Horchata diaries

Part One – The Dude, PDT and Café Arroz

I love horchata, the white cooling drink that seems ubiquitous in farmers’ markets in Southern California where I live, and is of course a staple in Mexico. It’s fresh and slightly rich and creamy, with a little bit of spice from cinnamon.

The first time I made horchata at home was actually for a cocktail recipe! I had spotted the Café Arroz, a long drink made with aged tequila as the base, coffee liqueur, and horchata, in the PDT Cocktail Book. It is a Mexican & non-dairy take on the classic White Russian (vodka, Kahlua, milk).

The White Negroni

Having been hooked on the Negroni for quite some time, it made sense that I would be at least as enthralled by the White Negroni. It is, in a way, the French cousin of the Negroni – the base of gin is maintained, while the Campari and sweet vermouth of Italian origin are replaced by Suze and Lillet, which both are French ingredients.

 

A White Negroni with Junipero gin

Mai Tai variations

What is great with classic cocktails is that they have such a strong structure, even with a twist they still make fabulous drinks. That explains why great cocktails are an endless source of inspiration. You can riff on them to death and still come up with something decent.

Mai Tai variations are generally built on a template of base spirit | citrus | orgeat | orange liqueur. In its classic iteration, the Mai Tai is a sour where aged rum is the base spirit, lime is the citrus, and orgeat (almond syrup) + orange curaçao serve a dual purpose as the sweeteners and modifiers. The orgeat adds a nutty, floral and slightly creamy flavor to the drink, while the curaçao contributes a foundation of bitter orange peel.

Playing it safe

A discussion on the food & drink forum eGullet got me thinking about safe orders at bars. I am not talking about craft bars here, obviously. By a safe order, I mean the type of drink you’d be comfortable ordering at any bar, regardless of how well it is stocked and the skill level of the staff. This could be your neighborhood bar where you are meeting friends, when you don’t feel like ordering a beer. Another typical scenario is some type of party/event where it’s clear the bartenders are not Tales of the Cocktail Superstars, and the drink options are limited.

The Above & Beyond at the Artesian in London, a cocktail with balloon garnish filled with eucalyptus aroma. Maybe not the best idea for a safe order…

Daiquiris with benefits

After the Negroni, the Daiquiri is probably my favorite cocktail. This seemingly simple drink – rum, lime juice, sugar – is refreshingly sublime when made with a good rum. Actually, this is an excellent test for any rum – if it doesn’t make a beautiful Daiquiri, then maybe something is wrong with it…

A rhum agricole Daiquiri (and a Pegu Club) at Pegu Club

This post is devoted to Daiquiri variations that use rum as the base, with a little bit of this or that added.

Beta Cocktails

• Recipes made so far: 30/55
• Difficulty level: 3/5
• Originality: 5/5

Beta Cocktails was originally published as Rogue Cocktails in 2009 by bartenders Kirk Estopinal and Maksym Pazuniak who were both working at Cure in New Orleans at the time. It was a little pamphlet of 40 irreverent and boundary-changing cocktails, many of them exploring the bitter end of the spectrum. After its success, it was revised and reissued as Beta Cocktails (due to a trademark infringement claim) at TOTC in 2011.

Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.

Charles Bukowski

Mixing with the Experimental Cocktail Club

• Recipes made so far: 9/85
• Difficulty level: 4/5
• Originality: 4/5

Negroni variations

From the archives…

The Negroni might be my favorite cocktail (although it may be a close tie with the equally sublime Daiquiri) and over the years, I have experimented with many different variations. By variation I mean:

• replacing the base alcohol (gin) with another one (rum, scotch, mezcal, tequila, or whiskey of course (*));
• replacing Campari with another amaro with a similar flavor profile (Aperol, Gran Classico bitter (**) (***));
• adding other ingredients in small touches (coffee liqueur, Fernet, etc, salt);
• or experimenting with aperitif wines including various sweet vermouths (Dolin, Vya, Cocchi vermouth di Torino, etc), less sweet sweet vermouths (Punt e Mes), quinquinas (Bonal, Byrrh), and aromatized wines (Cocchi Barolo Chinato).

From the archives

In the next few weeks,  I am going to start publishing on the blog a lot of items I posted over the years on the culinary message board eGullet. I’ve been active on eGullet as Frog Princesse for more than 10 years and close to 4000 posts now, well before I started the blog, and decided to start consolidating a lot of my content here on the blog so it would be all in one place. Also eGullet has been recently riddled with software issues, and I am concerned that one day all this content might be inaccessible or partially lost.

Timeless elegance

Timeless elegance is the theme of this month’s Mixology Monday Challenge and Special 100th Edition. With the resurgence of cocktail culture in the last 15 years, it’s interesting to note that we seem to have gone though a cycle. The old classics were rediscovered, elevated, tweaked, riffed on. Eventually we got a bit side-tracked with exotic ingredients, molecular mixology, or 20-component cocktails. Now the trend seems to be for simple yet memorable cocktails.

One person though always stayed the course, and his vision of perfectly crafted cocktails inspired countless bartenders all over the world. That person, of course, is Sasha Petraske, who passed away a few days ago. It’s quite incredible how much of a deep impact he had on the cocktail world as a whole. So many bartenders I admire have worked in his bars, or have been trained by people who worked in his bars. Many of them have opened or managed successful and influential bars.