The Old Hail Mary Never Works . . . Except When They Do!

There’s a cocktail in The PDT Cocktail Book called the “Pearl Button” (page 204) which has Cachaça, Lillet and lime juice (along with some other garnishes/additions that weren’t immediately handy). We didn’t have Cachaça, so I guessed that tequila might be good. Here’s what we did:

2 oz. tequila
3/4 oz. Lillet
1/2 oz. lime juice

It was good!

The second time we added a dash of Angostura bitters. Fine but it probably tastes better with some simple syrup, too (ours got funked the other day and I never made more).

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There’s a cocktail in the PDT book called the Nouveau Carré that’s a riff on a Vieux Carre/homage to New Orleans post Katrina. It’s six parts tequila, three parts Lillet, one part Bénédictine and three dashes Peychaud’s. I finally bought some Lillet in part (or mostly because) there are a bunch of cocktail recipes using it. This one was pretty good. What Lillet actually is is described in this unhelpful Wikipedia entry. It uses phrases like this: “The mix is then stirred in oak vats until perfectly blended. During the ageing process, Lillet is handled as attentively as any great Bordeaux wine (undergoing fining, racking, filtering etc.). Lillet belongs to a family of aperitifs known as tonic wines because of the addition of Quinine liqueur.”

If You’re Bored Of Negronis, This Is Good

It diverges quite a bit from the 1-1-1 recipe, but the Continental cocktail herein is quite good: six parts gin, three parts Cynar, two parts dry vermouth, and some stuff with lemon zest.

(This was the alternative, had we gone in that direction: 1-1-1 Aperol, dry vermouth and gin; dry vermouth is the curve ball here.)

Bebop-A-Reebop

Last year we enjoyed — and used — all the rhubarb we got from the CSA. And since my understanding of rhubarb begins and ends with strawberry-rhubarb pie, that meant we had many strawberry-rhubarb pies. We got backlogged with rhubarb, and eventually we froze the filling. Several large ziplocs of filling. Many, many pies’ worth of filling. It’s all still in the freezer, actually. Which is why I was a little discouraged to see four lovely stalks of 2015 rhubarb in the CSA share this past week.

Since we also got three quarts of strawberries, it seemed sort of obvious to make a strawberry-rhubarb pie. We didn’t do that. Instead, I remembered — or thought I remembered — seeing a cocktail recipe of some sort in one of the books that used a rhubarb syrup. I found this recipe for rhubarb simple syrup. This is a good way to use rhubarb. It almost — almost — makes me want to get more rhubarb.

In part this is because this Rhubarb Gimlet cocktail is really good: two parts gin, two parts rhubarb syrup, one part lime juice. I was hesitant to use that much sugar in a cocktail, but it actually tastes really good.

Like Fucking Robert Palmer Or Something

Jen’s been on a rum kick — last night we didn’t have cocktails at the Tiki-themed Chinese restaurant, so we resolved to have them at home. Now I don’t know the first thing about festive tikiness, and I much prefer the tang of bourbon to the treacle of rum, but I’m assuming I just haven’t had the right cocktail. Last night it was the time capsule cocktail the Unisphere. Not very tiki. Tonight it was the Irresistible (Mr. Boston, page 117): Six parts white rum (I was told this rum was probably not white), two parts sweet vermouth, one part Benedictine and one part lemon juice. It was complex tasting — the secondary ingredients melted into each other in a pleasant way.

As sweet as this tasted, it was surprising there wasn’t any sugar. Must be the the rum. I mean, I guess? I’m determined to make a month’s worth of rum cocktails, just as a challenge.