Morango Fizz

First use of awesome vintage Collins glasses: a Christmas gift from The Partner!

PDT Interview
Personal Preferences: A tasty tipp that everyone will like to get the evening rolling; a multiple rounder
Style of Drink: Buck, Collins, Fizz, or Long Drink
Spirit of Choice: Something out of the ordinary
Last Drink: Hotel Nacional Special


Each year we have two large parties of 50 guests or more.  A swank Winter Solstice party alternates years with a Mardi Gras bacchanal while each year we celebrate Pride.  They're fun.  We love the frenetic activity the week before.  The menu planning, the prep, the cooking, the baking, the decorating.   When the parties themselves unfold, we love having friends in our home, watching and listening to them enjoy themselves.  But when you throw a party that size you don't even get a chance to see everyone, never mind visit with anyone.  So we've decided that throughout 2013 we'd have a number of smaller, more casual dinner parties to enjoy the company of our friends as well as entertain.  In this way we could also properly warm the new kitchen.

Our first such evening was last night.  Just 4 friends to enjoy a dinner of homemade chicken pot pies, twice-baked mashed potatoes (topped with cheddar cheese & whipped cream!), and roasted broccoli and cauliflower.  The Partner made a devastating crème brûlée for dessert.  The perfect comfort meal for a kitchen warming on a windy, 20-degree Chicago night.  So I needed a cocktail to kick this evening off well.  Initially, I was looking at rather classic-sounding bevs.  But not everyone would be into brown liquors.  Then I came across the Morango Fizz.  It couldn't have been more perfect given my PDT Interview parameters.  And what it lacked in seasonality, it more than made up for in it's less-than-ordinary ingredients.  To boot, its base liquor would be a nice homage, given my friend, M., would be one of our guests for the evening!  It would bring a little warm weather sunshine into our mid-winter evening.

All agreed, this should be a feature on the roof this summer.  The Morango Fizz is bright & sparkling.  A summer sipper that goes down easier with each pull.  What's nice is that it's sweet and refreshing without being cloying.  It's pink lemonade-like hue is appealing without being pepto-y.  All-in-all, a delightful tipple that's as fun to make as it is to sip.

Morango Fizz
2 oz. strawberry-infused cachaça*
3/4 oz. lemon juice
3/4 oz. simple syrup
1 egg white

Dry shake ingredients, then shake with ice and strain into chilled fizz glass.  Top with 1 oz. club soda.  No garnish.


*:  Cachaça can be hard enough to find in the traditional variety, depending on what your liquor store carries.  So don't waste time trying to find strawberry-infused.  Better to make your own.  A good infusion takes anywhere from 12-hours to 3 days.  I had about 8 hours before our guests arrived, so here's a "quick" infusion:

• Remove the stems from a pint of fresh strawberries and do a medium-fine dice.
• Put the berries in a large non-reactive bowl.  
• Pour a full bottle of cachaça over them, give a stir, and let stand at room temperature.
• Stir once or twice an hour while infusing.
• After 8-12 hours, strain fruit from the booze and decant.

I was curious as to what this concoction would yield.  Cachaça is a strong liquor.  So I was amazed to notice throughout the day how the mixture slowly transformed from its sharp, alcoholic sting to a softer, lighter berry infusion.  At this time interval, the finished effect was a pleasant balance of a softer cachaça and a light essence of strawberry.  Nothing like the current trend of heavy-handed flavoring of rums & vodkas.  And that's a good thing.

White Lady

Happy New Year!

Has there really been no post since November??  Well, we've gotten through Thanksgiving, all the holiday parties, Chicago Christmas, New Jersey Christmas, both of us down with a winter cold, and a first week back re-entry.  And while last night wasn't exactly a Date Nite, we did eek out a cocktail from PDT that we sipped while we got ready to meet friends for dinner.

Say hello to the White Lady.  A staple offering from the 1920's at the infamous Harry's New York in Paris, this looks and tastes like the old classic it is.  I thought it would be a good one for The Partner given that the ginny, juniper, citrusy qualities would be mediated by the silky sweetness of the egg white & simple syrup....  Not so much.  A little too classic for his tastes.  While I wouldn't make this a regular for us, it is an easy classic sipper when you have a few friends over and want to impress with a single round that's classy looking, classic flavors, and introduces some  variety beyond the usual bowl of vodka.  A good aperitif to wake up palates before dinner...(and subsequent rounds!).  

**A note to C:  To start 2013 off on the right foot, The Dilettante took your advice.  To keep everyone happy while The Dilettante did the mix-n-shoot, The Partner got a short Tito's & soda sipper.  You were right!  No complaints, not whining, no rushing while the drinks were mixed, staged & photographed.  You're a genius! 

White Lady
2 oz. gin
3/4 oz. Cointreau
3/4 oz. lemon juice
1/4 oz. simple syrup
1 egg white

Dry shake, then shake with ice.  Serve in chilled egg coupes with no garnish.

Conquistador

PDT Interview
Personal Preferences: Date nite, vacation-ready!
Style of Drink: up & cold,
Spirit of Choice: tequila!
Last Drink: Manhattan

The Partner is well again!  So on a Friday night, that means ... DATE NITE!  We reserve Friday nights just for us.  Sometimes we go out and burn it at both ends -- happy hour, dinner, clubbing, come home with the dawn.   Sometimes we order in and watch a movie on Netflix or a Fringe or Top Chef on our TiVo playlist or pop in a Battlestar DVD.  Sometimes it's all of the above.  Whatever it is, though, it's just us time.  No friends, no family.  But with him being under the weather so much lately, Date Nite's kinda been Lame Nite.  But not tonight!

At this writing, we're 2 days, 23 hours & 35 minutes away from an 11-day Caribbean cruise (but who's counting).  So I was definitely in the mood for something Margaritaesque.  The fact that the evening's plan called for carry-out from one of our favorite neighborhood Mexican joints made tequila imperative.  (Well, that and it was DATE NITE!!!).  Since restocking the bar I've been like a little kid who's rediscovered an old toy.  Luckily, some nice Don Julio was restocked.  Of the many tequila drinks in PDT, I settled on the Conquistador.  Meehan says that this was conceived as "a 'mellow' tequila drink that retained the spirit's vegetable notes". I thought it sounded like an interesting riff on the venerable marg that would compliment dinner, set the mood for the evening, and not repeat a bev.

The first sip was a popping surprise.  A real wow in the mouth.  An unusual but very enjoyable combination of dry and fruity.  Almost grassy -- in a good way.  The egg white gave it a unifying smoothness.

In the span of time it took me to draw my first sip and a half and think the above sentences, I hear, "Oh wow...Tastes like a margarita!"  I look and there's a visible dent in The Partner's previously filled glass.

"You better make another one.  I'm almost ready."

My eyebrow arches, Spock-like.

"Hey,  Take that as a compliment!".

The Conquistador went down super-easy, with a chicken quesadilla app and some bonus nachos that made it into our carry-out, unorded.  As I watched Padma prance across our plasma, dispensing the Quick Fire Challenge coup de grace, I notice The Partner looking at me.  Awww...a little Date Nite love eye.  I start to smile warmly in return.  But it's not the love eye.  It's just the eye, looking at me... then looking at his (nearly) empty glass... then at me... then at the bar... then at me.  I shake my head incredulously.

"Hey," says he playfully, "usually I don't like 'em and you're like 'let's have another' and I'm like, 'ugh...o-kaaay'.  But I like these!  KEEP 'EM COMIN'!"

So that we did through dinner, paired nicely with burrito suizo and chicken enchiladas en mole.

I love Date Nite.

Conquistador
1 oz. rum
1 oz. blanco tequila
¾ oz. simple syrup
½ oz. lemon juice
½ oz. lime juice
2 dashes orange bitters
1 egg white

Dry-shake, then shake with ice and strain into a chilled egg coupe*.  No garnish.

*We don’t own egg coupes, so we enjoyed ours from a cocktail glass.

Derby Fizz | 35 down 240 to go

Finally, an opportunity to draw in some of the interesting facts with which H & M pack the front of the bible.  In order to broaden the reading (and drinking!) experience, they included recipes for other drink families beyond the holy cocktail.  These include tall drinks, punches, grogs and toddies, pousse-cafés, and pick-me-ups.  H & M group fizzes and Collinses together in the tall drinks family, with the distinctions between them centering on 2 factors:  ice and, once upon a time, glassware.  Collinses have ice, fizzes do not.  If you have the bar bounty that is a diversity of glassware, Collinses should be served in a 10-14 ounce glass.  Fizzes go in something smaller than 9 ounces.

To the bev!  In appearance, a Derby Fizz has a distinctly Weiss-like appearance.  It also reminds of an old-fashioned egg cream…but with waaaay more kick!  I have to admit, the DF was a little challenging in that the egg whites and simple syrup give it a distinctly creamy, mellow aroma more akin to a milkshake or egg cream.  But the flavor has all the strength of an alcoholic beverage.  That being said, it’s not harsh or sharp but light, bright, with hints of vanilla and citrus.  Don’t think milk punch or eggnog though.   This is something very distinct.

H & M, in describing the sours category of the tall drink family, say they are closely related to the fizz.  Compare the DF recipe with a sour base: distilled spirit, sugar, lemon juice (sometimes a dash of OJ), shaken with cracked ice.  So a fizz could be a “sodaed” sour ?  Seems like.
 
With the dissonance between the nose and the flavor this fizz is an acquired taste.  But it will grow on you if you let it.   Be warned:  As with so many of the Alchemist’s cocktails, one gets your toes atinglin'.  Two and it's time for dinner!

Derby Fizz
2 oz. bourbon
½ oz. lemon juice
2 t. egg white
¼ oz curaçao
Seltzer

Shake all the ingredients, save the seltzer.  Pour into a chilled wine glass.  Top with seltzer and garnish with lemon twist.