(EE-craftiness: part of a heart garland.)

I love Valentine’s Day.  I view it as an ideal holiday, and strenuously disagree with those who consider it to be over-commercialized, depressing, and all the rest.  Valentine’s is a bright spot in in the otherwise desolate month of February (at least in the Northeast).  Even before the days of EE, I was always happy to invite a pretty lady to be my valentine (and in my limited experience, ladies always enjoy being a valentine).  What could be better than fine dining, and perhaps the exchange of an extravagant gift or two, with someone whose company I enjoy?  Share the love, that’s what I say.

(Only on Valentine’s Day will your friends give you this card.  Hopefully.)

This year, EE and I somewhat reinterpreted our traditional Valentine’s celebration: we threw a cocktail party!

We hosted about 30 guests, a mix of singles and couples, for the express purposes of Valentining and having cocktails.  The goal was not to provide dinner - it was to provide an extra oomph of glizt and glam (and maybe even gossip and drama) to whatever evening people may or may not have planned for themselves.

In preparation for this momentous event, I went to work creating some drinks that fit the occasion.  The challenges/criteria were:

• 3 colors – EE often thinks in colors, so we determined the need for a red drink, a pink drink, and a white drink.
• Glassware – we only have so many of each type of glass, and wanted to avoid plastic.  The drinks had to spread across tumblers, stemmed wine, and stemmed cocktail glasses.
• Flavors – needed more than one type of flavor profile for a range of drinkers.

The results were (bearing their Valentine names):

Passion

Color: Red

Glass: Tumbler

Flavor area: Bitter

Ingredients

1 Tequila

3/4 Campari

3/4 Blood Orange Italian Soda (I bought this at Whole Foods)

1/3 Sweet Vermouth

drop Orange bitters

A muddled cherry (buy the frozen ones)

Muddle the cherry, stir vigorously with ice and all ingredients except the soda.  Strain into serving pitcher, add soda and stir gently.  At the party, I mixed batches of these in a pitcher, which we put out with an ice bucket and the correct glassware.

Blush

Color: Pink

Glass: Cocktail

Flavor area: Lightly fruity, easily accessible gin

Ingredients

1 Bombay Sapphire

1/4 Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur

1/4 Kumquat liqueur (you have to make it yourself – a post for another time – substitute Cointreau)

half a Lime’s juice

drop of Cranberry juice

Combine all ingredients with ice in a shaker and shake vigorously.  At the party I shook up batches and funneled them into a good-looking clear liquor bottle that I had de-labeled and cleaned.  The bottle was then left in an ice bucket next to the correct glassware.

Lovely

Color: White (ok, it’s yellowy, like white wine is white.  But true white is a pain)

Glass: Wine

Flavor area: Light, aromatic, refreshing, and sweeter

Ingredients

2 Seltzer Water

1 White Wine (something dry and simple – I used an Austrian wine made by Berger)

3/4 St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur

1/4 Dry Vermouth

1/4 Dolin Blanc Vermouth

Combine all ingredients and stir.  Or, if using a siphon for the seltzer (a superior way to go), just add the seltzer last and allow the blast of seltzer to do the mixing.  For the party, I had some old french lemonade bottles with flip-tops that I put batches into and then topped with seltzer.  We left the bottles in a bowl with ice next to the correct glassware.

Note:  Sadly, we had such a good time at the party that we didn’t take any drink/party pictures.  Sorry, that was lame of us.  Here’s a final photo:

(My present to EE this year – they are antique sterling stirrer-straws. I was a little wary of giving her something cocktail-related, given it’s kind of my own hobby at all, but she does seem to like them very much.)

]]> http://www.tessinrinpoche.com/2010/02/15/a-valentines-threesome/feed/ 1 http://www.tessinrinpoche.com/2009/09/30/what-im-having-sizing-up-a-dive-bar/ http://www.tessinrinpoche.com/2009/09/30/what-im-having-sizing-up-a-dive-bar/#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:25:56 +0000 Bertessa http://www.tessinrinpoche.com/?p=193

Bertessa's Manhattan. Josef Frank's Manhattan design.

“Hey, come out, a bunch of us are having a drink.”
“XYZ Class HAPPY HOUR! DIVE BAR near you!”
“There’s gotta be a bar somewhere near that subway stop, wait for me there.”

Any of the above can easily lead to a dive bar. I’m using the dive designation broadly to encompass anywhere that:

• has a digital jukebox
• smells pleasantly of stale beer
• isn’t conducive to open-toe shoes because the floor is gross
• allows and encourages beer pong

I am NOT saying that dive bars are bad.  They are a critical piece of any normal social life, but they may not make the best cocktails.  They definitely won’t have a cocktail menu, and the bartender may throw you out for requesting drinks he/she can’t pronounce (plus some patrons may then identify you as an easy mark).

What to do?

You could order a beer.  Unless this is a true dive, there will be some decent beer.  If it’s such a dive there is no decent beer, then definitely order a beer – from bottle if possible.

“I don’t like beer.”  “I’m on a low-carb diet.”  “Damnit, I want a friggin cocktail!”

Right-o, then, let’s think about the criteria for a cocktail you can try in the dive setting:

1. manly (even better if you’re female)
2. dark color (kinda like beer) (see point 1)
3. simple ingredients
4. not too many ingredients
5. taught in any bar course the tender may have once taken
6. resilient to poor craftsmanship
7. enough alcohol to sanitize the glass

Your dive bar testing cocktail: MANHATTAN

Ingredients

1 whiskey

1/2 sweet vermouth

bitters

Why The Manhattan

If the bar fails on any of these points, skip cocktails:

1. any bartender should know it and what’s in it
2. can be made with bourbon (e.g., Jim Beam), something even the diviest bar will have
3. vermouth is the first basic after beer and basic liquors
4. bitters, typically Angostura, are right after vermouth in the basics list

From there, even inverting the ratios will yield something drinkable.

Go forth and fear not, even when diving.

How I make a Manhattan

1 Rye Whiskey

1/2 Sweet Vermouth

6 drops orange bitters

Combine in a shaker and shake.  Serve either up or on the rocks as you prefer.  Garnish with a maraschino cherry.  Be sure to have a stem on the cherry – people can pick it up that way, and the best people can knot that stem in a way that impresses their company at a dive bar.   I know.  I’ve impressed people this way.

A note:

I think Wednesdays are a good day for a regular post.  That makes this the inaugural “What I’m Having” Wednesday post.  The idea will be to cover a basic (that I wouldn’t give blog love otherwise), or let me express a limited thought about how or why something is so.