juice, and away you go.

Ha, we do not take the easy way! (Actually, we do take the easy way, as there is no pesky pantry work involved here.)

Dozier Cooler*

4 Cardamom Pods

2 oz Pisco Alto del Carmen

Grenadine, hopefully homemade

1 oz Clementine Juice (or Mandarin)

1/8 oz Clandestine La Bleu Absinthe** (or another not too wormwoody Blanche)

Bundaberg Ginger Beer (or other spicy ginger beer or ale)

Cardamom Leaf (Yeah, I know. I'm probably one of three people in North America with a Cardamom plant. You can order one of your own from: Mountain Valley Growers. Failing Cardamom, use Thai Basil. Failing Thai Basil, Mint.)

Crush 4 cardamom pods and combine with 2 oz Pisco in a mixing glass. (Ok, we've got our cardamom.) After at least an half an hour, or whenever you finish making dinner, cover the bottom of a collins glass with grenadine. (Ok, we've got our pomegranate.) In a mixing tin, combine the Pisco, Clementine Juice, (Uh, duh, clementines,) and the Absinthe (OK, we've got our Anise.) Ice and shake. Add ice cubes to the highball glass and strain the Pisco mixture in. Top up the glass with ginger ale. (Ta da! We've got ginger!) Spank a cardamom leaf and add it to the glass. Serve with a straw or swizzle.

*According to this website, the Clementine, ."..was created at the beginning of the 20th Century in Algeria by a French missionary by the name of Clément Dozier, hence the name Clementine." Hence the name Dozier Fizz.

**The original recipe is supposedly based on the spices used in Algerian sweets. If you really wanted to stick to North Africa/Middle East, you could use Lebanese Arak instead of Absinthe.

I think it was pretty true to the original recipe and my wife gave it the thumbs up. Perhaps a Valentine's Day Cocktail, as well!

edit - I'm going to change the name from the Dozier Fizz to the Dozier Cooler, since it seems to have more in common with Coolers than Fizzes. Fizzes pretty much just soda, eh, with Coolers you have a bit more leeway to use Ginger Beer.

Also, aside from the salad, the variation is on a classic cocktail called the Bull-Dog.

Edited February 12, 2008 by eje (log)

[thirtyoneknots]

Since first trying it out over a year and a half ago I've been a big fan of the Floradora, as I found it in Esquire Drinks. It goes something like this, with my preferences in parenthesis:

2 oz gin (Just about any old-school brand works well, from plymouth to boodles)

1/2 oz Lime (or a little more)

1/2 oz raspberry syrup (a bit less for me, but it could vary depending on your syrup)

Build in tall glass over ice and top with good quality ginger ale (I like Boylans, made with cane sugar, or try a good spicy ginger beer).

Now I'd played around with this some since then, even serving it briefly at work last summer with homemade ginger beer, which was awesome. In the meantime, a variation appears in Killer Cocktails, subbing Pisco for the gin, which is awesome as well, and benefits even more from drying the drink out further. But the real gem was tucked away at the end of Imbibe's excellent and entertaining essay (as if other types of essays appear in said book) on the Floradora: The Floradora, Imperial Style. It goes a little something like this:

1.5 oz Brandy (I tried it with the Pierre Ferrand Ambre)

2 barspoons raspberry syrup

juice of half a lime

build over ice in a tall glass and top with champagne (I made do with a modest Cava, which did no harm).

Now that's quite a bit of variation, but boy is it a tasty drink. Definitely a nice change of pace in tall drinks.

[Dave the Cook]

Like the back of many liqueur bottles, Marie Brizard's Apry boasts a recipe. We should be thankful, I suppose, that it's a recipe for an actual cocktail and not a suggestion to dribble the contents over ice cream, sub them into Zabaglione or insert them into a batter for brownies. But the drink that's detailed is not very good:

Paradise

1 part orange juice

3 parts Apry

6 parts gin

It's as cloying as a Hallmark movie, and even less restorative. After a bit of citrus-switching and rebalancing, I came up with this variation:

2 ounces gin

1/2 ounce Apry

1/2 ounce lime juice

The Paradise Regained.

[thirtyoneknots]

I got my ass kicked at work today (along with everyone else), the place doing over 3x as much sales as a typical Monday. In the glow of closing duties I got to discussing with one of the waiters a cocktail that he had tasted recently, sort of an off-the-cuff creation by one of my peers. I decided to give a go at it in more my own style, and I was actually pretty proud of the result. As chance would have it, it also happened to be a variation, depending on one looks at it, of either an Aviation (same formula, totally different ingredients), a Daiquiri (similar ingredients, diff preportions and sweeteners), or a Bistro Sidecar, itself a Sidecar variation (uses similar sweetning modifiers, with similar effect). No name yet, but perhaps a Santiago Special, after the fisherman in Old Man and the Sea.

2 oz Flor de Cana 7 yr

3/4 oz lime juice

barspoon (~1 tsp) Grand Marnier

barspoon (~1 tsp) Frangelico

very short dash (2 drops or so) Angostura bitters

Shake and strain into chilled cocktail glass.

I really enjoyed the way the flavors sort of meld into one another. The bitters were added to tame the frangelico a bit, which I liked, but the other party involved in the experiment I think probbaly preferred the nutty finish, so omit them if that's what you like. I enjoyed the integrated flavor combination that tasted like none of the individual ingredients. I tend to a rather heavy hand with the bitters, but this is one case where I think less is more.

[bostonapothecary]

so i missed the cut off... oh well.

varition of the bonvivants gin and wormwood... and then a variation of the lone tree...

gin and orris (the root of the iris) smells and tastes like violets with a classy kind of bitter... the seagram's reserve gin is a great one for this... put them in a bottle together to your tastes...

2 oz. gin and orris

1 oz. sweet vermouth you got laying around... (stock's rosso)

pretty good... good experience for picking it out in wines. i tasted a cabernet recently from the north fork of long island... something about it was so familiar. it tasted like a particular part of my handmade sweet vermouth... i started subtracting the components... it unmistakably became the violet flavor... and then... i asked the wine maker what kind of yeast he used... barolo yeasts from piemonte... so thats why it tasted more like a dolcetto... the yeasts can often dictate more flavors in the wine than the grapes... fun fun.

next step. add a pinch of valrhona chocolate power, shake and double strain...

[eje]

Jimmy has summarized the contributions.

Pretty good turn out, both here on eGullet.org, and at large in the blogosphere...

Mixology Monday - Variations Wrap-up