Turns out I left with a bottle of Rothman & Winter Crème de Violette, a bottle of Peychaud’s bitters, a bottle of Regan’s orange bitters, and two bottles of Compass Box whisky that, uh, fell into my arms.

The first was the Oak Cross, which they describe as “a rich, medium-bodied malt whisky” combining “vanilla
characters from American oak and spicy, clove-like characters from French oak”. Basically, they take a selection of 10-12 year old Highland single malts, blend them, and re-age them in American oak barrels with new French oak ends. They end up with an interestingly spicy and woody scotch that’s as smooth as any good Highland but has more of a clove punch than I’d expected. It’s great with chocolate.

The second was their Flaming Heart limited release, “a big, bold malt whisky that combines peaty smokiness with the richness of French oak aging”. This one takes 10-16 year old single malts from Islay and the Highlands, blends them, and ages them for 18 months in the French oak they use for the Oak Cross. The result is almost as intensely peaty as a Laphroaig but with a spice punch that’s almost as strong. Incredibly good.

I guess I’m a bad person for smuggling the Oak Cross back to PA in my luggage, since I could technically special-order it from the PLCB. I’d need to buy an entire case, though, and probably wait 45 days for it to show up, if it ever did actually show up. The Flaming Heart can’t be ordered at all from the PLCB, though in fairness that’s probably partially because Compass Box only made about 4,000 bottles of it.

Still, it was a lot nicer to wander through John Walker, look at the bottles, ask the very pleasant and helpful clerks about them, and be able to pay right there and walk out with the whisky I wanted. After being used to liquor shopping in Pennsylvania, ending up in a store with such an incredible selection and a staff that was so excited about having customers who cared about good liquor was more or less the mixology equivalent of finding Bigfoot.

The fact that a store like John Walker could not legally operate in Pennsylvania is one of the best arguments against the PLCB I can think of.

There’s a bar near my house called Kelly’s that we go to sometimes, especially after work. It’s a little hole-in-the-wall place that happens to have surprisingly good food and cocktails. Notably, they actually know how to mix real cocktails instead of just looking at you dumbfounded if you order anything more complicated than a rum and coke. For example, they’re about the only place I’ve found in town that can make a decent Sidecar.

During one post-work happy hour, they had little drink cards at the tables from LUPEC, ’Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails’. Laura ordered a Firefly from it, loved it, and I’ve been pressed into service making them ever since.

It’s a simple drink, but quite tasty:

• 1 1/2 oz vodka
• 2 oz grapefruit juice
• 1 tsp of grenadine

Shake it up with ice, and strain into a rocks glass with crushed ice.

I tend to make them as spritzers, topped with some club soda.

They’re good with fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice and the Stirrings pomegranate grenadine, but absolutely great with homemade grenadine.

For the grenadine, I basically followed Pete’s recipe, but cooked it to 225 degrees instead of 230 so it wasn’t quite as sweet.

Mmm.

I picked up a vintage cocktail book last year and have steadily been drinking my way through it. Highly recommended.

Current favorites include:

The Calvados Cocktail

• two parts calvados
• two parts orange juice
• one part cointreau
• one part orange bitters

This is especially for special friend peterb, and is less sweet than you’d think due to the huge pile of orange bitters. Nice and tangy and orangey.

Satan’s Whiskers

• 1/2oz gin
• 1/2oz dry vermouth
• 1/2oz sweet vermouth
• 1/2oz orange juice
• 2tsp orange curaçao or grand marnier
• 1tsp orange bitters

A little sweet, but nice and complex from the bitters and vermouth. For reasons not entirely clear to me, it’s “curled” if made with Curaçao and “straight” if made with Grand Marnier. I think I like it better with Grand Marnier.

The Communist

• 1oz gin
• 1oz orange juice
• 1/2oz cherry brandy
• 3/4oz lemon juice

Surprisingly tart and refreshing from all the lemon juice – this would be wonderful out on the porch in the summer. I think the original recipe assumed a sweet liqueur-ish cherry brandy, but what I had was kirschwasser and it worked fine.

Note: You may be thinking “Those all sound great, Nat, but where the hell am I going to get orange bitters?”. If so, order them here. While you’re at it, pick up a bottle of their pomegranate grenadine and one of their key lime juice, either of which is miles ahead of the usual Rose’s stuff.

I’ve been making il Bicerin recently, though, and it’s essentially hot chocolate topped with an espresso con panna. It’s delicious, and it got me thinking about hot chocolate a bit more. The process of making it is fun — I like whisking the chocolate together with the milk and watching the texture and consistency change. Plus, it smells great.

With that in mind, I figured I’d try to merge the cocoa I usually make with the chocolate base for the bicerin and experiment a bit. I’m pretty happy with the results:

Hot Chocolate

• 5 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped into small bits
• 1 pint milk
• 2/3 cup heavy cream
• 3 oz Kahlua
• freshly grated cinnamon
• freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• a pinch of salt
• black pepper

Combine the chocolate with the spices and vanilla in a small saucepan. You want something with fairly high sides, since the mixture will foam up under heat.

(I haven’t listed any amounts for the spices for two reasons. First, it’s all to taste, and second, I didn’t measure them. I used about 15 grates of cassia stick on a microplane grater for the cinnamon, about five grates of whole nutmeg, and about five grinds of black pepper, but your mileage may vary. The chocolate flavor is very strong, though, so you’ll need to put in a lot of spices to overpower it and make the drink unpleasant.)

Add 1 1/2 cups of milk to the pan and place over medium-high heat, whisking frequently until it starts to boil. Keep a close eye on the mixture — it can boil over very very quickly and leave you with a burned mess on your stove.

While the chocolate is heating, whip 1/3 cup of the cream to serve as the topping. You can add sugar, but I like the contrast of the unsweetened cream with the super-sweet chocolate. The cream should be spreadable but not rock-hard; lumps of cream are less attractive than a nice smooth layer.

When the chocolate starts bubbling, whisk constantly for about two minutes. The mixture can boil over very easily, so you may want to lower the heat a bit once it reaches a full boil. After two minutes, remove the mixture from heat and let it stop boiling.

Add the Kahlua, the remaining milk, and the remaining cream. Whisk until smooth, returning the mixture to the heat briefly if you’d like it warmer.

Serve in a nice comforting mug, topped with an even layer of whipped cream.

There’s an article by David Lebovitz about it with a picture that definitely looked delicious, so I figured I’d try it. I chopped up a few ounces of dark chocolate, melted it in a cup of milk, boiled it down while whisking, brewed a few shots of espresso, whipped some cream, and mixed it all together in a few rocks glasses (I, er, don’t actually have good glass cappuccino cups, which I really ought to fix).

Turns out it’s just as delicious as it looks, and about as close to mainlining chocolate, sugar, and caffeine as you’re ever likely to get.

Do yourself a favor and try it immediately.

What you should do is take a pan with about a quarter inch of boiling water in it over medium heat, drop in your pastrami slices, and steam them for two minutes or so until they’re nice and curled up and they smell so good you may die of longing.

Then you whisk out the pastrami, drop it onto a nice heavy split roll, top with a slice or two of swiss, and pop it into a broiler for a bit to melt the cheese.

While the cheese is melting, crank the heat under the pan up to high and boil down the water until it’s a thicker sauce of meat drippings and spice, because you don’t want to let all of that wonderful flavor go to waste.

When your cheese is melted and the drippings have thickened up, spoon the drippings over the meat half of the sandwich until it’s nice and juicy.

Then all that’s left is to spread the thing with mustard and eat it.

This is how I grew up eating pastrami, but not once in Pittsburgh has anybody served me anything like this. For a long time I kept ordering hot pastrami sandwiches at restaurants and delis hoping I’d get a nice steamed pastrami, but every time I’d get this sad little thing from a toaster.

Bah.

Fight boring sandwiches. Steam some pastrami today.

So.

Flourless Chocolate Souffles

• 7oz semisweet chocolate, chopped roughly
• 1/4 cup strong coffee
• 4 tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
• 4 egg yolks
• 8 egg whites
• 1 pinch salt
• 1/4 cup sugar

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Butter eight 4-5oz ramekins and dust the insides with sugar.

Mix the chocolate and the coffee in a large metal or glass bowl over a small saucepan of hot water, stirring occasionally. When the chocolate has fully melted and the mixture is smooth, take it off the hot water and stir in the butter until smooth. Put the bowl aside and let it cool to room temperature.

When the chocolate mixture isn’t hot anymore, mix in the egg yolks. If you do this when the chocolate is still hot, you’ll cook the eggs and end up with a scrambled-egg souffle.

Whip the egg whites with the pinch of salt until they’re just starting to form peaks. Slowly add the sugar while mixing, and keep beating the eggs until they form soft peaks. You want the eggs to be firm enough that they won’t collapse under the weight of the chocolate, but not so hard that they turn into meringue or get brittle.

Stir about a quarter of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. Combine until the mixture is fairly smooth, but don’t mix so much or so hard that you knock the air out.

Gently fold the rest of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture with a spatula.

Pour the mixture into the ramekins, filling them as close to the top as you can.

Bake for about 15 minutes, until the souffles have risen nicely and are cooked through except for the very center. When they’re done they should have a soft crust on top and won’t jiggle very much when shaken. You can also check doneness by gently lifting the top of one with a spoon to look at the center; it’ll seal back up when you drop it back. Note that it’s a lot easier to deal with ramekins arranged on a cookie sheet than individual nuclear-hot ramekins scattered around the oven.

When the souffles come out, sprinkle them with powdered sugar and cocoa and serve immediately.

In theory this serves eight, but Laura and I happily scarfed down a half-recipe with no problems. Since it’s being divided into individual ramekins, you can easily halve/quarter/double/etc the amounts to scale.

Like many of the chocolate things I make, this originally came from Chocolate, which is an absolutely wonderful book. Everything I’ve made from it has been delicious, and none of the recipes have failed. Also, the photography is excellent, making it near-perfect food porn.

Cafe de Olla

• 5 cups water
• 1/2 cup coarsely ground dark-roast coffee
• 4 oz. piloncillo (Mexican dark brown sugar)
• 3 2-inch sticks of cinnamon
• 5 whole cloves
• Peel from 1/3 of an orange, without pith

Bring four cups of the water to a boil in a saucepan, and then add in the coffee, piloncillo, cinnamon, cloves, and orange peel. Stir them in and enjoy the nice froth of the coffee, and then lower the heat until the mixture is simmering.

Stir occasionally if you want to make sure the piloncillo dissolves, but you can mostly leave it alone.

After five minutes, take it off the heat, and mix in the remaining cup of water to cool it down a little.

Cover it and let it sit for another five minutes, and then strain and serve. You won’t need any milk — just serve it black.

I like to pour it into a french press after the simmering so that it’s easier to strain and serve, but the pouring can be messy if you’re not careful.

Traditionally this gets made in little earthenware pots called ollas, but I bet you don’t have any. Make this anyway — it’s great even if it’s not perfectly authentic.

The way I make cocoa has changed as I’ve discovered what I really like, and I’m pretty happy with the current method. It’s really a pretty loose recipe, shifting around to be soothing or spicy, thick and creamy or light and soft, etc, etc.

A few things stay the same each time: there’s always about a quart of milk, always about six tablespoons of cocoa powder, always some molasses, always some vanilla. The other seasonings vary wildly, including anything from cinnamon and nutmeg to powdered chipotle and star anise.

Anyway, this is how I made cocoa tonight:

Measure out a quart of milk into a medium saucepan and put it over low heat. You’ll want to stir this occasionally but can mostly ignore it.

Start some water boiling; this is part of the cocoa-and-spices base, which you’ll make while the water heats up. You don’t need a huge amount — maybe a cup or so.

Dump the following into a small saucepan:

• Six tablespoons of cocoa powder; more if you like chocolate overload like Pete does, less if you want a less assertive flavor.
• Four tablespoons of dark brown sugar. At first, you might want to try adding less and then sweetening to taste once the whole mixture is together. It took me a while to figure out just how sweet I liked the cocoa.
• One tablespoon of tapioca flour. I like my cocoa slightly thicker than milk, and tapioca has a more subtle flavor than cornstarch. If you want your cocoa to be more pudding-like, add another tablespoon or so. You can skip this entirely if you like thin cocoa, but you shouldn’t.
• A pinch of salt. Everything needs a little salt to taste better.
• A generous amount of black pepper. I use about 10-15 grinds of my peppermill. This gives the flavor a little bit of bite, but won’t make it noticeably peppery. Trust me.
• Five good grates of nutmeg on a microplane grater. I have no idea how much this corresponds to if you’re using jarred ground nutmeg. On the other hand, if you’re using pre-ground nutmeg, go out to a good spice store right now and get whole nutmeg to grate yourself. You have absolutely no idea how much better it will taste, and it’ll last forever.
• Fifteen good grates of cinnamon on a microplane grater. If you’re using ground cinnamon, see the bit about nutmeg and get yourself some cinnamon sticks. There’s no comparison.

Whisk these together until they’re more-or-less smooth. This doesn’t need to be even close to perfect.

That’s it for the solids. Now, liquids:

• About a teaspoon and a half of vanilla extract.
• One tablespoon of honey. Maybe a little less; it’s really more of a short pour than anything measured.
• One tablespoon of molasses. This is another maybe-a-tablespoon-maybe-less pour. Kind of pain in the winter, when it’s as slow as, uh, molasses in January, but this deepens the flavor a bit.

Whisk the liquids in. Again, doesn’t have to be perfect.

When the water boils, which should be about now, pour about a half cup in and whisk until incorporated. It should look like thick pudding and have some lumps.

At this point, I like to add an ounce or two of good bittersweet chocolate — Valrhona, Scharffen Berger, El Rey, something like that. Mix it in to the base; it’ll melt a bit but not completely, so add in another half cup of water and whisk to incorporate.

Now that the base is together, put it over medium heat to bring it to a boil. I like to believe this lets the flavors combine and smooth out. At the very least it smells great. You’ll want to stir this with the whisk pretty regularly, scraping the bottom and sides of the pan so that nothing burns.

When it gets close to the boil, you’ll see it thicken up and look more like pudding — this is the tapioca kicking in. Pay more attention to stirring it now.

As it starts to bubble, lower the heat so it doesn’t boil over. I like to stir it at the boil for a minute or so to thicken it further.

Once the base is as thick as you’d like, take it off the heat and whisk it in with the milk. You have been paying attention to the milk through this, right?

From here on in, you’ll want to stir it occasionally and keep heating it until it’s as piping hot as you want. You probably want to taste-test it now and make sure it’s sweet enough.

When it’s the right taste and temperature, pull it off the heat and pour it into a thermos. You’ll have a little more than a quart, so if you have a one-quart thermos like I do, be careful about that.

All written out, it seems freakishly complicated, but in practice it takes me about 20-25 fairly relaxed minutes of cooking.

I’m enjoying a mug of it right now with a shot of Irish cream mixed in. It’s pretty good with rum or vanilla vodka too.