http://www.premodern.org/nat Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:21:07 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Laura and I bought a shiny new car today. We dithered for a while on what to get, and settled on a shiny Mini Cooper Clubman. I've put a picture or two here. http://www.premodern.org/nat/archives/2008/09/22/that-heady-new-car-smell/ It will be in my best interest to never ever count up how much money I send to Amazon every year. I gave in and pre-ordered Fallout 3 and Rock Band 2, after ordering some random kitchen equipment. I already had five different book and video game pre-orders outstanding. It's entirely possible that I have a problem. http://www.premodern.org/nat/archives/2008/08/24/things-i-should-never-ever-do/ A trusted secret agent may or may not have been dispatched to a less-restrictive state to replenish my stocks of Crème de Violette and investigate the possibilities of the intriguing-sounding Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot and Orchard Pear liqueurs. It's hard to say; I would never subvert the kind guidance of the PLCB like that, so it may all be a cursed hallucination. Surely I just went through the long and painful Special Liquor Order process, ordered the legal minimum twelve bottles of each variety, and waited a month or so for the PLCB to protect me from the dangers of unlicensed liquor. That has to be what happened. Anyway, upon the successful completion of his mission and/or my hallucination, I had to figure out what to do with my new bounty. It was obvious what to do with the violette; it'll all be turned into Aviations and Moonlights. The Aviation is one of my favorite cocktails; Laura loves the Moonlight. The pear and apricot were trickier, though. Each one is actually a sweet eau de vie, brandy mixed with fruit juice. They're about 50 proof, and sweet without being cloying. The apricot has a wonderful fresh-apricot flavor, and it turns out that it can be used in a bunch of classic drinks that call for apricot brandy. It isn't as sweet as the Marie Brizard Apry, the usual standard for apricot brandy, which is nice. You end up with drinks that are a little sharper and a little fruitier, instead of being dessert in a glass. The pear was more of a challenge, though. It has a wonderful flavor, but it's pretty delicate, and I didn't have much luck finding drinks for sweet pear brandy. It wasn't clear that substituting it in for other fruits would work well, because it's such a soft flavor; it'd be easy to overwhelm it and lose all those wonderful pear notes. So, I had to make something up. Step one: make a nice ginger syrup to go with the pear. Can't go wrong with pears and ginger, right? So: Start with a standard simple syrup mix of two parts sugar, one part water. My squeeze bottles aren't too huge, so I went with 3 cups of sugar and 1 1/2 cups of water, heated until it's clear and bubbling. To that I added about 6oz of peeled fresh ginger chopped into small thin matchsticks, and a quartered vanilla bean. You need to be careful about temperature here; if the heat's too strong and the syrup is too hot when you add the solids, it'll boil over and you can burn yourself pretty badly. Once everything's in and stirred together, I put the heat on medium and let it bubble away until most of the water from the ginger was gone and the syrup thickened a bit. The easiest way to check this is with a probe or candy thermometer; about 220-223 degrees is what you want. When you get to that point, take the syrup off the heat and let it cool and steep for two hours or so. After that, strain out the vanilla and ginger chunks with cheesecloth or a fine mesh strainer. If you're going to keep the syrup for a while, it's a good idea to mix in 3 oz or so of vodka to improve shelf stability -- the alcohol content will keep it from getting moldy. With that made, it's on to step two, the actual drink. Start with: 2 1/2 oz white rum 3/4 oz Orchard Pear liqueur 1/2 oz fresh lemon juice 1/2 oz ginger syrup Toss it all into a shaker and shake with ice. Pour into a pint glass and fill about 3/4 of the way to the top with ice. Top it off with club soda, stir lightly, and enjoy. This ended up being an almost-perfect summer drink -- it's not too sweet, and the aftertaste is all pear and ginger. I tried it at first with 1/4 oz of the syrup because I didn't want it to be too sweet, but the flavor didn't have enough depth. With the extra syrup, it's complex and satisfying without being too sugary. Now it just needs a name. Edit: Laura has the name; it's a Pear Galette Fizz. http://www.premodern.org/nat/archives/2008/08/23/pear-ginger/ Picked up Braid yesterday. I'm pretty sure it's the best game I've bought on Xbox Live Arcade so far (and I'm counting the time I re-bought Puzzle Quest even though I'd already beaten the DS version so I could play the Xbox-only expansion), and it's in the running for best $15 I've spent all year. The time mechanics are beautiful, and the way the game builds on them with each additional world is very smooth. World 2 seemed simple but pretty; then world 3 took that, twisted it around, and gave me my first "whoa, didn't see that coming" moment. Then I hit world 4 and had to flail around for a while to un-stick my brain. Now I've solved that one, and world 5 is currently making me gibber a bit. If you have an Xbox 360 and haven't picked up this game, please do so immediately. http://www.premodern.org/nat/archives/2008/08/10/braid/ Watch more Middleman, you heartless bastards. http://www.premodern.org/nat/archives/2008/08/04/middleman/ It's damn hot tonight, so after taking the dog for a walk, I decided it was time for a nice tiki blender drink. It's hard to find good recipes for these things; mostly you end up with sickly-sweet messes of fruit juice, pineapple chunks, and rum. Fortunately, I've found a couple of tiki sites that have much better recipes -- ones with actual complex flavors and interesting combinations. Tonight's drink was from a recipe round-up on one of them, Kaiser Penguin: Scorpion from Steve Crane’s Luau, 1958 1 oz lime juice 2 oz orange juice 2 oz gold Puerto Rican rum 2 oz gin 1 oz brandy 3/4 oz simple syrup 1 oz orgeat syrup 8 oz crushed ice Add it all into a blender, and mix until it's more or less smooth. The original recipe claimed "for 3 seconds", but that didn't really seem like enough in my sad little blender. It's delicious. I need to try some of the other recipes on that page soon. http://www.premodern.org/nat/archives/2008/08/03/tiki-time/ So I went to San Francisco last week for a conference, and happened to be staying at a hotel close to John Walker & Co. I figured I'd stop in and see if they had any Crème de Violette, because I can't get any locally thanks to the PLCB. I'd picked up a bottle at a little corner liquor store the day before, but wanted to get another one for PeterB since he'd tried and failed to order us a few bottles through the PLCB's terrible SLO program a while ago. 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. http://www.premodern.org/nat/archives/2008/06/15/new-whisky/ I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but finally getting around to making the homemade grenadine mentioned at Tea Leaves jogged my memory and reminded me to mention it. 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. http://www.premodern.org/nat/archives/2007/12/10/firefly/ Laura and I are at the hockey game, and during a TV timeout a couple minutes ago they do a little 'Iceburgh Goes To School' segment where the team mascot goes to a local elementary school with a cameraman in tow and asks the various adorable moppets questions. Okay, fine, cute enough. So the first question is "Where do penguins live?" Sure, that makes sense, the team mascot's a huge freakish cartoon penguin. But then EVERY SINGLE KID says "up north where it's cold!" or "the north pole!" Not one knows the answer. So I ask you: is our children learning? http://www.premodern.org/nat/archives/2007/09/28/is-our-children-learning/ I think weblog posting from a new iPhone is near-mandatory, yes? So far I'm about as happy as I expected to be, which is very. http://www.premodern.org/nat/archives/2007/07/25/my-iphone-and-i-will-be-very-happy-together/