Invented By The Hair Of My Chinny Chin-Chin.

So after coming with this intensely Fernet-Brancatious cocktail, the next day I was tasked with something a little less Brancatious. My first thought was to go for something gin-based, mostly because I think I get really sidetracked by bitters in bourbon. Gin’s a little out of my comfort zone, so it becomes a fun challenge.

Mr. Boston has a lot of good gin cocktails. One I’m surprised I hadn’t already tried because it has a few ingredients I’d been trying to mix into stuff is the “Solomon Sling” (page 95), I guess a variation on a Singapore Sling. It’s six parts gin, three parts lemon juice, two parts simple syrup, two parts kirschwasser, one part Cherry Heering (or the knockoff I used) and one dash Angostura bitters.

It was really elegant, I don’t want to say “surprisingly” so but definitely elegant, like a cocktail you’d get at a cocktail bar.

When You’re Keyed In, It’s Less “Bar Guide” Than “Barguide”

The only — only — reason I haven’t pulled out Stan Jones’ Jones’ Complete Barguide before now is because it’s huge, and we have books stacked on top of each other in terribly inconvenient contortions, and so it’s been on the bottom of that stack.

That’s a mistake because it’s encyclopedic and incredibly useful. I like in particular the index that links individual ingredients to recipes. It’s less useful for “whiskey” but it’s very good for more obscure items: stuff like Fernet-Branca and Dubonnet. I haven’t delved too deeply into the first 200 pages (!) of single-space detail about all manner of drinkology, but it’s a great resource. Apparently the thing is out of print. The price tag on our copy is “$3.00.” I haven’t asked where it came from.

So I took advantage of that index to look up something to make with Fernet-Branca, and settled on a Fanciulli: Four parts bourbon, two parts sweet vermouth and one part Fernet-Branca. I did not make it “frappe style” in a “snow cone” type of built cocktail. It was a little Fernet-Brancatious, pretty bitter. I would try cutting the Fernet-Branca in half, just to try it.

[Googling]

Honestly, it’s a shame this thing is out of print; it’s really good. Strange in parts: unless I’m misreading what “variations” are, it appears like the two variations of some drinks are different in every way. And the layout is awesome: it’s like a 1970s dissertation. Love it.

Snapbacks & Tattoos

The first CSA dinner of the year. We got [reading from weekly email] leeks, strawberries, Jerusalem artichokes, kale, oregano and kale. I think that last kale was meant to be lettuce — we certainly get lettuce in our CSA . . . so much goddamn motherfucking lettuce.

I immediately disregarded the lettuce. Look, salads, in the scheme of making dinner in which kids are present, is a giant luxury that just doesn’t work. Besides which, I think salads are so fucking boring. And I’m not saying that because I can’t “enjoy” a salad or figure out how to make salad “really fucking wonderful,” because I can do both, but when faced with four or five green things, there’s only so much you can do. So maybe we’ll have salad another day this week. Or maybe the heads of lettuce will pile up in the crisper like so many packages of shitty baby carrots until they wilt and decay. Fuck lettuce.

So anyway, leeks. Leeks got steamed and then grilled in the grill pan with the skirt steak drippings (as per this but without the romesco component). Leeks are OK. I find the dirt off-putting and the extreme measures you need to take to rid a leek of dirt sort of off-putting. Ultimately they’re [googling] allium, so who cares? This leek treatment was basically OK.

I sauteed the Jerusalem artichokes using this inspiration with oregano — CSA oregano! — instead of sage. I’ve heard crazy things about Jerusalem artichokes — they’ll keep in the crisper for three seasons of the Kardashians — but I wanted them out of my life. So there.

The kale was like baby kale or something, so I didn’t bother it, or rather I put a bunch of bacon drippings in a pan and sauteed the crap out of it. Normally I would have boiled/blanched it for four or five minutes, but it just didn’t seem like it needed it. It probably did, actually.

With the strawberries we used the old standby recipe with the Michel Guérard “cuisine minceur” fromage blanc hack (16 oz. ricotta cheese, 4 tbsp yogurt and a pinch of salt). Not much to report other than IT WAS AWESOME. Such a great recipe.

This Is Just To Say: Fucking Around With Carrot Chips

In the cabinet I found these old vegetable chips I got from Fairway that I was trying to foist on Mr. Kiddo at one point about four months ago: sweet potato, squash (zucchini), taro and carrot. I got this notion to look up (again, because I will never, ever remember) what carrots go with in Niki Segnit’s The Flavor Thesaurus. Found two right off the bat (indeed, I switched to baseball after Game 1 of the NBA finals): cardamom and hazelnuts. The cardamom tasted good (whole shaved with microplane) as did the hazelnuts. You could do a high-concept trail mix and blow minds probably.

This Is Just To Say: Garam Masala In Meatballs

I make meatballs pretty frequently, mostly because, duh, they’re good but also because the boys both will totally eat them. I try to think of stuff that I can goof around with that won’t necessitate scuttling dinner, because that would be disastrous, so I keep the experimentation within a safe orbit.

So this last time I went into Niki Segnit’s The Flavor Thesaurus and worked the angle of tomato, being that we were eating pasta with meatballs in tomato sauce. Sure enough, a lot of the components of garam masala are in there for tomatoes: anise, cloves, nutmeg — like ketchup, I guess. So, anyway, I figured we should try it. It worked. It was good. I would do this again and again, in fact.