Tessin Rinpoche » Orange

A Valentine’s Threesome

Bertessa — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:23:11 +0000

(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.)

What I’m Having – Pomplamoose The Cocktail!

Bertessa — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:20:01 +0000

Pomplamoose (the band) is awesome, as I’ve said previously. Pomplamoose (the word) is awesome. Say it with me, slowly to appreciate it, Pah-mm-p-la-mmoooooo-ssse. So fun. I’m even going to say it again to myself. Really, thank you France for creating such a cool word for a pretty lame fruit.

I’m OK with grapefruit. I went through a period in college when I ate them every day (I even own grapefruit spoons as a result), but I have never been that enthralled with the flavor – certainly not with the name. Grapefruits neither taste nor look like grapes. The world wide web tells me they are so named because they grow in clusters on a tree. This seems like a poor naming convention, as grapes are also fruits and had claimed the cluster format first. “Pomplamoose” on the other hand – that is a name that suggests the pithy food that is this strange pummelo-orange hybrid.

Luckily someone else already graphed grapefruit’s place in the world (though I’m not 100% in agreement on all counts):

A Pomplamoose is much cooler than a grapefruit, regardless of taste.

Me being who I am (someone with a mixology hobby, let alone a mixology blog), I decided that I needed to create a drink honoring Pomplamoose (the band) and Pomplamoose (the word), while improving upon Pomplamoose (the fruit). There are grapefruit bitters commercially available, but I wanted to really taste the fruit in my beverage. I was also feeling too lazy for the trek to the east side to buy them. The main problem with really tasting the fruit is that grapefruit juice is pretty unbearable. I overcame this problem, but it wasn’t cheap or easy.

The Tessin Rinpoche Pomplamoose is heaven:

A Pomplamoose, in one of our set of new (to us) vintage glasses

Ingredients

1 grapefruit juice

1 Bols Genever (other Dutch genever probably works, but British gin won’t)

1/3 Dolin Blanc vermouth (again, sorry, run-of-the-mill vermouth won’t work)

1/4 Agave nectar

1/4 Cointreau

drop absinthe (I mean a smidgeon, barely a drop)

Combine over ice and stir madly. Do not shake this one – the genever doesn’t like it, the Dolin doesn’t like it, the absinthe doesn’t like it, and the cloudiness just isn’t desirable. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a twist (lemon – the twist is actually more than looks here).

This is a SPECTACULAR aperitif. It is highly drinkable, yet palate cleansing. I generally post drinks that most anyone could make easily, but sadly this one is a little less accessible. There isn’t any strange technique involved, but some of the ingredients are a bit hard to find and they’re expensive when you do. I’m sorry for that. That said, these liquids are well worth the time and money.

Besides, you get to say to guests, “would you like a Pah-mm-p-la-mmoooooo-ssse?”

Then you can listen to the band:

What I’m Having – Preparing for Halloween

Bertessa — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:36:42 +0000

I was Dick Tracy for Halloween in second grade. I had style.

Since then, honestly, Halloween has not been my best holiday. I’ve never gotten arrested, beaten-up, or improperly drunk. Maybe it’s for the lack of such events that I’ve found Halloween a bit of a let-down.

Luckily I now have a blog, and blogs can fix anything. How might Tessin Rinpoche pull this off? I have as many option as a super-hero’s tool-belt (yeah, blogs are just as awesome as yellow belts over spandex), but I’m only dealing with one of them today: the Vampire’s Tan.

Maisie the Halloween cat guarding a Vampire's Tan

Ingredients

1 white rum

3/4-1 Stone’s

3/4 Aperol

1/3 Cointreau

dash Peychaud

Combine the ingredients in a shaker and shake! Alternately, if making pitchers, feel free to just stir like crazy. Serve it up or on the rocks. Garnish with a piece of black licorice.

Why this is a great Halloween Drink: It…

is orange – people can find it through the eyeholes of their masks
tastes good – almost swillable, but not quite so lethal as the Nevermake
is resilient – you can just pour it into whatever receptacle you have handy
is orange – yet it doesn’t use orange juice, which is typically yellowish anyway
uses white rum – a special request from a bride with wedding rum to burn (but not BURN)
has a cool name – people have to ponder it a bit (ok, maybe only dorks like me will think it’s a good name)

All in all, I think this is a great, simple winner. The only downside is that it may be a bit much for a long party, especially if people need to drive home. This is Halloween, though, so driving is a bad idea no matter what. You can solve this simply by partying with your neighbors (they’ll be wearing masks anyway – you can pretend they’re your normal friends).

Cheers,

Count Poche