I should’ve realized much earlier; the recipe called for vodka. Not just plain vodka, but flavoured vodka. Not just flavoured vodka, but TWO flavoured vodkas. Not just any two flavoured vodkas, two flavoured GREY GOOSE brand vodkas. It’s kind of like the adage about the dog you kick but still keeps coming back; but the cocktail recipe you know is wrong in every way possible, but you still tried making it.

I blame it on my qualifiers, which has affected my palate till I’m practically pregnant. Case in point; I really really wanted a creamsicle. I never want a creamsicle! And I wasn’t going to go to the store to buy a bag of creamsicles of which I’d eat a quarter and then throw away the rest of the box.

Thus, this Vanilla Creamsicle cocktail appears to be the perfect answer.

Vanilla Creamsicle
Ingredients:
- 1 oz Grey Goose La Vanille (substituted with UV vanilla vodka)
- 1 oz Grey Goose L’Orange (substituted with Svedka clementine vodka)
- 3 oz Orange juice
- 1/4 oz triple sec
- fresh cream
Garnish: orange peel

The promise

What can I say, I’m a sucker for things served in parfait cups. *sigh*.
However, when I tried to make the concoction myself, it looked alot more like baby formula from China pre-FDA-chief-execution, than anything non-toxic.

The truth

It tasted pretty foul too — had to dump it out after the tiniest sip.
I think I’m going to stick with White Russians to get my creamy cocktail fix from now on.

There are some milestones in life that we’ve all experienced and can relate to. Getting your driver’s license. Holding onto your first paycheck. Finding out that tonic water has calories.

Yes, my dear, I’m afraid it’s true: the tooth fairy doesn’t exist, tonic water is not just water with quinine, and your father was the one that accidentally ran over Pookie when you were 8.

Neil: “What? No, you’re making things up. Tonic water doesn’t have any calories. It’s tonic water!”
Me: “Why do you think gin & tonics are so sweet and delicious? It’s not gin & magic.” (note to self: create a cocktail called Gin & Magic)
*One wikipedia article later*
Neil: “Tonic water has as many calories as soda? That’s bullshit!”
Me: “Oh trust me, I know.”

Tonic water, usually sweetened with, of course, high fructose corn syrup in the US, has around 120-140 calories per 12oz can, which is pretty much exactly the same as any other soda that rots your teeth and gives you diabetes. It did, at one point, consist merely of carbonated water with quinine, back when it was used as an anti-malarial by British forces in tropical countries. I’d love to see if I could actually find some tonic water that’s still made this way, with no sweetener and massive amounts of quinine so that 1) I can drink G&Ts instead of take anti-malarials when/if I travel to the appropriate place (like, outside my Manhattan apartment in 20 years), and 2) just to see what the original G&T taste was like. Btw, one of the above statements is completely fallacious, but I’ll leave it up to you and your doctor to figure out which.

Anyhow, after a revelation like that, we had to drown our caloric sorrows with some gin & tonics. We picked up tonic water from Whole Foods, which sells their own 365 label of tonic water, for the reasonable price of $2ish/6 cans. The one over at Union Square also sells Q tonic water (read: designer tonic water made ’specially for G&Ts) for $11.99/4 bottles, but I’m not made out of enough gold to buy it (I might pick it up next time though, just out of curiosity and financial masochism).

Matchup between our current in-house gin brands…! All G&Ts were made with 1.5oz gin to 3oz tonic water (1:2 ratio), poured over ice and garnished. 1 can of tonic water makes exactly 4 G&Ts.

The Great Hyperbole-Free Gin & Tonic Matchup - 2008!

Brand	Hendrick’s	Bombay Sapphire	Tanqueray Rangpur
Garnish	Floating cucumber slices	Wedge of lime	Wedge of lime
Verdict	It’s… surprisingly very good and refreshing! We both thought the taste of Hendrick’s by itself was… “weird”, but with the floating cucumber slices in particular, it became the best “summer”-ish drink. Great balance.	Great juniper/botanical tones cutting through the sweetness of the tonic water. A classic gin & tonic	This just didn’t taste right. The lime infusion with the gin just ends up feeling too… harsh, and the tonic water didn’t help round that out
Rating

To summarize: Hendrick’s puts an interesting twist on the G&T, Bombay Sapphire makes a classic, and Tanqueray Rangpur is a dud. Till next time, friends!

So the editors of this illustrious journal were sitting around experimenting with martinis one day recently, and — violating the second rule of alcohol consumption — we had a computer open. As anybody on the entire planet could tell you, computers and youtube go together like gin and olives (which is to say: very well but it’s not exactly good for you).

I honestly couldn’t tell you the details of how this happened, but we wound up on the youtube channel for something called drinkstv.

In a phrase: oh the pain. They’re wrong about everything, wrong in a way only a South Florida bartender serving up liquor to flabby, overtanned fratboys (and the female equivalent) can be.

Maybe some people enjoy having their intelligence insulted. Me, not so much. Try this experiment:

1. Watch this little clip on how to make a mint julep.
2. Okay, now do it again but don’t look at her boobs this time.
3. A LIME?! SPRITE?

For those not in the know: mint, bourbon, sugar (powdered or granulated; there’s some debate), a splash of water, and a lot of crushed ice. That’s it. It’s not a “mojito with bourbon.” In fact, the only thing they have in common is mint and sugar — and you shouldn’t really be bruising the mint in a julep so even that’s kind of a stretch.

And that abomination used fairly costly bourbon to boot.

Make no mistake: I’m not opposed to hot bartenders (though “oh look cleavage” and “hot” comprise a Venn diagram that doesn’t overlap all that much), but their job isn’t to be hot; their job is to give me something nice to drink. If you really want to use sex to sell your product, open a strip club — and then hire competent bartenders. If I’m ordering cocktails at all — and I don’t order anything more complicated than a whisky sour much exactly becaue of stuff like this — I’m going to do it because I think the bartender knows his or her trade.

Because let’s face it: this is the internet, and it’s full of things way more titillating (har) than anything you can see behind the bar at any club. For free, even.

God help me if I went up to this woman and ordered a sazerac.

In closing, let me note that the comments on the youtube video I linked make it almost worthwhile. Usually youtube comments are transcendentally stupid, but for once they actually seem to get it.

As a scientist, I like quantitative formulas. As a young Manhattanite, I like to drink. To wrap these statements altogether, to find out which brands have been enjoyed the most from my home bar, I suggest the following:

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To the great delight of my tenderly growing home bar, I just received a marketviewliquor shipment, and along with a couple bottles each of the wonderful Shiraz & Niagara varietals we tried during our vacation a couple weeks ago, I also picked up a bottle of Disaronno Amaretto ($18.99/750mL), which is really the one, the only, the true amaretto. I have to admit, I did seriously consider getting the Trader Vic’s Amaretto ($13.99/750mL) but decided the $5 difference wasn’t worth it, at least, this first time around. And oh geez, I’m so glad I opted for the Disaronno.

The shiz is amazing! Absolutely amazing! Impossibly delicious, even on its own with a bit of ice (and I generally find liqueurs too sweet and cloying to stand on its own). It’s a bit of a sweet almond, buttery flavour — you really have to try it, its rather indescribable. Where this particular brand stands out is that it doesn’t taste chemical or synthetic at all.

But where this amaretto really shines is in… cocktails!

Amaretto Sour // 2:1 amaretto & lemon juice. Shake.
Ah, one simply cannot talk about amaretto cocktails without first discussing the Amaretto Sour. So simple yet stunningly flavourful!

Bocce ball // 2:1 vodka & amaretto, fill with orange juice. Stir.
This is basically a variation on the brunch favourite, the screwdriver, but I’ve never heard of it before, only when I googled “Cocktails with Amaretto”. I have to say; I very much enjoyed it. The amaretto flavour complemented well with the orange juice. I suspect it’d be perfectly fine without the vodka — its just there to make this drink a quiet assassin.

Butter Nut Scotch // 1:1:1 scotch, butterscotch schnapps & amaretto. Shake.
Ok. I really didn’t expect this to be good. But I just happen to have these ingredients lying around (despite the Mr. Boston butterscotch schnapps I have being pretty gross, and the scotch being really a blend of scotch and whiskey), so I had to try it. Its not bad, got potential as a rich & satisfying drink (abet a dangerous one from the sheer amount of alcohol involved) — the amount of the schnapps needs to be reduced because it stands out too much in this particular ratio, but I think with a little tweaking, this could a surprisingly good cocktail.

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As the New York Times reported today… apparently eggs are back! Pink ladies, flips, fizzes. What perfect timing — right after I started lamenting that the cream sherry flips and gin fizzes I’ve been enjoying at home would be impossible to find at bars!

 ”Suddenly, eggs are everywhere. Just a year ago, a bartender in the meatpacking district lamented that while she longed to add a flip to her cocktail list, she feared it would be impossible to sell a drink that listed eggs as an ingredient. (“I can’t leave it off, though,” she said. “What if someone’s allergic to eggs?”)

But what a difference a year makes. At Olana, a restaurant that opened on Madison Avenue in February, two of the restaurant’s seven signature cocktails feature eggs: the Pear Sidecar, in which egg whites meet pear brandy, and the Apricot Cobbler, a similar drink featuring apricot brandy. A recent addition to the cocktail list at A Voce, a flatiron district restaurant, is the Agrumi Fizz, in which a mix of gin, limoncello, orange liqueur, and egg whites gets topped with a float of Chianti.”

-   Let Rocky Balboa Drink the Yolk April 6, 2008, New York Times

Now, to the farmer’s market to find fresh eggs! Or maybe I should just skip that and go straight to Olana…

Last Friday, I re-entered the high heeled shark-infested waters known as the New York dating scene… to the great delight of more geriatric friends who love to live vicariously through me. The gent & I were meeting up at Union Square and winging it from there, and being a 21st century woman and all, I figured I should contribute some ideas for dinner & a bar afterwards. A New Yorker friend recommended a hidden bar, Angel Share, haphazardly located in the middle of a busy Japanese restaurant.First of all, let me say… this is not a bar for first dates. Or second dates even. Unless you’re 100% sure you’re madly in love with this guy/gal. This bar has romantic down to an art form, to the point where you’re going to want to take your pants off, regardless of how unattractive, uninteresting and repulsive your date might be. It’s insta-hook-up in bar form.

Three restaurants, 1 bartender with a chip on her shoulder, 1 run-in with a friend, and a flight of stairs later, we found ourselves inside a sushi place, standing outside a wooden door that could’ve easily passed for the entryway to a storage cabinet

“Are you sure it’s here?” my date asked. “I’ve been to this restaurant a couple times and never noticed a bar.”
“No no,” I insisted. “My friend said it was completely unmarked.”
I opened the door…

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Well. I’m drinking a cocktail I just made and despite being both a biologist and a budding statistician, I think I may contract salmonella tonight (around 1/20,000 chance). Oh well. At least I’ll have a blog post to show for it.

I got through the first hurdle of my grad school qualifying exam today! So to celebrate, I opened up a bottle of sherry I got recently (the cheap stuff, but hush, it’s my first time) and decided pretty soon after pouring off a taster size portion into my wine glass that 1) port is better and 2) maybe I should’ve spent more than $4.49 on the sherry. Now what to do with a whole bottle that I don’t particularly want to drink from again. I’ll definitely cook with it a bit, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to make cocktails out of the stuff too. A quick Google search tells me that Cream Sherry Flips are the most common cocktail made with cream sherry… but it involves an egg.

Cream Sherry Flip

2½ oz Cream Sherry
2 tsp Table Cream
1 tsp Simple Syrup (2:1)
1 Fresh Egg
Nutmeg

Instructions: In a cocktail shaker combine sherry, cream simple syrup and an egg. Shake vigorously (or use a stick blender) for 30 seconds. Add ice and shake again for 30 more seconds. Strain in to a mug or coffee cup and sprinkle with nutmeg.

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When you turn 21, it’s as good a time as any to start on stocking that home bar you’ve been daydreaming about before but never could bring yourself to bribing one of your overage friends to buy you 1901823 bottles of hard liquor for.

Well, as a reward to myself for not rioting against the unbelievably ridiculous and paradoxical government which decided that certain subsets of those allowed to vote in a democratic election are somehow still incapable of making responsible decisions, I bought myself the beginnings of a home bar as a birthday present. But what to get?!

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Ah, caipirinhas – perhaps Brazil’s best export outside of footballers (though admittedly, there’s some fine exporting going there). For those that haven’t had the chance to experience one yet, 1. get your arse to the nearest Brazilian steakhouse ASAP, 2. cry into your mojito instead. Of course, I may be a bit biased in this — the first time I ever had a caipirinha, a Brazilian friend brought a giant gourd (literally. a gourd.) filled with mysterious substances that he had us take turns pounding/mashing before we started taking sips and passing it around.

“Pedro. Where on earth did you find a giant gourd??”
“Oh, I missed drinking out of these so much, I ask my mother to buy one and send it to me in the mail.”

Somehow things taste better when it came out of a container sent by someone’s mother 5000 miles away.

Now I don’t remember too much else about that particular drink besides that it was good, I kept calling it capoeiras, and we were preetty happy by the time the gourd had been emptied.

A few days and wikipedia articles later, I had learnt that the secret of the caipirinha is cachaça, or a distilled liquor vaguely resembling rum, but made from sugarcane instead of molasses. The end result tends to be a bit softer than rum, and quite conducive towards sipping. Or awesome cocktails. Cachaça just started being imported into the US recently (before, being mainly popular in Germany… hallo randomness!). The most recognizable brands in the US market are Pitú and Cachaça 51, and indeed, I had a liter of Cachaça 51 courtesy of MarketViewLiquor for 19.99. Haven’t tried to look for cachaça out in the city too much yet, so I don’t know what the de facto availability is.

Anyhow, I had some friends over for dinner, and the debate turned towards the perils of nationalized healthcare; basically, an excellent time to bust out some awesome cocktails. I just happened to have limes. Some brown sugar. Aaaand cachaça! So I started cutting those limes into wedges and got enthusiastically into the muddling business before realizing… I have no idea how to make a caipirinha.

So instead, I did what I do best — make shit up.

Caipijitos (serves 4)
Ingredients
- 1 lime
- 4 tbl of brown sugar
- 4 shots of cachaca
- 1 12oz (standard) can of seltzer water // carbonated water

1. Cut 1 lime into ~8 wedges, put into a thin/tall glass (small french presses are awesome for this). Add the brown sugar and cachaca and muddle.
2. Pour into 4 glasses (in my case, red wine glasses) over a couple ice cubes.
3. Top off each glass with seltzer water & mix.
4. Serve to unsuspecting guests as caipirinhas. Bask in their praise.

Wow. Damn good. I think the star of the party really is the cachaça. I sipped a bit of the stuff later and it has a distinctive taste that stood out nicely in the Capijitos. Definitely worth a second shot at trying to make real caipirinhas.
Till next time… cuidado!