… from the Perspectives Happy Hour BarHow you doin’? One thing I love about some of the older cocktail recipes is that they have great names. For example, The Hanky Panky Cocktail which has a great story, as well. It was invented by one of the few women known to have tended bar, pre-Prohibition, Ada Coleman, then at the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in London. Be careful with this one, but not too careful. It calls for Fernet Branca, which of course isn't to everyone's taste. Here, though, it's used in such small quantities that its sharper elements are tamed. Hanky Panky matches the distinctive character of Fernet Branca with the botanicals found in gin and sweet vermouth to create a rich blend of flavors—a blend that lets the pushy liqueur remind you of its better side. Let's talk about that bitter Italian liqueur, a beneficent bully. Formulated as a digestivo in the mid-19th century, Fernet Branca has a blend of botanicals, including cardamom, chamomile, saffron and rhubarb, that together work some sort of gastronomic magic to dispel the discomfort of overindulging at mealtime. And the bully part? This same mix of ingredients has a flavor so bracingly bitter and complex that a first encounter is usually seared into a drinker's memory. This powerful flavor makes Fernet Branca tricky to work with as a cocktail ingredient. Not content to play a supporting role, Fernet Branca has a knack for taking over any drink that incorporates it as an ingredient. Fortunately, there are a few cocktails that play to Fernet Branca's strengths. Note: Some bartenders adjust the drink's proportions to create a drier cocktail; for that version, try 2 ounces of gin, 1 ounce of sweet vermouth and 1/4 ounce of Fernet Branca. Both versions are worth a try. Prep time: 3 minutes Yield: 1 cocktail Ingredients 1-1/2 ounces gin 1-1/2 ounces sweet vermouth 2 dashes (1/4 ounce) Fernet Branca Directions
Chefs Secrets: The Savoy has always been my place to stay in London until… well, I was tossed out. I was drinking at the American Bar with Master Christie (first officer on the original Pacific Princess and a real troublemaker). Without going into too much detail—there were girls involved, tossing food at guests and lots of Hanky Panky. Keep this a secret, please. Quip of the Day: Q. How do you make your hanky dance? A. Put a little boogie in it. ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. All recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide. ------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America, Tunnel to Towers, Union Rescue Mission and/or American Red Cross. #Cocktail #HankyPankyCocktail #FernetBranca #Gin #Vermouth #Cheers #HappyHour #2024 #T2T #URM #FeedingAmerica #RedCross #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2024
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…from the Perspectives’ Happy Hour BarHow you doin’? Death in the Gulf Stream Cocktail—funny name, funny story, funny drink. It was a favorite drink of Ernest Hemingway's… but then he had so many favorite cocktails. The drink first appeared in Charles Baker's Gentleman's Companion. Baker's description of the drink is classic. Take a tall thin water tumbler and fill it with finely cracked ice. Lace this broken debris with 4 good purple splashes of Angostura, add the juice and crushed peel of 1 green lime, and fill the glass almost full of Holland gin... No sugar, no fancying. It's strong, it's bitter—but so is English ale strong and bitter, in many cases. We don't add sugar to ale, and we don't need sugar in a Death in The Gulf Stream—or at least not more than 1 tsp. Its tartness and its bitterness are its chief charm. It is reviving and refreshing; cools the blood and inspires renewed interest in food, companions and life. Prep time: 5 minutes Yield: 1 cocktail Ingredients 1 fresh lime peel zest 1 tablespoon fresh key lime juice 4 dashes Angostura bitters 1 teaspoon simple syrup (if you must) 3 ounces Bols’s gin Directions
ChefSecret: Holland gin, of course, is Genever, and the version from Bols works well here. I agree with Baker that too much sugar ruins this drink, but I like my cocktails drier than most drinkers do. If you can find key limes, use them here. If not, a typical supermarket lime will do. Quip of the Day: A true friend reaches for your hand … and puts a glass of gin in it. ------------------------------------------ Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. All recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide. ------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America, Tunnel to Towers, Union Rescue Mission and/or American Red Cross. #Cocktail #DeathInTheGulfStreamCocktail #Gin #Bols #Genever #ErnestHemingway #CharlesBaker #GentlemansCompanion #Cheers #HappyHour #2024 #T2T #URM #FeedingAmerica #RedCross #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2024 …from the Perspectives’ Happy Hour BarHow you doin’? I can’t remember a time when I went out to eat with my parents to a “fancy” restaurant where I didn’t order a Shirley Temple when my folks ordered their martinis. So, just who was Shirley Temple? Shirley Jane Temple was born on April 23, 1928, at Santa Monica Hospital, the third child of homemaker Gertrude Temple and bank employee George Temple. Temple's mother encouraged her to develop her singing, dancing, and acting talents. At about this time, her mother began styling Temple's hair in ringlets.[15] While at the dance school, Temple was spotted by Charles Lamont, who was a casting director for a movie company. Little 3-year old Shirley hid behind a piano while he was in the studio. Lamont liked Temple and invited her to audition. He signed her to a contract in 1932. Educational Pictures launched its Baby Burlesques, 10-minute comedy shorts satirizing recent films and events, using preschool children in every role. In 1933, Temple appeared in Glad Rags to Riches, a parody of the Mae West feature She Done Him Wrong, with Temple as a saloon singer. That same year, she appeared in Kid 'in' Africa as a child imperiled in the jungle and in Runt Page, a pastiche of the previous year's The Front Page. The younger players in the cast recited their lines phonetically. Shirley Temple became one of the most popular actresses in the world (child or adult) at that time and even won an Academy Award—a miniature of the adult sized one. While all this was going on children all over the world were ordering a drink—Shirley Temple—made with 7/Up and grenadine topped with a Marsicano cherry. All these years later you can still find a grown-up version of a favorite mocktail, the Shirley Temple. A Bend Over Shirley cocktail is the made with the same grenadine and lemon-lime soda, it has the same fruity taste you loved as a kid along with a kick-ass adaptation from the 2-ounces of vodka. Prep time: 3 minutes Yield: 1 cocktail Ingredients 2 ounces vodka 1 ounce grenadine 4 ounces lemon-lime soda 3 Maraschino cherries for garnish Directions
ChefSecret: You can use a plain vodka or substitute a cherry-flavored brand such as Smirnoff, or Skyy. Grenadine is not made from cherries but a deep red, pomegranate-flavored syrup. You can use Sprite or 7/Up for the lemon-lime flavor. For a more traditional approach, substitute ginger ale and an added splash of orange juice. Quip of the Day: A vampire walks into a bar and tells the bartender he wants a Shirley Temple. The bartender heads to the backroom and a few moments later, he comes out with his drink. The vampire sips his drink and quickly spits it out. "This isn't a Shirley Temple," he tells the bartender. "I can't help it, buddy," the bartender says. "She's been dead for eight years." ------------------------------------------ Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. All recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide. ------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America, Tunnel to Towers, Union Rescue Mission and/or American Red Cross. #Cocktail #Mocktail #ShirleyTemple #Grenadine #Vodka #Lemon-Lime #7-Up #Cheers #HappyHour #2024 #T2T #URM #FeedingAmerica #RedCross #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2024 …from the Perspectives’ Happy Hour BarHow you doin’? Here’s a strange Happy Hour cocktail dating back to Prohibition. I selected the Monkey Gland because it's a great drink, but I also chose it for its back story. Consider serving this one up at your next party, just so you can entertain your guests with a funny historical anecdote. The Monkey Gland is a Prohibition classic, devised at Harry's New York Bar in Paris in the 1920s. The name is a reference to a surgical procedure by Dr. Serge Voronoff. For men with performance issues, Dr. Voronoff offered to implant in them the testicle of a monkey, for "rejuvenation," as he called it. That would make your George very curious indeed. In 2024, if you're an adult male who feels the need for a little, um, assistance in the intimacy department, you reach for one of the blue pill pharmaceuticals you see advertised during football games. In 1928, if you needed a little vavoom in the bedroom, you went to see Dr. Voronoff. So popular was Voronoff's vitality procedure in the 1920s that it inspired the creation of the Monkey Gland, a cocktail named for the rather sensitive part of an unfortunate simian's anatomy that Voronoff surgically implanted into his eager patients. This is a drink where purchasing the right ingredients makes all the difference. Fresh-squeezed orange juice is essential and a quality grenadine—Stirrings makes a decent one and an authentic absinthe really make the cocktail come together (though a substitute such as Herbsaint, Pernod or Ricard will also suffice). Did Voronoff's treatment work? No, not really—and one doesn’t have to guess how the castrated monkeys felt about the whole thing. One picture above is worth a thousand words. Fortunately, the cocktail still does the trick and you don’t need to de-ball any monkeys in the making of this cocktail. Prep time: 3 minutes Yield: 1 cocktail Ingredients 1-1/2 ounces gin 1-1/2 ounces freshly squeezed orange juice 1 teaspoon grenadine 1 teaspoon absinthe Directions
ChefSecret: Can’t find a good absinthe? You can use Herbsaint, Pernod or Ricard as a substitute. Quip of the Day: Life is like the monkey bars… you have to let go to move forward. ------------------------------------------ Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. All recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide. ------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America, Tunnel to Towers, Union Rescue Mission and/or American Red Cross. #Cocktail #MonkeyGlandCocktail #Gin #OJ #OrangeJuice #Grenadine #Absinthe #MarchMadness #Cheers #HappyHour #2024 #T2T #URM #FeedingAmerica #RedCross #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2024 Happy Hour... Celebrating Black History MonthHow you doin’? February is Black History Month and today I want to celebrate Tom Bullock, the first African American author of a cocktail book. Here was a mixologist that captured the mysteries and marvels of an art that borders on magic. In 1913, the former president Theodore Roosevelt was in court trying to save his reputation. It was then that T.R. was accused of being an alcoholic, despite his continual, fervid insistence that he’d never been drunk in his life. Fed up with this libel, he vowed to sue the next publication that claimed it, ultimately taking out his anger on a tiny Michigan newspaper called the Ishpeming Iron Ore. As a witness under cross examination, Roosevelt did acknowledge a fondness for Mint Juleps, and further admitted that he had tasted a Julep once at the St. Louis Country Club, but only drank “a part” of it. As far as the St. Louis Post Dispatch was concerned, this “just a part” business was proof he was lying. It was literally unbelievable. Why? Because the cocktail in question had been prepared by none other than Tom Bullock. “Who was ever known to drink a part of one of Tom’s Juleps?” editorialized the paper on March 28, 1913, “To believe that a red-blooded man and a true Colonel at that, ever stopped with just a part of these refreshments… is to strain credulity too far,” adding of Bullock that “there is no greater mixologist of any race, color, or condition of servitude.” This is most of what we know of Tom Bullock—that he was revered as a bartender for over 25 years serving the best establishments in Louisville and St. Louis. Bullock was the first African American to publish a cocktail book, called The Ideal Bartender, in 1917. His volume is sadly short on personal details. This isn’t much and the mind thirsts for more. Some diligent researchers have been able to unearth the shape of his life, and that of black bartenders more generally from Reconstruction to WWI—particularly Michael Jones the former, and David Wondrich the latter—but this column is about cocktails, and Bullock’s talent, told through his cocktails, was enormous. As noted, he was a wizard with the Mint Julep. He had the good idea of mixing absinthe and Benedictine, the first author I’ve seen do that. He was perhaps the first to publish a Martini-like cocktail with an onion, which would become the Gibson. He also has a flurry of original cocktails, any one of which I’d be proud to serve to you today, but a favorite is the Admiral Schley High Ball, made of Irish Whiskey, lemon juice, pineapple syrup, dessert wine and soda. Schley was a Navy Admiral and a hero of the Spanish-American War. The Admiral Schley’s High Ball is a lovely and disarming drink, the bright fruit of the pineapple teasing out the honeyed brightness of the dessert wine, with the mild oak from the Irish Whiskey providing structure, a kind of a gentle but present backbone. It plays to Irish Whiskey’s core strength, which is that it’s such a soft and approachable spirit that subtle fruit—that which would be bludgeoned by bourbon or even scotch—is allowed to express itself and entice you with its subtleties. It’s an inventive and delicious original from an excellent bartender, the flavors obvious in the way that great ideas always seem obvious in hindsight. We don’t recommend using it as any kind of valid legal defense, but it’s certainly worth your time on its own, or to make as a kind of toast to the noble past, and the mysteries and marvels of an art that borders on magic. Thanks to The Robb Report for today’s history lesson. Ingredients 2 ounces Irish whiskey (I prefer Tullamore D.E.W.) 1/2 ounce Sauternes 3/4 ounce pineapple syrup 3/4 ounce freshly-squeezed lemon juice Directions
ChefSecrets: This drink really shines where the whiskey provides soft supple fruit and a faint malty sweetness but mostly gets out of the way, functioning as the structural framework on which the other ingredients rest. For a quick and easy pineapple syrup, you can mix equal parts pineapple juice (Dole cans are fine) and sugar and stir until the sugar dissolves. Bullock calls for a dessert wine which could be found all over the place in 1917. That said, I’ve had the best luck with Sauternes. Just understand your proportions of pineapple syrup (for sweetness) and Irish Whiskey (for strength) which might need to be adjusted, depending on which bottles you grab. I like to top it off with soda because it gives the drink bubbles and puts some separation between the flavors. Quip of the Day: A neutron walks into a bar. “How much for a beer?” the neutron asks. “For you?” says the bartender. “No charge.” ------------------------------------------ Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. All recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide. ------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America, Tunnel to Towers, Union Rescue Mission and/or American Red Cross. #Cocktail #AdmiralSchleyHighBall #TomBullock #BlackHistoryMonth #Cheers #HappyHour #2024 #T2T #URM #FeedingAmerica #RedCross #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2024 |
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