Aroma Cucina

Cocktail Anniversary

Yesterday, May 13th marked the 202nd anniversary of the cocktail. Actually, it marked the 202nd anniversary of the first time that the word cocktail appeared in print, or so says the lore, but with a little googling, there may be some difference of opinions.

From Vital Statistics: the first sighting was in 1803, in Farmer’s Cabinet, a cocktail is described as being “excellent for the head”.  Note the date of the entry: May 13

The Boise Weekly has this timely info: The first appearance of the word "cocktail" in any publication appeared May 13, 1806 in The Balance and Columbian Repository, a New York newspaper. Described simply as, "a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters--it is vulgarly called a bittered sling and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a Democratic candidate: because a person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow anything else.”

The Museum of the American Cocktail sites the same quote, but puts the date as May 6, 1806, and does not name the publication.

Bear in mind, this little controversy is only regarding the etymology of the word cocktail, not where, or when the first cocktail appeared. That debate we leave for another day.

I leave it to you, dear reader, to decide, but yesterday, we raised our glasses to salute the cocktail and the bartenders that make them.

Wine Blogging Wednesday

Old World v. New World

Wine Blogging Wednesday is a blog event created by Lenn Thompson. Read more about WBW here.  The basic gist is that a host proposes a wine to taste, you taste, then blog about it.

This month’s pick is Old World Reisling. My first reaction was “Blech. I don’t like Riesling’s, too sweet.”  But, I was going to be open-minded. Quit snickering.

Not knowing my Old World from my New World Rieslings, I decided to subject our guinea pig dinner guests, Mitch & Ali to a little blind tasting. 
The Old World: Chateau D’Orschwihr Riesling Bollenberg 2006, France.
The New World: Grant Burge (Barossa) Thorn Eden Valley Riesling, 2006, Australia

Served with roasted quail over bulgur wheat.  For anyone remotely interested in why bulgar is spelled about 25 different ways, click here.   It’s amazing how much importance something like this can take on when there are 2 bottles of wine being drunk! I’m also a firm believer in tasting wine with food; it’s the way god intended wine to be drunk.

The Australian Riesling came out of the bottle with a bit of a fizz, or maybe it was just a sparkle, but it had a pleasant, peachy nose with hints of citrus, moderately lingering finish.
The French Riesling was clearer, more direct with hints of lemon peel, but also a cooling minerality and a longer finish.

The night wore on and we continued to sip and to eat and funny things started happening in the glass.
Our Aussie friend, well, she just sort of relaxed in the glass, and got a little flabby, a little too lazy. She’s just a party girl at heart.
Our French friend remained….austere.  That was the word Mitch used, when he nailed the Old World wine.  It stayed upright and proper all through the meal while continuing to refresh and enhance the palate. 
The Chateau d’Orschwihr was empty by now, so we returned to the Grant Burge for a final sip, and on its own, not in a comparison tasting, it was quite a nice, easy to drink, summery tasting wine.
Moral of the story: Rieslings are good. They should be a great, food friendly summer wine choice. See, pays to be open minded. Come on, quit snickering!

Cocktail Anthropology

Who knew that cocktails are essentially an American invention? That an “American Bar’ in Europe means a cocktail bar? That it wasn’t only the Pickwickians that belonged to The Sporting Fraternity?  Or that ice from upstate New York would find its way to a drink in Havana?

David Wondrich enlightened a group of us at the National Arts Club last night.  His new book, "Imbibe!"  is the history of the cocktail and of Jerry Thomas, who wrote one of the earliest bartender guides.  This guy’s life would make a great HBO mini-series, it’s got it all: humble beginnings, adventure at sea, the California Gold Rush, fame, fortune, diamond studs, loss of fortune and death at a relatively early age. His life is a window into an explosive time in U.S. history, where men were men, empires were being built, and the cocktail hour started at breakfast.

Lost Weekend

No, we didn’t go on a four day binge like Ray Milland in the 1945 movie, The Lost Weekend, but we did participate in two cocktail workshops at the Astor Center.

Saturday afternoon, Jon Santer, a mixologist, and cocktail instructor from San Francisco, came into town to teach us about gin cocktails.
Wait. Take the eeewww, “I don’t like gin” look off your face.  Gin, like vodka, is distilled into pure alcohol, so you have an essentially tasteless base liquid; now add some botanicals: juniper is the only constant, then perhaps orange or lemon peel, cinnamon, cassia, or nutmeg. Think of it as a complex, flavored vodka and see, now you are happy again and back in familiar territory. Gin gives a drink more complexity than vodka, and not all gins taste alike so you do need to experiment to find one that pleases you.
To reinforce this, Jon had us mix a vodka Lemon Drop that is basically vodka, lemon juice and simple syrup. It tasted like your basic lemonade. Then we made it again, this time with gin, and now there was a complexity to the drink that hadn’t been there before, something that made you want to take another sip, something elusive and deserving of exploration. 

Trader Horn

We are still experimenting with cocktails, and last night we invented the “Trader Horn”, named after the 1931 movie.  It’s a strange film, shot mostly in Africa, it’s a time capsule showing us a world where it was ok to be racist (“Come here you black rogue!), to show native women’s bare bouncing breasts, and a white woman’s tiny little titties, and to really shoot dead a rhino. There are some truly wonderful animal sequences and a barely existent plot.  To make this all enjoyable we drank our Trader Horns, and decided that two horns, was one too many.

This will make 2 cocktails.

3 oz gin
1 oz St. Germaine
1 ½ oz fresh lime juice
1 oz simple syrup
½ oz pomegranate juice
2 sprigs of mint

Muddle the mint, add the other stuff, shake, strain and watch a weird old movie.

Libations

The grocery store delivered and now we have fresh mint! So, to celebrate I made us some French Pearls (gin, mint, simple syrup and Pernod).  I still am a little too violent with my muddling as you can see from the flecks of mint, but I am working hard to improve.  Little by little, practice makes perfect.  Of course this will only last as long as my supply of lemon and lime juice lasts. Remember all that powdered lemon and lime peel, well; what did you think that I did with the juice? I froze it into nice little usable portions that all melted into one usable portion on the way over here.

On the downside, the grocery store sent us cilantro instead of parsley, and flat water instead of Pelligrino. The very nice customer service representative explained that most people don’t really know the difference. I kid you not.

And here’s the morning mountain update: We woke up to some nice icicles, it’s stopped snowing although there is more in the forecast for later today and tomorrow.  The powder skiing yesterday was outrageous, face shots, over the head plumes, yeah, it was that good.

New World Wine

It’s been a long time, about six months, since we drank an American wine. Our friends Jody and Tom, from Portland Oregon, left us a gift of a bottle of Lemelson Pinot Noir from the Wilamette Valley. I was always a fan of big, chewy wines, the kind of wines that are like a sensuous roll around on silk sheets; but spending time in Italy has made me appreciate the somewhat more austere taste of Italian wines. Think of the difference between hopping into bed with Marcello Mastroianni versus Marlon Brandon.
Well, I have to say that getting reacquainted with the Marlon Brandon slice of life was a lot of fun. We set out a big table of cheeses, and wine and some delicious tartufo flavored salumi and talked about just how good the wine tasted.
After a few months of ‘deprivation’ it was an eye opener to taste this style of wine again. There is an ongoing discussion in the wine world about how European wines are generally more food friendly than the big American and Australian wines.  I do have to say that it would have been difficult to pair this wine with a simple meat based dinner. However, it paired beautifully with the big cheese and salumi flavors, and there was something about the different tastes on the table being anchored by this strong wine flavor that really worked, but in general it’s a challenging wine.  And pairing wine and food IS challenging, when you get it right, the food just sings, when you get it wrong, you wind up with a sour taste in your mouth.

Our latest cheese discovery is caciotta. It’s a young, smooth, relatively bland flavored cheese that can come from a cow, sheep or water buffalo, depending on which part of Italy you are in. Recently, we served it at the restaurant, melted, with black truffles and honey.  This is a cheese that melts beautifully, it gets all brown and bubbly and acts like a neutral palette to play off of other flavors. Our favorite variation is to sprinkle some fennel flower pollen on the pieces before melting and then a bit of honey right as it comes out of the oven. The caciotta on the left was flavored with oregano and some red wine, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the fennel variation. If you can track down some caciotta, this makes a great, quick meal, along with a salad. And it tastes great with some Pinot Noir! Thanks again, Jody and Tom!

Syrah

Sometimes its not about food, its about wine. Not that they are ever exclusive, tasting wine always makes me think of what food would make it sing, and vice versa.
Our mission this afternoon was to drive to Morra for their 33rd annual chestnut festival. We went last year, and it was fantastic….we went this year, and there was nothing going on. There were signs up…but no festival.
I was hungry…I’m always hungry….and it was the dead part of the afternoon, so we thought we’d take a chance and drive into Citta di Castello and see if this wine bar that we had heard about was open. The wine bar is called Syrah, and if you find yourself in Castelllo, in need of a glass wine, this is the place to go. It’s stylish, friendly, and has the most amazing wine selection that I have ever seen in Italy. The wine list is as thick a novel, and it’s chock full of interesting wines. There are three or four pages of just sparkling wines, 3 sparklers from Umbria, and I’ve never seen any of them before. I had a 2003 Cannanou from Agrigolas that was so sexy, but in a seductive, classy way, not a miniskirt and too high heels way. We drank our wine with some soft, yielding, prosciutto, and for awhile all was right with the world.

Tale of 2 Wine Merchants

I’ve had blinders on. With my head buried in the headlines about eating locally, sustainable food chain, organic v. affordable, I completely missed spotting a trend in wine shops in New York.
Just by fluke, I visited two wine shops yesterday, and both of them are very proud to say that they are actively seeking out and supporting smaller wine producers. They both boast that they don’t carry the big brands. You won’t find Veuve Cliquot or Yellow Tail Shiraz at either Chamber St. Wines or at Moore Brothers.

Chamber St. Wines is housed in an old fire station and has a tightly edited selection of small, naturally produced wines. And that doesn’t translate as: all wines cost $$$$, there are some well priced wines to be had.  You may not find your favorite, old stand by selections, but you will be enticed to try and support some of these smaller vintners.  They have a good selection of Italian wines, and that always makes me happy. I came home with two bottles of Verdicchio di Matelica, which is my preferred region for Verdicchio, as the wines taste more of minerals and are crisper than the Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi which are more easily found. Verdicchio was the “Mateus” wine of the Marches. Remember in the late 70’s, early 80’s when that nasty Mateus wine was so popular and completely ruined the reputation of good Portuguese wine makers? Verdicchio did the same thing; it was generic plonk, in a quirky bottle. Its time to update your memory chip, and give this subtly nuanced and well balanced wine another try.

Yesterday evening, we walked over to the Moore Brothers on 20th St. where, they hosted a Barolo and Barberesco wine tasting, with wines from the Azienda Agricola Paitin di Pasquero.  The Moore Brothers are passionate about wine, passionate about sussing out small winemakers who are using traditional methods and making ‘real’ wine.  I’m sorry to say that I’m not sure which Moore brother we chatted with last night, David or Greg, but he’s the cowboy boot wearing, country music musician brother, and he is full of fire when he talks about the US wine industry and their slavish devotion to Robert Parker and his anointment of huge American wines.  There is a huge difference between New World (read US) and Old World (read European) wines. Mr. Moore explained it this way, “The Americans like to dine with Pamela Anderson, and the Europeans with Grace Kelly.”  I’m paraphrasing, but you get the gist of it.  Without a millennium of established wine culture to fall back on, Mr. Moore contends that the US consumer got used to drinking “super-sized”, high alcohol content wines. While I may not be as didactic as Mr. Moore, I do agree that European wines are more civil and respectful than their boisterous American cousins. In Italy, there is tremendous, almost fanatical, respect for terriore. Not just in wine, but in food, as well; so the pairing of local foods and wines is not a political choice, but just a natural, organic, logical, symbiotic relationship. Of course you drink the 2005 Barbera d’Alba Serra Bella with the braised meat and game dishes found in Piedmonte! You would be questioning the wisdom of Bacchus to do otherwise! Regionalism aside, this wine requires meat, with some fat, to give balance to the tannins in the wine.   After our lively discussion, we went down to the main floor of the shop; which is a perfectly chilled, temperature controlled ‘cave’.   It was delightful to wander around the shelves, looking at all the wines that had been so carefully and thoughtfully selected. And what really tickled me was the area set aside for bambini.  Can you imagine a wine store that actually sets aside valuable selling space to keep your kids entertained while you shop? My kinda place.

Brewer's Plate, Fishtown Style

Fishtown  is a great old neighborhood in Philadelphia; there is a kind of a funky, small town feel to it. They have a weekly newspaper, called "The Spirit";  it’s the kind of newspaper that assumes you already know everybody in the neighborhood, that you are up on the local sports teams and that you are shamelessly proud of all the kids. One of their regular contributors is Patty-Pat Kozlowski. Now, how great is that name? Well, Patty-Pat was assigned to cover the Brewer’s Plate Fundraiser for the Spirit. That's the event we talked about earlier in the week.  I just wanted to share with you his front-page disclaimer, about why he needs to bring along his sidekick “Ginny Tonic” to help him review the event.

“Now, it’s a citywide known fact that when this writer drinks alcohol, my pants come off, I think I’m a rock and roll star, and this writer’s family ponies up bail money for the aftermath, so I stay away from beer, wine and hard liquor.  Also, as the recipient of gastric bypass surgery, my stomach isn’t what it used to be, so taste-testing my way through 15 Philly restaurant and brew pubs is just a faint memory.” 

That description is worthy of a Pulitzer Prize; you can see Patty-Pat in all of his glory and humor, sitting down and telling you his story.   By the way, he and Ginny Tonic had a fine time at the Brewer’s Plate.