It’s a cliché to rattle off the list of foods that came with Italians to this country and that have become a part of daily life across all parts of the community, but perhaps there’s a few things that could become more ubiquitous still — like their approach to alcohol and drinking…
Tag: recipes
We take a look at the continuing boom in cider being driven by the success of international brands, and look at two ways of mixing them in cocktails — just in time for Spring…
Working fast isn’t about working hard, it’s about working smart. The craft cocktail renaissance has brought us many fine things: old, forgotten recipes, timeless drinks, a renewed sense of professionalism behind the bar. But as bartenders have learnt more about what they serve, new techniques and more variations on a Manhattan than I’ve had hot dinners, so too has the queue at the bar grown.
We delve deep into one of the deep South’s greatest gifts to drinkers everywhere: fried chicken. Grab a can and crank out this recipe, and discover the ins and outs of this finger-lickin’ good food…
There’s no secret that drinking leads to everything from little lies to egregious exaggeration; but perhaps there’s no stories quite like those that sprung up around the tall tales of tiki culture.
Port has found its way in to cocktails since the days of Harry Johnson and Jerry Thomas, with mentions of port-based drinks in both the Bon Vivants Companion and a healthy 36 mentions in Johnson’s Bartender’s Manual. They list Port Wine Flips and Port Sangarees; Port then was a staple of the bar. Nowadays Port has fallen from favour.
I was in Boston a couple of months back, attending the Boston Cocktail Summit. It was a grand affair that culminated, from my point of view, in me being roasted, Friars Club-style, by some of my best friends in the business. They were far too kind to me.
It’s a tough time for journalists — the old media world is in tumult, print mastheads that have for many decades made the news have now become the news themselves. They could do with a drink, and this one has their name all over it.
Nowadays, when a bartender is throwing Scotch into their mixing glass, they’re most likely reaching for a blended whisky. That’s what we think of when we read “Scotch whisky” in a cocktail book, right? We think of consistent, all-rounder blends.
But in the days of Harry Johnson and Jerry Thomas, the Scotch they would have reached for most likely would have been a single malt.
Vodka arrived on the scene later than other cocktailing spirits, only really hitting its stride after the second world war had wrought its destruction. So on the topic of vodka, the pages of the old cocktail books we often turn to are, for the most part, silent. Lucky, then, that there’s a rich vein of vodka coursing through the pages of some of the 20th century’s greatest writers…
At its simplest, Rock and Rye was little more than rye whiskey, its edges rounded out by a little rock candy syrup. Indeed, that was how Harry Johnson prescribed it in his 1882 Bartender’s Manual. It was a simple preparation: the barkeep only needed to place a whiskey glass in front of the customer, pour in some rock candy syrup, place a spoon in the glass, and “hand the bottle of Rye whiskey to the customer, to help himself.”
Easing the ills of mankind with booze and herbs has a long history. It goes back at least to the days of Hippocrates, the ancient Greek known as the father of western medicine, who proffered a recipe for vermouth to cure jaundice, rheumatism and menstrual pain, among other things. He died in 370 BC but the idea of a herbal potion would kick on.