Movie And An Drink: The Good Night And Good Luck

Thursday Movie and a Cocktail: The Vesper AKA Casino Royale

Our Vesper's

Theme Recipe: Pepper Potts Dirty Vodka Martini

I Would Like a Vodka Martini, Please

In the first Iron Man film, Miss Pott's gets herself in a spot of bother over Tony's appearance at a function...her reaction?  A specific drink order!

2 oz very dry frozen vodka
1/2 oz. olive juice
Smallest dash of dry vermouth
"Lots of olives"

Pour booze over ice in a cocktail shaker, add the olive juice and swirl a bit, add the dash of dry vermouth, cover and shake.  Strain into a cocktail glass and add a ton of olives (the original dirty martini only specified two....)

Theme Recipe: The Rotten Pumpkin Cocktail

Pardon me for posting a recipe with rotten on a zombie day...but all's fair!  Most people just think this is a screw driver made with black vodka...it's not really supposed to be.  The original drink was made with spiced fruit juice of an orange color and black rum.  I did a 31 days of Blavod feature for last year's countdown, I did the black screwdriver, which I used the same picture for, but...this is really a pumpkin drink!

1/2 cup orange juice,very cold
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/2 oz pumpkin spice liqueur
Black vodka, chilled
Orange wedge for garnish

Mix the first three ingredients and stir well.  Pour the black vodka over the the back of a spoon to float on top on the spiced orange juice.  Paint a little of the black vodka on the orange wedge and garnish the drink with it.

Theme Recipe: Pumpkin Martini

There dozens, possibly more, pumpkin martini recipes out there.  I like this one because the ingredients are easy enough for anyone to find in any town, the fact that it's not too sweet and, well, it actually contains pumpkin!

1 tbsp. plain pumpkin puree (unsweet)
1 oz. chilled or frozen vodka of choice
1 oz. vanilla spirit of choice (I use Vanilla Schnapps)
1/2 oz. golden rum
Spices of choice, or use pumpkin pie spice
Ice

I posted a recipe to make this at home earlier in the month and can be found here.

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice.  Place all ingredients in to the shaker, starting with the puree, and then the alcohol, so on.  Shake until the shaker is frozen on the outside.  Strain into a cocktail glass.  If you like, garnish with more pumpkin spice or fresh grated nutmeg.  If you like it sweet, use pumpkin pie filling instead of pumpkin puree.

I believe the original photo above is from drinkoftheweek.com.  

Theme Recipe: My Favorite Bloody Mary

I was going to post some of the last Halloween Bloody Mary recipes out there, only to find out that over the past year, every bartender making this drink for Halloween seems to think that vampires....and regular folks, have acquired a taste for bacon in their cocktails.  Now, I'm not personally adverse to trying a Bloody Mary garnished with a slice of bacon, but does everyone have to do it.  OK, so this is my silly blog, I'd rather post my own favorite.  I've posted at least two Bloody Mary recipes here on this blog before, Vincent Price's recipe by the pitcher and The Blackula, but truth be told I love a lot of celery and like it spicy.  I've had a lot of Bloody Mary's in my time, but almost none of them had rimmed seasoned glasses.  It took a bartender from England to blink my mind into "put the bleedin' celery salt on the glass!."  Also, I love that he just says straight out "do you want that with vodka, gin, rum, tequila or aquavit?"  Aquavit?? Really??  Never tried it, promise to some day.  He uses Tabasco sauce exclusively...another thing that this southern American didn't expect....but check these out!

For Glass:

Lemon wedge

Celery salt

For Drink:

1/4 oz fresh lemon juice

Couple drops Tabasco

Serious shake of Worcestershire sauce

Dash of salt

Black pepper to say "when"

2 ice cubes

2 full oz. vodka (or booze of choice)

More ice cubes

Tomato juice

Stick celery (or whatever for garnish)

1.  Start by running the lemon around the rim of the glass, then dip in celery salt.  Set aside

2.  Mix the lemon juice, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce and salt and pepper in bottom of glass and stir.  Add two ice cubes and pour in vodka, stir well.  Add extra ice and top with tomato sauce, stir well.  Garnish with celery, cucumber, whatever you like....bacon??

This is a theme restaurant in Tokyo...it almost makes me want to visit!

Theme Recipe: Bronx Cocktail

Nick Charles states that The Bronx cocktail should always be "shaken to the two-step."  Well however you shake it, if you like gin, then you'll really like the Bronx, which is really a type of martini, being described as "perfect martini with orange" ("perfect" means with both type of vermouth, not perfect as in "perfection).  I've already tackled the The Martini, which he says should be shaken to The Waltz.

1 oz. Gin

1 dash dry vermouth

1 dash sweet vermouth

1/2 oz orange juice

Orange slice or stemmed maraschino cherry for garnish (optional)

Ice

Place all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice.  Shake well ( to the two step if you like!) and pour into martini glass.  Garnish if liked.

Some places in Europe this is served over ice.

Two Halloween cocktails from last year:  The Dark And Stormy Martini as part of last year's 31 Days of Blavod, and the The Vampire Martini.

Theme Recipe: The Martini

In Season 4 of Leverage Parker finagles a phone number off a mark in "The 15 Minute Job" in a bar while he literally slurping a huge martini!!  And...when I think of Leverage I have always thought of cocktails and more cocktails, and I am admitted Martini admirer--used to be even a purist on the subject.  So here's the classic martini with a few classic variations.

The classic does taste of vermouth.

1 1/2 oz. good gin (I love Bombay!)

1/4 oz dry vermouth

1 cocktail shaker

Ice

1 Martini glass (frozen if possible)

1 green olive (truly, the classic is an unstuffed olive)

Add the gin and vermouth to cocktail shaker, and shake only enough to feel a frozen sensation on the hands.  Strain into glass and garnish with single olive.  Simple but still one of the greatest drinks of all time.

Variations:

Of course these days there are so many drinks that are called "martinis" that bear little resemblance to the original drinks, however, there have always been a few genuine variations on the original drink that are classics unto themselves--funny thing is, many of them are all but forgotten in the sea of other martinis.

Still a favorite and my personal number 1 cocktail  The Dry Marinti

Sweet Martini

The Perfect Martini--meaning that it is made with both Dry and Sweet Vermouth

Another personal favorite:  The Dirty Martini

Smokey Martini

Martini with Twist

The Gibson

Theme Recipe: The Abbey Cocktail

I didn't have Internet access on Friday the 13th and I always like to post a cocktail or two for the occasion, because around here, it's time to celebrate, not fear!  So here's the cocktail of choice for the latest 13th.  Some just call it "an orange martini," and I suppose that by today's standards it is.  The concoction itself is an old one and actually predated the invention of the Martini.  Call it what you like--it's great for hot weather!

THE ABBEY COCKTAIL

1 1/2 oz. good dry gin

Juice 1/2 orange--fresh squeezed

1 dash orange bitters (or you favorite bitters)

1 cocktail shaker filled part way with ice

Martini glasses (chill them if you can)

Maraschino cherry for garnish (now, optional)

Easy:  combine all ingredients in the shaker and shake until very cold.  Strain into cocktail glass and garnish with cherry, or not.  Enjoy!

Theme Recipe: Hot Cinnamon Tea With Honey

Been serving afternoon tea all week watching Wimbledon and this year I wanted to experiment with some home flavored teas, to keep the budget down and the tea service interesting...turns out this was a good idea for another reason...I got a really bad cold, and this particular tea was great with tea cakes, cookies and tea sandwiches under the circumstances.

1 3/4 pints water

1 stick cinnamon (real canela for mild, hard cassia for spicy [my choice]--this is the kind you most often find in supermarkets)

2 tbsp. loose black tea

1 to 4 oz. honey (depending on taste and type)

1.  Combine the water and the cinnamon stick and bring the the boil.  Remove from heat and add the tea leaves, stir well.  Cover and let infuse for no more than 5 minutes.

2.  Strain tea into a heated tea pot, and add in the honey.  Stir well to melt, cover and serve.  This looks best in clear cups or middle eastern tea glasses.  If you want, stir in some milk.  A really nice addition...golden rum!

Theme Recipe: Mint Julep

Given my penchant for cocktail recipes, and the affiliation of this famous Bourbon drink with the Derby...well with today's theme focused on mysteries and frights that contain horse racing and Derby moment, the theme recipe HAD to be a mint julep.  There's only one little problem, for a cocktail that basically contains sugar, water, mint and bourbon, there are a lot of variations on this one.  That just strikes me as weird.  As a southerner, I grew up with bourbon and juleps--there wasn't a great deal that was mysterious about this concoction.  Yeah, I did notice on Derby Day there were some dudes in top hates sipping these from metallic...maybe even silver cups, I thought that was just rich southern snobbery not meant for the likes of my rather humble family--so I just imagined that the drink was just the same one I knew, just in a fancy, expensive cup.  Well...turns out, yes and no.  I found an original recipe for the julep a couple of years back and was rather astonished to learn that the drink not only went back to the original Derby, but that it, if properly made, would take DAYS to make!

Col. Meriwether Lewis Clark, grandson William Clark of the Lewis & Clark expedition, founded the organization that would eventually run the first Derby, had a thing about horses and cocktails (Churchill Downs was named for some of his relatives that gave up the land for the track to be built).  It turns out that he served the original julep at the inaugural Derby in 1875, and they are still served today.  A lot of early traditions of annual events do not survive more than ten or 15 years....I was surprised that this tradition was quite stubbornly intact, despite the prohibition years.  Suffice, though, that the original drink was as much about ice as it was the fine bourbon.  Ice, at the time, was still a sign of serious prestige in warm months.  To make these today, shave ice needs to be frozen a couple of times, with a straw spout to be close to the original.  Even today, most juleps at the Derby look like drink at the top, above.  So that's what I'm going with.  Still even in these versions, directions and quantities differ wildly.  A lot of drinks go with weird bits of measurements like 1 2/3 ounces bourbon, etc.  I've got no time or day...or night, for that matter, for that!  Besides, no proper mint julep is shy of 2 oz. anyway!!

2 to 3 oz. really good bourbon

1/2 cup fresh mint leaves

1/2 ounce simple sugar syrup or 1/3 tsp. sugar mixed with 

   1/2 oz. water

Lots of ice!

Mint sprig

1.  Muddle mint in sugar water---that just means pound the shit of it. 

2.  Add some ice and pour in the Bourbon and stir well until the ice starts to melt and float.  Add more ice, give it a quick extra stir and top with mint sprig. That's it!

Variations:

As I've pointed out, the weird, "subtle" and often unnecessary variations that can be found all over the place, so I won't bother with those, but there are a few that warrant mention.

First of all, there's the one that it is personal to me.  I just happen to like light brown sugar in my mint julep, rather than regular white sugar.  I just "cotton" to the taste that it creates with the bourbon.  So that's my favorite.

Some much more modern versions have people muddling the mint in club soda, rather than plain water or simple syrup.  Others, even more "modern" have a splash of soda poured in in the last minute and stirred.  While, I'm sure this is perfectly refreshing in the heat of July, I'm not so sure how appropriate it is for Derby weekend.  Still, I'm actually going to try one with my mom tomorrow.  She's not a big cocktail drinker, so even my rather implacable ass is going to compromise (shock!).

For kids, there is a non-alcoholic version.  Stateside it is muddled mint topped with club soda or, more commonly, ginger ale.  Over across the pond in England they curiously muddle mint with New World pineapple juice and leave to stand for a few hours, pour the mixture over ice, top with ginger ale.  An earlier version used a combination of pineapple juice, lemon juice, mint and sugar and ginger ale.  All topped with fresh mint sprigs.

These days all types of mint can be grown at home.  We've had Derby Days that two or three types of mint, from Apple Mint to Orange Mint were tried out in juleps.  That's all fair drink play.  One thing though, I don't recommend making them with lavender mint!!  And if you don't like mint..don't drink these.

Theme Recipe: The Black Vodka Blackberry Collins

I love to give black vodka recipes for Halloween and Friday the 13th.  The original of this cocktail was with crushed blackberries and blackberry liqueur only.  It gets darker and stronger with Blavod--the black vodka.  It's original recipes is a modern take on the Collins cocktail, it was re-named the Black Swan, along with a host of other cocktails, during the 2010 Oscar season.  Here's the updated version for a real Friday 13 kick:

Some blackberries (most recipes call for fresh...to hell with it, use frozen.)

Simple syrup (that's just sugar water)

Blavod

Fresh lemon juice

Soda water aka Club soda

Smash blackberries in bottom of glass(es).  Add Blavod and stir.  Add in the lemon juice and simple syrup and stir.  Then add some ice (do not stir).  Top with Soda and garnish with blackberry or lemon slice and any ole damn piece of fruit at hand!  Enjoy.  Drink enough of these and you might not even care if Jason is outside....then again....  Happy Friday 13th!!

Theme Recipe: 70's Kitch Food

There are so many foods that are associated with the Kitchy cocktail parties of the 1970's that it is almost too big a subject for one little blog post, but I'll give it a "college try."

Peanut Butter or Cream Cheese Stuffed Celery

Chafing Dish Meatballs

Bundt Cake

Pouring something sweet over a block of cream cheese and serving it with Triscuits 

Skooter Pies Or Moon Pies

Wedge Stuffed Tomatoes

Homemade Chex Mix

The Humble Breadstick

Bar Nuts

Ketchup Topped Meatloaf

Cocktail Finger Sandwiches

Tuna Noodle Casserole

Sweet And Sour Chicken

Ground Beef Stroganoff 

Home Candied Apples--Sans Razor Blades Please!

The 1970's was well known for it's plethora of cocktail parties--as well as the Happy Hours in bars.  I heard all about these, and figured, hey, they'll still be around when I'm old enough to drink....they weren't!  Rat Bastards!  Seriously, I understand why the Happy Hour at bars was discouraged on a daily basis...but an old fashioned cocktail party now and again couldn't really hurt....as long as the guests are from the neighborhood or have tee-totally drivers.  The 70's gave rise to a whole slew of cocktails, but new and old favorites that were rediscovered with gustO!  Here are a few:

Harvey Wallbanger

Grasshopper

The Bacardi

The Margarita

The White Russian

The Bloody Mary

Whiskey Sour

Tom Collins

Blue Hawaiian

French Connection

Tequila Sunrise

Brandy Alexander

The Zombie

Extra Dry Martini, Shaken not Stirred

Singapore Sling

Daiquiri--Original 

Bloody Maria

The Shirley Temple--the quintessential non-alcoholic cocktail bar none!

Frozen Daiquiri

Screwdriver

The Gimlet:  a personal favorite

Mai Tai

Planter's Punch

Manhattan

Pina Colada

An Old Fashioned

Pink Lady

No one my family was ever big on entertaining, so none of the aunts and uncles, or my parents for that matter ever threw cocktail parties, but when entertaining was unavoidable, such as various meetings, kids parties, holiday gatherings, etc. the quintessential finger sandwich was the order of the day.  My mother had recipes for these things from way long before I came along--and they don't really bear much resemblance to the English Tea Sandwich, except for their size.   First of all almost all the filling included cream cheese (such as cream cheese and olive), and all of them were spreads of some sort.  Her personal claim to fame was her cucumber sandwich, which was dyed green!  Well, at Christmas, if one was so inclined, the filling were green and/or red.  Later on, long after these went out of style in most families, I insisted, as silly kids are likely to do, that they have a Halloween look--one "black"--meaning gray filling, one orange.  Needless to say, they do not need to be colored at all and are actually quite tasty.  I even included them (in their natural state) on the English Tea table in my house...one American Southerner insisting that one of our lowly foods, be properly "raised."

The recipe is really simple, and it actually a great substitute for traditional cucumber sandwiches, in which the fresh sliced cucumber must be salted, rinsed, drained and dried.

1/2 to 1 whole cucumber chopped (you can seed it if you like)

1 package soft, room temperature cream cheese

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. celery seed

1/2 tsp. celery salt (or to taste)

Pinch each of garlic salt and onion powder

Small pinch of sugar

Green or other food coloring (strictly optional)

1.  Place the cucumber in a food processor and process to a complete puree.  

2.  In a separate bowl, mash the cream cheese, pour in the cucumber puree and mix well.  Season, mix and taste.  Add more of anything that you like.  Add a few drops of the food coloring if you are using.  Mix well.  To make sandwiches, cut the crust of bread, spread with cuke mixture, top and cut into desired shape.  Cover with a damp cloth to keep fresh.

VARIATIONS

Of course it really good on crackers, like the ever popular 70's Wheat Thins, Butter Crackers or Triscuits.  As part of cheese board, you can place some in a bowl and serve it with other cheeses and toppings like chopped onion, etc.

As mentioned the color can be changed per holiday.

This also make a great dip with vegetables and good potato chips.

You can stuff into celery or cherry tomatoes.

If you like things tart, then drain the puree to get rid of excess water and replace it with a  nice wine vinegar.  The same can be done with lemon or lime juice.

You can use the base with seasonings for other vegetable purees.