Jeffrey Morgenthaler

To be honest with you, I didn’t really have much of a chance to prepare for this month’s Mixology Monday. In fact, when Natalie emailed me a reminder earlier today, my first thought was, “Oh, f*ck!”. And as much as I loves me some Mixology Monday, I’ve been a little out of the loop this week. There are a few reasons for this:

1. I’ve been very busy with the bar.
2. I’ve been very busy building websites.
3. Today is my birthday.

However, I was able to put something together on the fly while making dinner tonight. This might come as a shock to some of you, coming from a lowly barkeep and all, but I’m actually a fairly adept cook. So while I was putting together dinner, I whipped up a cocktail with some of the ingredients I had in my liquor cabinet. And to my surprise it turned out pretty okay. In fact, I think this would be a wonderful first course.

The food:

Butter Leaf Salad

With buttermilk-tarragon dressing, late-summer tomatoes and country bacon

¼ cup buttermilk
¼ cup sour cream
¼ cup mayonnaise
1½ tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp cracked black pepper
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tbsp freshly chopped tarragon

Whisk ingredients together in a non-reactive bowl. Cover and chill in a refrigerator for one hour to meld flavors.

Meanwhile, slice ½ pound bacon into thick chunks and cook over medium-high heat until fat is rendered and bacon is near crisp. Drain of fat and pat dry with a towel.

Seed tomatoes and dice. Let drain and set aside.

Toss washed butter leaf lettuce with dressing. Garnish with tomatoes and bacon.

Herbsaint-Scented French 75

With Beefeater gin and organic lemon juice

3 oz dry sparkling wine
1½ oz gin
1 oz fresh lemon juice
1 oz simple syrup
Herbsaint

Rinse chilled champagne flute with Herbsaint or other anise-flavored liqueur. Combine gin, lemon juice, simple syrup and sparkling wine and stir with cracked ice until chilled. Strain into flute and garnish with lemon twist.

I liked the idea of the lemon juice and sparkling wine cutting the fat of the dressing and the bacon. I went with the Herbsaint because I thought it would pair well with the anise notes of the tarragon, and given that Herbsaint is one of the drier absinthe substitutes out there I think it pairs really well with this particular salad.

Try it for yourself and let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks for reading, and thank you for hosting, Natalie!

Recently, over at the Epicurious blog they had a post detailing their ten must-read books for cooks and gastronomes. I figured, “What a great idea, I should steal this for my own website!”

So here are my recommendations for the top ten books any bartender or home mixologist should keep within arm’s reach at all times.

1. Cosmopolitan: A Bartender’s Life by Toby Cecchini

Cecchini nails the quotidian life of a bartender down with the sort of accuracy that only a true lifer could. A must-read for anyone currently or formerly in the business, or just those with mild flirtations or aspirations.

You can buy this brilliant take on the business here. Better yet, pick up an extra copy and leave it as a tip for your favorite barkeep - if they haven’t read it already.

2. The Joy of Mixology by Gary Regan

If Gary’s chapter on drink families were the only chapter in this book, it would still be worth the cover price. This is probably my all-time favorite guide to mixology and bartending, all wrapped up in one place.

You can buy the Joy of Mixology here. Put it someplace handy, use the hell out of it, and then pick up another copy when you can no longer read the first.

3. The Complete Book of Spirits by Anthony Dias Blue

Only when you understand the history and process of making the spirits that you work with every day can you truly begin to create things of sublime beauty. Anthony Dias Blue makes that journey a little easier with all of the above, as well as short product reviews of just about every spirit you’ll come across in your travels.

I plan on reading this book once a year to stay in shape. Grab a copy here and do the same.

4. Cocktail: The Drinks Bible for the 21st Century by Paul Harrington

This is the book that I had at my side for years as I taught myself to make cocktails the right way. Paul’s attitude toward the craft is opinionated and brilliant. I think about the words in this book nearly every night I’m behind the bar.

Sadly, this one’s out of print, so plan on spending a pretty large sum if you want to buy one of your own - but it’s worth it. If you do stumble across a copy in a used bookstore or garage sale, grab it without hesitation.

5. On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee

This book is subtitled The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, and chapter nine is the most in-depth, scientific analysis of the production of alcohol you’re going to find anywhere. Read it once, slowly, and then give yourself some time to digest. It’s a heavy read but worth the workout.

He’s not as fun as Alton Brown, but he may have taught the man everything he knows. Pick up your own copy here.

6. Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails by Ted Haigh

This book is the bible of cocktail archaeology, which has inspired a new generation of cocktail enthusiasts - just look at the vast proliferation of cocktail blogs for proof.

I’ll pick this one up from time to time, turn to a random page, and whip up one of whichever I find. I’ve never been disappointed yet. You can pick up a copy here.

7. The Savoy Cocktail Book by Harry Craddock

It’s football time here in the university town I call home, so on Saturday mornings my kitchen often becomes the epicenter of pre-game madness. I like to put out a bottle of vodka, a pitcher of my Bloody Mary mix, and a tray of fun garnishes for the fans and let people put together their own drinks.

Now, I understand the benefits of juicing your own tomatoes for the ultimate do-it-yourself Bloody Mary. However, I’ve got to point out that in the middle of winter here in the Pacific Northwest, canned tomato juice tastes a hell of a lot better than the mealy specimens my local grocery store is peddling for $3.99 a pound. So here’s a beefed-up Bloody Mary mix you can make any time, with ingredients you can find just about anywhere.

1 46-oz can tomato juice
1 garlic clove, minced
½ small avocado
¼ cup Worcestershire sauce
1½ oz lemon juice
1½ tbsp steak sauce
2 tsp cracked pepper
1½ tsp celery salt
1½ tsp hot sauce
1 tsp horseradish

Purée garlic, avocado, and eight ounces of the tomato juice in a food processor or blender until smooth. Add to remaining ingredients in a large pitcher and stir until combined.

As an aside, I’ve found that this recipe works best when it’s allowed to sit overnight to let the flavors combine. So if you have the time, try to make it the night before.

To make a Bloody Mary, fill a 16-ounce glass to the rim with ice and add two ounces (¼ cup) of your favorite vodka. Salting the rim of the glass is optional, but I like to pre-salt a few glasses and set them out. Top with Bloody Mary mix and garnish as you like. Here are some suggestions for your garnish tray:

Celery stalks
Stuffed olives
French cornichons
Pickled white asparagus
Lemon and lime wedges
Pearl onions
Pickled green beans
Cherry tomatoes
Pickled garlic cloves
Pickled pepperoncini peppers
Cooked, peeled shrimp

And for a wonderful treatise on making a single Bloody Mary the right way, check out this video my peeps over at the Small Screen Network have put together.

There aren’t many spirits that inspire such passionate opinions as gin does. I know vodka drinkers who recoil in horror when confronted with a bottle of Tanqueray, and gin drinkers who would rather abstain completely than suffer through a Grey Goose martini.

But what many people don’t realize is that gin and vodka begin life in the exact same way. You could even say that gin is nothing more than infused vodka. In fact, I’ve used this exact line on so many customers trying gin for the first time that I’ve decided to prove it to myself! What a better way to waste a bunch of time and ingredients while getting an opportunity to learn more about my favorite mixable spirit, right?

In his book The Complete Guide to Spirits (HarperCollins, 2004), Anthony Dias Blue describes cold compounding as a legitimate method for producing gin.  He even provides a rough recipe for infusing a monster 2,000 liter batch. Not having access to a tanker truck of vodka or a hundred pounds of juniper, I did a little math and came up with something more workable.

That first batch was a drinkable, yet super-perfumed gin that I felt could be improved with a little trial-and-error. I won’t bore you with the details of my many failures before honing in on the recipe you’re about to see, but I will say that I’ve now got a liquor cabinet full of funky gins that may or may not ever be consumed.

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I never really venture too far outside of my comfort zone when it comes to cocktails. Sure, I’ve tried some strange combinations before, but when all is said and done I usually tend to stick to the classics.

Until this evening.

Maybe it was all the late-summer sun I got at the pool this afternoon before work. Maybe it was crawling around inside the keg cooler looking for a leak in the beer gas line.

Or maybe it was the f*cking iSi whipper that I’ve had sitting next to the cash register for several weeks now, staring at me and asking (not literally, at least I hope not) when I was going to actually try something new.

Well, I went out on a limb and tried something I’d wanted to do for a while: a deconstructed cocktail.

Being a Latin-American restaurant, we tend to make a lot of margaritas. Like, a lot of margaritas, so naturally I wanted to start there. I grabbed my iSi whipper, filled it with the ingredients I thought would make for a decent Cadillac foam, and set it to chill while I put together our basic margarita:

2 oz tequila
1 oz triple sec
1 oz lime juice
1 oz lemon juice
1 oz simple syrup

Shake ingredients together over cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Then I grabbed my whipper, which I had already filled with…

2 egg whites, lightly beaten
2 oz Grand Marnier
4 oz orange juice, finely strained
4 dashes peach bitters

…and double-charged with CO2.

I then laid down a nice, thick foam on top of the margarita I had just made. You can see how well they stay separated.

Running back to the kitchen, I grabbed some black Hawaiian sea salt for contrast and grated it into the foam.

Voila! The sweetness of the foam is wonderfully complemented by a tart, bracing blast of tequila and lime with each sip. And the presentation ain’t half bad, either, if I do say so myself.

Hey, you know what? That was really easy! I’m going to try to venture outside of my comfort zone more often.

I was in Portland again this weekend, taking a tour of House Spirits Distillery and meeting with some West Coast cocktail luminaries. I’ve been a big fan of the House Spirits products for quite some time, so this was quite the excursion for me.

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Sometimes living in Eugene, Oregon means that you have a smaller circle of people who share similar interests as yourself. Driving an hour and a half to Portland is always an option, but sometimes you just wish you could play at home.

A select few of us local cocktail enthusiasts gathered today to experiment with obscure seasonal produce, dabble in an enormous library of rare liquors, and eat some wonderful cocktail-hour-inspired bites. It was a reawakening for me in a sense, as I spent the day remembering things that I had forgotten.

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Earlier today at the Cocktail Summit, we played with seaberries (aka sea berries or sea-buckthorn). If you haven’t tried seaberries before, they’re a small, soft fruit full of a milky, citrusy, tart juice - slightly astringent and very rich. They’re unlike anything I had ever tried.

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