MxMo XXX--Local Flavor

[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 Monday.

This month's event is being hosted by Kevin over on his blog Save the Drinkers The theme is Local Flavor!.

To quote Kevin from his explanation of the topic:

Option 1: Gather ingredients that are representative of the culture/geography/tackiness of your respective cities and make a drink with a truly place-based style. For example, huckleberries are native to the geographical area where I live, as are elderflowers, potatoes, and extremely conservative, closet-case politicians. (I’m just saying!)

Option 2: Dig up an old drink that came from your city and revive it! If you can find the original bar, that would be even more interesting.

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

This one is right up my alley! I hope you'll also participate.

PS. First person to incorporate "XXX" content into their Mixology wins, uh, something. Kudos, at least.

Edited August 7, 2008 by eje (log)

[Chris Amirault]

What a great topic, especially for those of us outside of the cocktail epicenters. I'm rolling up my sleeves and getting to work.

[jmfangio]

PS. First person to incorporate "XXX" content into their Mixology wins, uh, something.  Kudos, at least.

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Well, I'm ready to represent Los Angeles, home to the San Fernando Valley, undisputed porn capital of the world...but I think I'd better leave this idea alone.

[haresfur]

Sometimes the drink comes first, sometimes the locale, and sometimes the *name*.

And it happens I have a drink that I can stretch to make into an entry this month. It is named after a fine, venerable, company - the Tacoma Screw.

So first the story: Sitting at the dinner table my wife mentioned to our niece that she needed to stop by Tacoma Screw in the morning to pick up some bolts for her horse carriage. Much silliness later, it was decided that we needed to honor the company with a cocktail "worth paying extra for".

Obviously an orange juice base was in order. Tacoma is a seaport and I like rum... Lot's of blackberries on that side of the state but as near as I can tell the WA state liquor control board doesn't have blackberry liqueur so I substituted Cassis - honoring our local puritanical version of socialism (... not that there's anything wrong with that...)

The Tacoma Screw

In a rocks glass mix:

2 oz white rum

3 oz orange juce

ice cubes

pour in 1 oz Cassis without mixing

float a splash of Pyrat XO rum on top

Enjoy!

[Chris Amirault]

There are two important drinks in RI culture. One is coffee milk, and having a taste for neither milk- nor coffee-based cocktails, I'm taking a pass there. The other is frozen lemonade, which you can find throughout the city on ice cream trucks and at roadside stands all summer long.

Del's lemonade is the standard, with New England the only other real contender. (The swell Christopher Martin explains on his quahog.org entries on Del's and NE that the latter runs a distant second.) The drink is a slushy lemonade that includes a few 1/2" chunks of lemon (zest, pith, and pulp) throughout. As reported on the Del's website and elsewhere, it's based on a 19th century drink from Italy:

Great grandfather DeLucia made the earliest Del's Frozen Lemonade in 1840, in Naples, Italy. During the winter he carried snow into nearby caves and insulated it with straw. When summer arrived and the local lemons were ripe and flavorful, he mixed their juice with just the right amount of sugar and snow. Thus making a refreshing drink, which he sold at the local market. Fruit ices are popular in Europe, yet none is more loved than the product made from fresh lemon juice. Lemon ices produce the most delicious and thirst-quenching treat.

I tried to recreate a drink that is very lemony, and given the Naples connection, limoncello was an obvious choice. The drink also includes that chunky textural component in a style that can go up a straw; if you want something even finer (I like nibbling on the toothy zest), use a microplane. In honor of the Del's source, it's sweeter than my usual drink and perhaps yours as well, so cut back on the simple if you want something more tart. Finally, I fiddled around with Fee's orange bitters, but the slight residue of pith attached to the zest gave this enough bitterness so the final recipe leaves it out.

Ode to Del's

• 1 1/2 oz limoncello
  1 1/2 oz white rum
  the zest from one lemon, removed with a peeler in strips or shaved with a microplane
  1 oz lemon juice
  1 oz simple syrup
  8 oz ice
  

If you peeled the zest instead of microplaning it, blend all of the ingredients without the ice first. Then blend with the ice until slushy. Serve in a 12 oz glass with a straw -- or, for authenticity's sake, in a paper cup that you squeeze and fold to get the last bits out of the bottom.

[jmfangio]

Here are a couple of candidates for Los Angeles, for option number two.

First, given the number of glamourous restaurants from Hollywood's golden age - Perinos, Romanoff's, Chasen's, The Brown Derby, The Cocoanut Grove, etc. - one would think that LA would have a more storied cocktail history, but sadly that doesn't seem to be the case. It's also sad that all of these beautiful old buildings are now gone. I can still remember the old Brown Derby building from when I was a kid, and Perinos and The Cocoanut Grove were torn down only in the last couple of years.

The only cocktail that I know to have originated in LA is the Flame of Love martini, created by Chasen's bartender Pepe Ruiz:

2 oz Vodka

2-3 drops La Ina Sherry

2 Orange peels

As described by Pepe: "You swirl a few drops of La Ina Sherry in a chilled stem glass and pour it out. Than squeeze a strip of Orange peel into the glass and flambe it with a with match. Throw away the peel. Now fill the glass with Ice to chill again, then throw that out. Add vodka, then flambe another orange peel around the rim. Now throw out the second burnt peel. Then just stir it gently. And drink, drink."

Dean Martin was reportedly the inspiration for this drink after he told Pepe that he was bored with the same old Martinis. Pepe spent three weeks experimenting until he came up with this drink, and it soon became Dino's favorite Martini. Frank Sinatra immortalized it in a 1962 recording entitled "Nothing But the Best (Is Good Enough for Me)". The lines "I like a martini, and burn on the glass" is a tribute to the drink.

On a literary note, another true LA original is Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels. When he wasn't hitting the 'office bottle', usually rye if memory serves, Marlowe did enjoy a good cocktail. In "The Lady in The Lake" a "wizened waiter with evil eyes and a face like a gnawed bone" serves him a Bacardi Cocktail, and he was also quite fond of double Gibsons.

But, if I were going to pick one cocktail for Marlowe, it would have to be the Gimlet, since Chandler's kind enough to provide a recipe in "The Long Goodbye." As Marlowe sits with Terry Lennox in Victor's on Vine Street:

"What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters," Terry Lennox says scornfully. "A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow."

And I guess the Gimlets put Lennox in a somewhat philosophical mood:

"I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar -- that's wonderful.

I agreed with him.

"Alcohol is like love," he said. "The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off."

Edited August 10, 2008 by jmfangio (log)

[Chris Amirault]

I'm confused by the Flame of Love a bit: doesn't the ice threaten to wash off the sherry rinse? Janet will surely soon weigh in on the Gimlet, one of her favorite drinks, shortly.

[JAZ]

Janet will surely soon weigh in on the Gimlet, one of her favorite drinks, shortly.

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How could I not, after that?

Chris is right: the Gimlet is one of my favorite drinks. I even defend the use of Rose's Lime Juice because of that (although these days I am making my own lime cordial). And I love Raymond Chandler and Phillip Marlow. I love the scene quoted above, although I have to say that half gin and half Rose's is not how I make my Gimlets.

But the Gimlet as an LA drink? It's just so damned British; even Marlowe was introduced to it by an ex-pat. On the other hand, I guess if everyone's main introduction to it was from Chandler, then maybe it does count as an LA drink.

[Dave the Cook]

That's where I first heard about it. In case that matters.

[jmfangio]

I'm confused by the Flame of Love a bit: doesn't the ice threaten to wash off the sherry rinse?

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My thought as well - I'm just repeating the recipe as I found it. Whenever I've made this drink I've started with a pre-chilled glass to eliminate that step. It's really a pretty nice drink. I've also made it with Lillet to nice effect, and I think it would be even better with Cocchi Aperitivo Americano, which I'll have to try when I can bring myself to open my last remaining bottle.

I even defend the use of Rose's Lime Juice because of that (although these days I am making my own lime cordial). And I love Raymond Chandler and Phillip Marlow. I love the scene quoted above, although I have to say that half gin and half Rose's is not how I make my Gimlets.

Yup - half and half is a bit rich for me, too, but I suppose that the Rose's of Chandler's day was was an entirely different beast than the artificially flavored high fructose corn syrup dreck that we find today. Probably closer to the British import, if you can find it, which is made with real lime juice and cane sugar.

That's where I first heard about it. In case that matters.

Exactly. The Gimlet is, of course, a quintessentially British cocktail, but according to this story on NPR.com and a couple of other sources that I've seen, it wasn't until this novel that it became popular in America.

[KatieLoeb]

I gotta stick by my Front Stoop Lemonade recipe as being uniquely Philly.

Bluecoat gin is distilled in Philly.

Thai Basil is a nod to the rapidly growing Asian population in South Philly.

We have Front Stoops, not back/front porches, hence the name of the drink.

[mbrowley]

This one was a lot of fun. In the end, we settled on a Bloody Mary variant leveraging our proximity to Mexico, but with a nano-locale twist. The result? Clam Squeezin's, Absinthe, and the Bloody Fairy Cocktail

I just poured another and am about to walk out the door to nurse it down under the blazing azure sky...

[Chris Amirault]

Good call with the Herbsaint. I'm no Bloody fan, but this one I'll try.

[mbrowley]

Good call with the Herbsaint. I'm no Bloody fan, but this one I'll try.

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I'm with you, Chris ~ vodka's not my usual tipple, and bloodies aren't what jump to mind when I want to wrap my hand around something cold, but drinking whiskey by the pool invites stares. Besides, this is quite nice. Just...go easy on the Herbsaint. Tried the drink with an Herbsaint wash and it was too much. Mere drops.

[JAZ]

I don't know that Atlanta has any historic cocktails, but going with option #1, I started thinking about peaches. While I was at the store to pick some up, I stumbled across Red Rock Golden Ginger Ale, a native Atlanta soda. Seemed like an omen. (And having recently lost electricity for 6 hours due to an Atlanta thunderstorm, the name was easy.)

Dark and Peachy

1/2 large peach, cut into small chunks

2 oz. Barcardi 8 or similar dark rum

.5 oz lime juice

1 teaspoon Falernum

dash peach bitters

Red Rock ginger ale*

Place the peach, rum, lime juice, Falernum and bitters in a shaker with ice. Shake hard and pour out (double strainer suggested) over fresh ice in a highball glass. Top with ginger ale.

* if you need to substitute a different ginger ale, pick one that's spicy and not too sweet. Red Rock is made with capsaicin as well as ginger.

[thirtyoneknots]

Texas has never developed much of a native cocktail culture, at least not outside of the former gangster-run casino culture in Galveston, but I thought I'd toss this out. The National Cocktail of Texas seems to be Crown and Coke or insert your own favorite brand here. Supposedly Texas is the biggest market for Crown Royal in the world and I have little trouble believing it. It's not a whiskey that I find terribly interesting, but it is one of the very few products that causes a riot when we are out of it. So recently late in the shift as things were winding down one of the managers pours himself a Makers Mark on the rocks to soothe after an especially stressful night. I offer to touch it up a bit, and inspired by the recent whiskey and coke discussion, I add 3 dashes of Angostura bitters, a splash of coke, and a lemon twist. Bastard of the Old Fashioned and the Whiskey and Coke it actually combined the good qualities of both and ended up being the hit of the next few days. It's still not something I'd be ashamed to make someone, or drink myself for that matter.

Edited August 12, 2008 by thirtyoneknots (log)

[bostonapothecary]

Texas has never developed much of a native cocktail culture, at least not outside of the former gangster-run casino culture in Galveston, but I thought I'd toss this out. The National Cocktail of Texas seems to be Crown and Coke or insert your own favorite brand here. Supposedly Texas is the biggest market for Crown Royal in the world and I have little trouble believing it. It's not a whiskey that I find terribly interesting, but it is one of the very few products that causes a riot when we are out of it. So recently late in the shift as things were winding down one of the managers pours himself a Makers Mark on the rocks to soothe after an especially stressful night. I offer to touch it up a bit, and inspired by the recent whiskey and coke discussion, I add 3 dashes of Angostura bitters, a splash of coke, and a lemon twist. Bastard of the Old Fashioned and the Whiskey and Coke it actually combined the good qualities of both and ended up being the hit of the next few days. It's still not something I'd be ashamed to make someone, or drink myself for that matter.

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kola expressed through coke is a pretty noble flavor...

i was too distracted to participate in this MxMo but i trying to get around to making a ward eight since i used to work at Locke-Ober. when i was there, i made them their first batch of real grenadine in probably thirty or so years. when i left they went back to roses... so sad for easily one of the most gorgeous bars in the world.