Jeffrey Morgenthaler

I’ve you’ve never made - or enjoyed - a mint julep before, be sure to check out this post, with lots of information from myself, and videos from the real experts.

In the bottom of a 10-12 oz glass (or a silver julep cup, if you’ve got one on hand) gently muddle together:

12 mint leaves
¼-½ oz simple syrup

Add to this mixture:

2 oz bourbon

Stir to combine ingredients, and fill glass with finely crushed ice. Garnish with the prettiest mint sprig you have, and serve.

An authentic Dark and Stormy made with Gosling’s rum and homemade ginger beer is the ideal prelude to summer, when the spring months are arriving like lions and one’s mind turns to thoughts of lambs.

The national drink of Bermuda, a true Dark and Stormy is never made with Jamaican ginger brew or weak ginger ale. Only the real stuff made in small batches will do, so try this recipe at home or seek out a case of Barritt’s or Blenheim if you can.

In a collins glass filled with ice, add:

2 oz Gosling’s Black Seal rum
5 oz ginger beer

Garnish with lime and serve immediately.

I like to use Buffalo Trace’s Sazerac 6-Year rye in my Sazeracs. The nose is sweet and fruity, but the palate is nice and dry with a lot of spice - a perfect choice for the Sazerac experience.

Fill an Old-Fashioned glass with ice and water, and set aside to chill. Once cold, drain ice water and rinse with Herbsaint.

In a 16-oz mixing glass, combine:

1 sugar cube
-or-
¼ oz simple syrup

4 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
1 dash Angostura bitters

Small splash water

Muddle together until sugar cube is dissolved (skip this step if using simple syrup, obviously)

Add:

2 oz rye

Fill mixing glass with ice and stir contents until well-chilled. Strain into Herbsaint-rinsed Old Fashioned glass. Twist lemon peel over drink to express oils, and discard peel.

Serve!

A couple of months ago, my friend Kevin from The Scotch Blog sent me a bottle of Pig’s Nose scotch in the mail.

As an aside, I highly recommend making friends with people who do things like, say, run the world’s biggest blog on scotch whiskey. Really.

Anyway, Pig’s Nose is a fun, easy-to-drink, everyday whiskey with some relaxed caramel notes, a little orange thrown in there, and - oddly enough - figs and raisins. Oranges, figs, and raisins? That sure does remind me of one of my favorite dessert wines, Pedro Ximenez… Sounds like it’s time for a cocktail!

2 oz scotch
¾ oz Pedro Ximenez
1 dash orange bitters
1 large strip orange zest

On the inside of a double rocks glass, rub the outside of the orange zest until the oils have coated the interior of the glass. Fill glass with ice.

In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, add scotch, Pedro Ximenez and orange bitters. Stir until well chilled. Strain contents into ice-filled glass, garnish with orange zest, and serve.

Note: This was originally posted on November 23, 2006, but since Thanksgiving is this week, I’m reposting it as I think it’s a very worthwhile recipe for the holidays.

I love egg nog, but I can’t stand the overly-thick goop they sell at the grocery store. Even when you cut it with alcohol, it’s still so overly-pasteurized and full of preservatives that I can barely slug it down.

So I did a lot of research, and tried a bunch of recipes and methods, from cooking the eggs into sort of a custard (how many bars have a stove top and sieve?) to separating the eggs, beating them independently, and folding them together (way too much work!)

This is the recipe I devised. It can be made in just about any home or bar, since the ingredients are fairly simple. It can be done entirely in the blender, so there are no whisks or egg beaters or rubber spatulas needed. It yields two servings, so you can easily multiply it to serve more. It doesn’t use a ton of heavy cream, so it’s fairly light. In other words, it’s practically perfect.

2 large eggs
3 oz granulated sugar
.25 tsp freshly-grated nutmeg
2 oz whiskey or brandy
2 oz spiced rum (I prefer Sailor Jerry’s)
8 oz whole milk
2 oz cream

Beat eggs in blender for two minutes on medium speed. Slowly add sugar and blend for one additional minute. With blender still running, add nutmeg, whiskey or brandy, rum, milk and cream. Chill and serve in wine glasses, grating additional nutmeg on top just before serving.

I cobbled this recipe together from a number of sources many years ago, and have spent every Thanksgiving making it for friends. It’s always a popular winter warmer, and everyone spends the post-prandial hours sipping large mugs of wassail on the deck.

1 cup water
2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
6 cloves
1/2 teaspoon mace
6 allspice berries
Cinnamon stick
2 pounds sugar
4 × 750 ml bottles sherry
12 eggs, separated
375 ml brandy
6 apples, cored and baked

In a covered 12-quart stockpot, bring water to a boil. Add nutmeg, allspice, ginger, cloves, mace and cinnamon. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add sugar and sherry and heat until the sugar dissolves completely.

Beat the egg yolks and whites separately; fold together. Put egg mixture in a large bowl, and slowly add the heated mixture to the eggs, 1/4 cup at a time at first, stirring each addition to slowly heat the eggs. Once the brew has been thoroughly mixed, add the brandy and the baked apples.

I keep my Wassail in a large crock pot on low heat to prevent the eggs from curdling. If you don’t have a crock pot, keep it on the stove on low, but be very careful: even on low heat this mixture will get hot - quickly.

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.

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.