Good Like, Weird Good

The Keegan (Mr. Boston, page 185) is four parts bourbon, three parts Aperol, two parts yellow chartreuse and three parts lime juice. I have two almost-empty bottles of lime juice in the fridge, so this was appealing, as was the chartreuse, though I have green and not yellow. So, you know, there’s that.

Normally I don’t like this kind of low-alcohol drink; I like stuff boozy. This was good, though. Strange good. Weird good.

Backward, “Nociprema,” Which Basically Sounds Like A Really Effective Antibiotic, Or Perhaps Even An Acne Medication

The Brooklyn, which I saw in the PDT book, is eight parts rye, three parts dry vermouth, one part maraschino and one part Amer Picon, which I knew we never had and which was probably the reason I’d never tried to make this drink. It turns out that Cio Ciaro — my guess for a substitute — was a reasonable substitute. That said, I don’t really smell or taste amaros or bitters, so how would I ever know what to really substitute. I actually thought to smell Peychaud’s bitters once and it smelled just like Old Spice or some such thing. Crazy.

Here’s a summation of Amer Picon and somesuch, as well as a telling about of a homemade sous vide version of Amer Picon.

Oh, and this was good, even without the Amer Picon.

On Choy

If you ever find yourself with some mei qing choy, perhaps from your CSA, this is a pretty good recipe.

Toward A Better Latke

If you aren’t totally annoyed by those fucking goddamn popover commercials, this Epicurious recipe for latkes really works well. The issue with latkes is the bath of water that happens in the mixing bowl. This takes care of that by squeezing out the potato hash with a towel. Sounds a little labor intensive but it’s not. Just squeeze out the potatoes as you want to do then add back in whatever spices you want. I put it on a half sheet and dumped the potato juice out of that into the sink. You’re left with a relatively dry batter that crisps up nicely.

The Age Of Vermouth

There’s a drink in the 1927 book Barflies and Cocktails called “Warday’s Cocktail” (page 75), which is 1 teaspoon of yellow Chartreuse (I used green because I only have green), “1/3 Italian Vermouth” — i.e., one ounce sweet vermouth, 1/3 gin (read: one ounce gin) and 1/3 calvados or Apple Jack (we used one ounce of Apple Jack).

I was intrigued by it because a gin/Apple Jack-based drink sounds really weird. That, and the chartreuse has been burning a hole in my pocket (perhaps it literally could . . .). It’s a pretty OK cocktail — sort of like the Ur or Platonic cocktail in that it just tastes like generalized “cocktail.”

(Barflies and Cocktails is really weird, by the way; very “23 Skiddoo” or whatnot. Lots of mixers and vermouthiness.)