tea berry-blue

So, most of you know that I’m sort of a giant nerd for cocktail things…ESPECIALLY cocktail things that are hard to find/acquire/track down, etc.

This is my holy grail of things I haven’t been able to get which only makes me want them more:

That little bottle is full of a potion called Elixir Vegetal de la Grande Chartreuse. It’s made by the Chartreuse Monks, the same people responsible for the Chartreuse Liqueurs we all know and love.

The thing is, it’s barely ever available in the US because of this little issue wherein the Chartreuse Monks won’t give the FDA the list of ingredients.

A while back, one of my favorite bitters-selling websites, Cocktail Kingdom had it, and I was super stoked and going to buy a bottle. But something weird happened with my order and it didn’t go through, and when I tried again, they no longer had it in stock. TRAGEDY.

So, this morning, I was just browsing for something on the internet, as I am often wont to do, with no particular purpose in mind, and suddenly, up on my screen popped the Elixir Vegetal product page on Cocktail Kingdom.

I was a little disoriented in a “hey, why is this showing up on my screen?” for a minute, and I was about to close out, when, on a whim, I clicked the “add to cart” button.

AND IT WORKED.

Cocktail Kingdom has Elixir Vegetal back in stock, if you are looking for it in the US!! Go, purchase!

Mine is coming to me shortly!

Mirrored from Nommable!.

My recent dearth of posts to my own food blog (thank you Rose, for still being active in my absence!) can only be attributed to a week of allergies followed by a week of bronchitis. I’m slowly recovering from the bronchitis, physically weak but mostly able to breathe again, although my medication, including a codeine-based cough syrup, means that I’m forbidden (tragedy of tragedies) to drink.

But my recovery means that I’m now well enough (even though I’m still a bit weak, woozy, and dizzy) to tell you a story that is in very small part a recipe but in a larger part a romance, in the more classic meaning of the word, where I embarked upon a voyage that I thought was going to be one of humorous novelty, and discovered I had opened a door into a world that I had not known existed, and a kinship with someone who died long before I was born.

Some of you might know that I had a great-grandfather named G Selmer Fougner, who, from 1933 to 1941, was the chief wine columnist for the New York Sun (the newspaper of “Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus,” fame. He is often touted as journalism’s “first wine writer,” as his column started just on the heels of Prohibition’s repeal, and he went on to write about food in a way that is luxurious, decadent, and verging on sinful as he operated at the peak of the Great Depression. But I’ve also heard that what he did was afford people who could not eat as he did a sort of vicarious entertainment, the same way that movies of the 1930s allowed people a view into fabulous and wealthy homes.

Now, most of you know that I’m not much of a wine drinker. I don’t dislike wine, and I will certainly have a glass now and then, but I’ll almost always choose gin, whiskey, or beer over wine.

So the existence of “Baron” Fougner remained an entertaining tidbit that I’ve sometimes mentioned at parties, or am now-and-then confronted with by someone with a particularly rich knowledge of wine lore, like my eighth grade science teacher. But other than the pride of such an interesting role in the history of journalism, it wasn’t too much to me.

Then, this summer, I was looking for gifts for my father for his birthday, and thought it might be a treat if I could find one of G. Selmer Fougner’s books, unsure whether my father had all of them. I started doing a search, and discovered the following:

Along the Wine Trail, Volume II: Distilled Spirits

This was followed up by a third volume, also on spirits.

I asked my mother if she knew about this. And, lo and behold, I discovered that we were in fact in possession of a full bound set of all five volumes of Along the Wine Trail.

So I started reading. And I discovered that this book included recipes. Not only did it include recipes, but it included recipes in the guise of entertaining stories about my great-grandfather’s experiences mixing, ordering, and drinking cocktails.

All kinds of cocktails.

I started in the beginning of the recipe section, with the first recipe in the book, which, of course, was The Martini. I went on to the French Martini, and then to the Bronx Cocktail.

And here is my great-grandfather’s “recipe” for The Old Fashioned Cocktail, transcribed word for word.

The following letter from a “Wine Trail” follower will interest those who favor the Old Fashioned Cocktail:

“After reading your articles in The Sun for several weeks, I should like to ask you a question which confuses many of my friends. What is the preferred recipe for an Old Fashioned Cocktail? A few days ago one of my guests asked the waiter for one and specified a piece of orange, a piece of lemon, a slice of pineapple and a cherry, and the waiter, who was German, responded with: ‘Ach! Vot you vant is vegetable soup.’
“Personally, I have tasted Old Fashioned Cocktails which made me think my head was on fire, and then I have tasted a variety which made me forgive all my enemies and fill me with a desire to give all I have to the poor.”

The waiter may have thought he was being funny, but he showed rare ignorance of the requisites of his job. Some of the best recipes for an “old fashioned” call for all the fruit mentioned. Oscar of the Waldorf specifies as follows: 1 lump of sugar, 1 jigger of rye whiskey, 1 cherry, 1 dash bitters, 1/2 slice orange, 1 stick fresh pineapple and a lump of ice.

Charles C Mueller, pioneer bartender of some of hte finest hotels and clubs, uses the same ingredients, while this writer prefers the simple form containing merely the sugar, dissolved in a few drops of mineral water, rye whiskey, a dash of bitters, a lump of ice and a piece of lemon peel twisted on top.

There is something magical, to me, about being able to share a cocktail with a man who died nearly forty years before I was born, but who left me a legacy that I might appreciate more than anything else he could have given me.

Mirrored from Nommable!.

My mom doesn’t like cherries.

Well, that’s not completely true.  I’ll amend the statement: my mom doesn’t like maraschino cherries. The nearly-fluorescent syrupy sweet things that barely resemble anything that could have ever grown on a tree.

When I was a kid, this was a pretty sweet deal.  Ice cream sundaes?  I got the cherry.  You know, unless my brother got it.  But there was a one in two chance I was getting an extra cherry.

Then I got older, and less excited about cherries, and more excited about boozey things that cherries go in.

So, around November of last year, I started experimenting with making cherries my mom would actually like.

Here’s the resulting recipe.

Tea | Nommable!

Mirrored from Nommable!.

I bought my mother a bottle of G’Vine Nouaison this week and we went through pretty much the whole bottle over the course of one weekend, which we rarely do because usually I make drinks with completely different ingredients every day, but this was just so good with herbs that I kept playing around with it.

There is also a special quiz question for you today: What do the names of all these drinks have in common?

1) Dig Ophelia

Ingredients
2.5 oz G’Vine Nouaison
.5 oz Bo Nardini Rue Grappa
.25 oz St. Germain
5 sprigs lavender
1 tsp honey
2 dashes Fee Bros Grapefruit Bitters

Instructions
Add gin, grappa, and lavender to shaker, muddle
Coat chilled cocktail glass with St. Germain
Add honey to shaker and shake
Strain into glass and add bitters

2) Citizen Charlotte

Ingredients
2.5 oz G’Vine Nouaison
.5 oz Etrog Citron Liqueur
.25 oz Dolin Dry Vermouth
1 Tb thyme
1/2 of a garlic scape

Instructions
Chop scape into 1/2″ chunks
Put all ingredients except vermouth in shaker, muddle
Coat cocktail glass with vermouth
Shake contents of shaker and strain into glass!

3) Dalton Trumbo

Note: I used wild black caps for this drink. If you can’t get black caps, regular raspberries are probably the best suitable replacement. Here’s a picture of black caps in case you live somewhere where wild berries are plentiful:

So that is what is in the drink!

Ingredients
3 oz G’Vine Nouaison
4 sprigs of oregano plus one for garnish
5 black caps plus 2 for garnis
1 tsp honey

Instructions
1) Put all ingredients in shaker, muddle until berries are well-crushed and gin is bright pink.
2) Shake and strain into chilled cocktail glass
3) Garnish with oregano and additional berries

Thank you to gildedage who is my new official Drink Entitler Person.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

Or, you know, five. Which is how many new ones that are worth sharing I’ve made since the last time I did a cocktail post apart from the strawberries. Holy heck! How did I go that long? What is wrong with me?!

I am feeling uncreative and beyond naming things right now. Which you may have noticed from my last post where I just started naming things “strawberry” in different languages. I figure the options right now are 1) sit around naming them for the next hundred years or 2) just throw ‘em up without names. If you want to volunteer names, go for it!

1)

Ingredients
2 1/2 oz Small’s Gin
1/2 oz Scarborough Faire Gin (homemade infusion! I make it with Gale Force Gin and 1/2 cup each parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme)
2 sprigs oregano
1 small plum,
1/2 oz lavender syrup
1/4 oz Branca Menta

Instructions
Add cut up plum, 1 sprig oregano and regular gin to shaker.
Muddle, then add Scarborough Faire gin & syrup. Shake.
Coat chilled cocktail glass with Branca Menta, discard excess.
Pour drink into glass, add oregano for garnish.

2)

Ingredients
2 oz Magellan Blue Gin
1 oz Carpano Antica Formula
1/2 oz limoncello
1 rib rhubarb plus a small piece of rhubarb for garnish
1 Tb lemon thyme
3 dashes Fee Bros Rhubarb bitters

Instructions
Add gin, thyme and chopped rhubarb to shaker, muddle well
Add Carpano Antica & limoncello and shake
Pour into chilled cocktail glass and add bitters
Garnish with leftover piece of rhubarb!

3)

Ingredients
2 oz Dogfish Head Jin
1oz Dolin dry vermouth
1/2oz Domaine de Canton
1Tb purple basil + 1 leaf for garnish
1Tsp Vietnamese coriander (this is different from your more typical coriander/cilantro and has broad, flat, shiny leaves) +1 leaf for garnish
1 hot pickled pepper
1/8 tsp cinnamon
Bottle Green Ginger & Lemongrass Soda to top

Instructions
Soak pepper in gin for five minutes.
Add gin (with pepper), basil, lemongrass, and Domaine de Canton to shaker, muddle.
Add vermouth & cinnamon, shake
Pour into highball glass with ice, add soda until glass is full. Garnish with leaves.

4)

Ingredients
2 1/2 oz Ethereal Gin
1/2 oz Averna amaro,
1/2 oz Heering Cherry Liqueur
10 bruised sage leaves (Bruise the sage leaves by running your index finger and thumb in opposite directions against the leaf)

Instructions
Put all ingredients in a glass. Muddle, then shake.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Easy!

5)

Okay, I have to say, this is the best drink of the bunch. And it’s vodka. Vodka! My mother wanted a drink to showcase our new honey, so this is seriously made with honey RIGHT out of the hive. How awesome is that? But you should all try it. I recommend a lighter honey. Clover is probably fine, or acacia or tupelo.

Ingredients
3oz Comb Vodka
1/4 oz Mathilde peche
1/2 oz freshly extracted honey (any honey will do if you are not a nerd like me)
1 tb fresh lavender plus a sprig of lavender blossom for garnish
2 tb fresh mint.

Instructions
Add vodka, lavender and mint to shaker, muddle just until leaves are bruised.
Add honey and shake.
Coat chilled cocktail glass with Mathilde peche
Pour drink into glass, garnish.

Whew, okay, now I am caught up with the drinky-drinks.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

In order:

By Monday, the chickens were much fluffier and were developing more adult feathers!

Also, our new hive was really seeing some activity. Hive #1 has so much honey we are going to be harvesting next weekend, hooray! It’s crazy, you can smell the honey in the air from like ten feet away. Our new hive is a hive of blonde bees, and they are very pretty and redder in color than our other bees. It’s neat because you can tell them apart by sight.

Yesterday, my mom made the most awesome nachos and salsa ever. I can take zero credit for any part of this meal except that I dumped some of my pickled hot peppers on the nachos, so good. Oh, and I picked the asparagus, but I’m going to post another post, probably tomorrow, about cultivating asparagus in your garden!

The nachos have steak, cheese, black olives and peppers on them, and the salsa is black beans, grilled corn and grilled onions, tomatoes, avocado, garlic, cilantro, lime juice, and a little cumin. Yum!

Anyway, here is the cocktail I made to go with the nachos and salsa:

Happy Accident

Ingredients
2.5 oz Depaz rum
.5 oz Elisir MP Roux
.25 oz cognac
about 6 sprigs of oregano
about 4 sprigs of chamomile, plus three chamomile blossoms for garnish

Instructions
Put rum, oregano, chamomile,in a shaker with ice and muddle well
Add MP Roux and shake
Coat chilled cocktail glass with cognac
Pour drink into glass, add blossoms

And here is the drink I made today. This is my first drink using Boyd & Blair, which is the vodka I’ve been waxing poetic about to everyone I speak to. And you can consider this my first entry into the “drinks that absolutely require the flavor of vodka” category :-P

Drink Me

Ingredients
2.5 oz Boyd & Blair Potato Vodka
1.5 Tbs chopped wood ear mushrooms, reconstituted if dry
1 tsp whole black peppercorns
.5 oz black pepper-wood ear syrup (basic simple syrup with 2 tbs wood ear mushrooms, 2 tsps black pepper added)
.25 oz Dolin Blanco vermouth
6 drops white truffle oil

Instructions
Crush peppercorns slightly
Leave vodka to sit with mushrooms and peppercorns steeping in it for about 5-10 minutes
Strain vodka into a shaker with ice, add syrup and shake
Coat glass with vermouth, add contents of shaker
Add of few of the vodka-soaked mushroom pieces back to the glass
Add truffle oil in little drizzles

The best thing about this drink is that not only is the drink yummy, but you end up with vodka-soaked mushrooms that are freaking amazing. I’m actually going to save them to use in other stuff.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

So, some of you may have noticed the name of the last drink I posted. It was one of those days when what was going on in my life had something to do with how I was feeling about naming things, so I guess I should tell you the exciting thing that happened today in addition to getting chicks on Friday.

Actually, let me just show you.

Do you notice anything special about that picture? Like, say, the presence of two hives instead of one?

Well, that is because my parents got up at the crack of dawn to ACQUIRE A NEW QUEEN. And now we have two hives! So exciting.

The bees are producing crazy honey. Like, we put in some empty spare frames with some comb they made last year but never got around to filling, and it was full within about eight hours. Crazy! I’m excited to see what this honey tastes like compared to the goldenrod honey they made last autumn.

Bees are the most awesome. Check them out!

Love them! That last one was a bee on my leg. They kept landing on me today. At first it was because I was wearing crazy madras shorts which make them think I am a beautiful flower, so I changed into whites and I think then it just meant that they love me. D’aww.

Anyway! I got a ton of work done in the garden today. We went to three garden centers and picked up a bunch of stuff, including a golden raspberry bush and Vietnamese coriander, which is one of my favorite drink-worthy herbs, but we couldn’t find it last year.

Here’s some of my gardening work for today:

That is my mom’s bed of eight basil plants in seven varieties. We bought SEVEN varieties of basil. Who does that?! So now, we have an entire bed of basil. Excellent?

That one is carduni, which is another thing I love (fried!), but that is pretty hard to find. We couldn’t get it last year. Then it’s collards, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t have another vegetable that began with the letter “C” to go in that bed, but it’s cool because I do love brussels sprouts.

Yesterday, Jess came up, and we got invited to a barbecue at the neighbors’ at the last minute. It was fun, but I got massive horrible asthma pretty much the whole time I was there, and ended up sitting on their sofa in their living room the whole time. I felt really badly about it, but there wasn’t much I could do.

Then, this morning, we got up and went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s sort of crazy, because the last two I went to opening night in costume, and this one, I was only vaguely aware that it had opened. It says something about how my life has changed, and something about how disappointing the last two movies were. This one was cute. It wasn’t as good as the first one, but it was much easier to follow and not as overwrought as the second and third ones. It didn’t actually ever feel like it was a long movie, which is good when something is over two hours.

Then was gardening and beekeeping, hooray! I wore the bee hat today and everything, which I usually don’t do.

Jess was in Chile for a while, and she brought me back a bottle of really good pisco.

Jess tends to like sweeter, fruitier drinks than my mom or I do, and we have a ton of berries in the fridge right now, so I made this for her and then added the pickling liquid for me and my mom.

Ingredients
2.5 oz pisco
1 large strawberry or 2 small
10 blueberries
1 tsp basil jelly
Juice of 1/4 lime
1 tsp pickling liquid from a jar of pickled hot peppers
1 slice lime

Instructions
Cut strawberry into chunks
Add strawberry, blueberries, and pisco to shaker with ice and muddle until fruit is well crushed.
Add jelly, lime juice, and pickling liquid and shake
Pour into chilled cocktail glass and add lime slice

We also dumped the leftover fruit from this into our wine tonight :-P Yum.

Last but not least, I leave you with pictures of the chicks, who are fluffier and cuter than they were last time two days ago!

And our scallop appetizer (with bacon, brown butter, and scallions)

And the second batch of salt & pepper ice cream (made with more brown sugar and less white sugar), served with a 12-year balsamic

Are there ice cream flavors anyone would like to suggest I try? As long as it is a flavor that appeals to me and for which there are ingredients available, I will consider pretty much anything.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

Last night, I pulled out the ice cream maker for the first time this spring. It’s time!

Now, there’s a little more of this story I might tell you another time…I *will* tell you another time…but I’ve been planning on making toffee bacon ice cream all winter, and then yesterday I came up with an idea that was either inspired genius or gross! So I had to try it!

Cracked Pepper and Sea Salt Ice Cream

Ingredients
3/4 cup whole milk
3/4 cup half & half
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup piloncillo sugar
4 egg yolks
2 Tbs honey
1 Tb vanilla bean paste
1 tsp cracked black pepper
1/2 tsp fine sea salt

Instructions
Whisk the egg yolks and the sugar together until frothy and pasty.
Mix the milk and half & half together in a saucepan, cook just until boiling, remove from heat, wait until it stops bubbling.
Add 1 Tb of the hot milk to the sugar and egg mixture, whisk quickly to keep the eggs from cooking.
Keep adding the hot milk to the sugar and eggs in small increments, whisking and pausing between additions, until 3/4 of the hot milk has been added.
Pour the milk/egg/sugar mixture back into the saucepan, and add honey and vanilla, heat over medium heat, stirring frequently until mixture thickens.
Remove from heat and chill for at least four hours.
Once chilled, add heavy cream and stir until well mixed. Stir in salt and pepper.
Put entire mixture in ice cream mixer and follow instructions for your ice cream mixer until frozen. Put finished ice cream in freezer.
Chill for at least two hours in freezer.
Serve with cracked pepper and additional shavings of piloncillo on top.

I can’t even tell you how awesome this was. It is so lovely. I really wasn’t sure if it would even be edible, but holy wow, I want to eat it all the time. I am making another batch of it up here at the barn for my parents.

Story number 2: In which Tea actually makes a drink with vodka that isn’t something for her dad.

You know how sometimes things all come together in funny ways so that weeks have themes? Well, here’s how my week went as far as my libation imbibement for the week.

trouserminnow posted something about vodka earlier this week, and pretty much the question of what cocktail there might be that is actually better with vodka than with any other spirit, where the vodka is actually tasteable as the centerpiece of the drink (many vodka cocktails are all about covering up the flavor of the vodka). Which I’ve been thinking about now on and off, because I can’t *not* take that as a challenge. And I have a theory which I will be trying out later this week at home.

Then, I was over at Astor, and apart from getting an excellent little daiquiri-style drink, I discovered Boyd and Blair, which is very possibly the greatest vodka I have ever tasted. Seriously, this thing has a depth to it that I’ve been starting to see in some newer vodkas, but it just goes beyond anything else I’ve ever had.

Then, tonight, my mom bought a bottle of Comb, which is distilled from honey. I love their gin, Comb 9, and the Comb was ostensibly a “We need a good vodka for guests who hate gin” purchase. Because pretty much anytime my parents have friends up to the house, they want vodka, and we have barely any (at least compared to anything else in our cabinets).

Also, today, I sent karnythia a drink recipe, and I know she’s a vodka drinker, so I was messing around with vodka in my headspace to begin with, and then I wanted to try a variation on what I gave her. So, karnythia, this drink is also for you!

Split Hive

Ingredients
2.5 oz Comb vodka
.5 oz rhubarb-honey-white balsamic syrup (recipe below)
10 blueberries
1 4 inch narrow piece of rhubarb stalk.

Instructions
Add everything but the piece of rhubarb to a glass or pitcher, muddle until blueberries are well-crushed.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass, add stalk for garnish.

Ingredients for syrup
4 small rhubarb stalks
2 Tbs honey
2 tsps white balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup water

Instructions
Chop rhubarb into very small pieces.
Add to small saucepan, add water to cover.
Add honey and vinegar, heat until boiling.
Once boiling, stir intermittently to keep rhubarb from sticking to pan
When liquid becomes syrupy and rhubarb has cooked down completely, remove from heat. Strain into a bottle.

And finally, for the most exciting news of the day!

I went out to Long Island after work, and met my mom to drive up to Connecticut, with a stop at Suburban Wines on the way (which was incredibly disappointing; this place used to have an amazing selection. I don’t know if it’s a reflection of the clientele or staff turnover or what, but while their bourbon selection is still pretty okay, that’s pretty much the ONLY selection that wasn’t completely decimated. It was sad! But I digress. Anyway, I get into the car, and when we stop at a light, my mom tells me to be quiet and listen.

I hear this sound. It goes, peep peep peep.

PEEP PEEP PEEP.

It takes me a second.

“Holy shit, is that in the car?!” I ask.

“It’s in the car,” my mom answers.

So then when we stop the car at Suburban, the first thing I do is open the back door to see the new babies.

PEEP PEEP. They peeped all the way home! It is the most joyous noise in the universe, all the little peepings! So cute! So exciting! Chickens! I do not even know where to begin with how awesome this acquisition is!

I HAVE CHICKENS, PEOPLE. CHICKENS.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

These are mostly for beautyofgrey– photos of the dresses I bought yesterday! All from Nordstrom Rack, all under $50.

I wore this one to work today! I really like the little rosette on it.

I have been having a little love affair with dresses that I probably would never have even considered wearing a couple of years ago. The kind that look frumpy on the hanger! The kind with crazy prints that look like the Von Trapp Family’s discarded curtains. When I started working at King Features, I had to upgrade my wardrobe after a year of working out of my apartment and having to dress for comic shows. I mean, I cuted up, but my cuting up involved cute tee shirts and floofy skirts, and I needed to step it up a little.

This one is a little little-girly, but I freaking loved the fabric too much to pass it up. It’s crazy soft and floaty and reminds me of a dress I had in college, that had butterflies on it in similar colors.

The thing is that at first I was buying slacks and stuff, and that’s just not me. I mean, like I was saying to drjeff, if I had my druthers, I would still be wearing ball gowns and shit like I did in college. And I just had no idea how to dress like me but still like a grownup. It was awkward. I think I posted a bunch of posts here asking people how to dress, but I just didn’t quite get it.

It didn’t help that my body type made dressing hard. I mean, I am lucky in that I’m a normal dress size
(6-8), but my boobs pretty much mean that a lot of clothes are out. Strapless? Out. Strappy? Out. Halter? Nope. Backless? Nope. Nothing with an empire waist or any kind of decoration around the bustline, because it always falls at the wrong place.

This one isn’t my typical style, really, but I really liked the print and the sleeves! I was on a cute floral print kick, apparently! Which I like because so many colors!

And then I started watching Mad Men, and like every single person who has ever seen Mad Men, developed a huge crush on Christina Hendricks. In between fanning myself off, though, I noticed that here’s finally someone who is pretty much exactly my size. We have almost the same measurements and it was like, hello, lightbulb! I can see how all these clothes look on her and try to buy things with similar styles. And that’s what I’ve been doing since, well, the end of last summer. And I never feel like I’ve put something stupid on because I don’t know how to dress anymore!

On to drinks!

Highland Park

Ingredients
2.5 oz G’Vine gin
.5 oz limoncello
1/4 cup fresh lilac blossoms (removed from stems) plus some blossoms for garnish.
.25 oz St. Germain

Instructions
Add gin, limoncello, lilacs to pitcher or glass with ice and muddle well.
Let sit for 5 minutes
Coat 1 chilled glass with St. Germain, discard excess
Pour, garnish with remaining lilacs.

Remedy (This and variations on this is what I was drinking all last week when I was crazy sick)

Ingredients
2 oz Bulldog gin
1 oz Elisir MP Roux
1 Tb local honey

Instructions
Put all ingredients in a pitcher or glass with ice and stir. You need to stir for a while to get the honey to dissolve if you are using thick honey.
Pour into chilled glass!
That is all!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

Yesterday, I opened a bottle of Berkshire Mountain Distillers’ Ethereal Gin. Anyone who keeps sharp tabs knows how much I love their Greylock, so I was really eager to try this.

I’m not sure how to describe it. Ethereal has one of the most unique flavors I’ve ever tasted in a gin, that I can only explain by likening it to the flavor that you get in your mouth when you’re sitting around a bonfire and you breathe in the scent of burning wood. So, really fascinating and complex and difficult. It’s not something I’m just going to sit around and drink, but mixing it was sneaky because I didn’t want to cover up the burning flavor. I tried it with like seven different things and I’m still not 100% happy with this one but the sorrel is something I’ve never used in a cocktail before and that part worked perfectly.

Ephemera

Ingredients

2 oz Ethereal Gin
1 oz Ramazzotti
3 large sorrel leaves
1/8 oz Zirbenz Stone Pine Liqueur

Instructions
Chiffonade the sorrel leaves.
Add Gin, Ramazzotti and sorrel to a pitcher and muddle.
Coat a cocktail glass with Zirbenz, pour out excess.
Strain drink into glass!

Tonight, we had a dinner party, and on account of having to get the house ready, we just ate sandwiches, although saying “just” when discussing these sandwiches is a bit of an understatement. This is my sandwich:

The is prosciutto, salami and capicola with provolone and arugula and a tiny bit of rosemary olive oil. It was to die for.

Also, yesterday: Do you remember my giant asparagi? Well, this one is giving them a run for their money. Also, I think it is getting a job in the adult film industry:

Oh my word.

Then, today, dinner party! I forgot to take pictures of the salad, but it was a plain old tricolor. Here is the other stuff we ate!

Antipasti!

This is my invention. It’s polenta spooned on a cookie sheet in disk shapes, topped with prosciutto and baked until the prosciutto is crispy and the polenta is firm, then covered with fried crispy sage and brown butter.

Linguini primavera covered with seafood!

Tiramisu and a raspberry-rhubarb crostada!

So I like making negronis but usually when we have company and I am like “negronis!” the company is like “gross!” which is sort of devastating because negronis are my go-to drink. This time, everyone but my father said yes to negronis so I was sort of tickled and I got to make a whole pitcher of this:

Blood Orange Negroni

Ingredients
1.5 oz Rogue Pink Spruce Gin
1 oz Campari
.5 oz red vermouth
Juice from 1/2 blood orange
1 blood orange wedge
10 sage leaves

Instructions
Add gin and 9 sage leaves to pitcher and let sit five minutes
Add campari, vermouth, and juice, plus leftover orange pieces, muddle
Strain into glass and garnish with blood orange wedge and one sage leaf

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.