Heaven's Dog

With only two weeks left in San Francisco, Noelle and I decided to check out one more bartender on Don Lee's list: "Erik at Slanted Door." Some time ago, we went to the Slanted Door, only to find that Erik had left, and was now doing the cocktail program at Heaven's Dog. We were told the Dog was in Oakland, which neither Noelle nor I were particularly excited about. As we explored other bars in the city and talked to other bartenders about places to go, the Dog was always mentioned. Last week, when Noelle had the bright idea to actually check where it was, we were pleasantly (kind of?) surprised to see that was actually in SOMA, right smack in the middle of the city! So last night, we decided to go.

To be frank, we weren't expecting much, as we've realized most of the people on Don's list are now in management, and thus no longer mixing drinks. The Dog was pretty crowded, but we headed down to the end of the bar, where servers usually congregate and drinks get trayed and shipped off to tables. Usually this bit of real estate is jealously guarded by the wait staff, so when a giant man walked up to us, looking not unlike a bouncer, I got a bit worried. Don't judge a book, I guess; he turned out to be one of nicest guys we've ever met, let alone met at a bar. He asked us what we wanted, gave us some suggestions, and handed our order off to one of the bartenders. We both got items off the menu at first. Both drinks were highly spiritous. That's usually an early indicator of a pretty damn good cocktail program; the higher the proof, the better the recipe.

I went for a Remember the Maine: Rye Whisky, Sweet Vermouth, Cherry Brandy, Absinthe, Bitters. This drink comes from Charles H Baker's The Gentleman's Companion, and was excellently crafted, apart from being a just bit too heavy on the absinthe for my taste.



Noelle opted for a Bittered Sling: Armangac, sugar, water, bitters and nutmeg. I'm not sure the origins of this drink, but it is very, very tasty. It warms you all the way down, that's for sure. The nutmeg was a really great addition, though I think nutmeg bitters would be a better addition, since that may be preferable granules of nutmeg in the drink. Otherwise, it was an excellent way to put the armangac through its paces.



In case you're wondering, yes, that's one giant chunk of ice. It's quite clear, even if it doesn't come through in the picture. They use a rather ingenious method of making the ice clear, but it's top secret!

When we got the drinks, the man who took our order came back to ask how they were. After hearing that Noelle - who is all of 90 pounds and, as an tiny Asian girl, probably shouldn't be drinking so much liquor in such a concentrated amount - liked her drink, he admitted that he was a bit worried about recommending such a strong drink to such a small girl. We laughed about it, then we chatted about how cocktail culture is really spreading, and 21 year olds today are drinking much better than he drank at that age. He told us that when he started getting into the scene, there were only a handful of places to go. "I would go to New York and hit a couple of bars, and when I would tell my friends, they had no idea what I was talking about." He gave his card, and o the joy! his name was Erik.

Although he didn't mix for us last night, we asked if we could come back to see him. So, be ready for another post on Monday!

One more note: I absolutely cannot say enough about the customer service at Heaven's Dog. Each bartender had every aspect of their craft down to a T. Gary Regan could have written The Joy of Mixology from watching these guys. They're all pros, they're incredibly nice, and they won't be there too much longer, so GO! Go now!

Queen Park Swizzle

I came upon a really lovely recipe for a Queen Park Swizzle this evening. The ingredients included lime and mint—great flavors for a summer’s night. Even more enticing: the blogger said he first tried this drink at Milk and Honey, of NYC and London fame!

So I tried it out. Here’s the recipe, via spiritedcocktails.com.



Ingredients:
- 2oz aged white rum

- 1/2 of a lime

- 1/2oz simple syrup

- 2-3 sprigs of mint
- A few dashes of Angostura bitters

- Club soda

- Plenty of crushed ice

Instructions:

The technique for this cocktail is a little different than anything we’ve used in the past. There’s no shaking involved, so we’re going to build the entire cocktail right in the glass. Start by squeezing half a lime into the glass. (Some people will choose to drop the shell of the lime in once you’ve squeezed it – your choice.)

Next add the simple syrup, and the leaves of 2-3 sprigs of mint. Finally, add the rum, and fill the glass with crushed ice. The use of crushed ice here versus cubes is important – you want the ice to really mix with the ingredients. Once you’ve added the crushed ice, use a swizzle stick to – yes – swizzle the cocktail. That is, use the swizzle stick to agitate the ingredients along with the ice, which will not only help mix everything, but also chill it (you’ll notice a nice frost form on the outside of the glass within 30-60 seconds.)

A few notable substitutions. I didn’t have any aged white rum laying around, so I used the white Bacardi I had instead. I also used some dark demerara sugar, not white sugar, since I thought it might work with the lime and rum.

Overall, the drink came out quite tasty! It’s light, bubbly, and a bit more spicy (due to the angostura) than similar drinks, such as the mojito and caipirinha.

I did have some initial issues with the layering—sipping from the top, I could only taste the soda water and angostura. So I had to give it a mix before everything came together (although this ruined the beautiful angostura float).

Making it again in the future, I’d like to peel back on the amount of lime. A proper highball glass would also capture the layered aesthetic better. But overall, yummy.

Before closing this entry, I’d like to speak to one aspect of my cocktail tonight. What, Bacardi white rum? Blasphemy, Noelle! Blasphemy! And to you, I say, I am unashamed of using such a common spirit. I don’t think we’ve ever addressed this explicitly in our blog, but Josh and I like to think of our cocktails as the drink for the common man or woman. Our goal is to make well-balanced cocktails that don’t need hoity-toity spirits you’ll have to smuggle in from the Netherlands. We love the craft and the taste and damn right we’ll be tasting the more exotic spirits at the bar—we raise our glasses to you, fancy ingredients and ingenious bartenders! But you won’t find that stuff in our kitchen. Our mission is to make classic cocktails affordably.

By the way, Spirited Cocktails is a delightful blog that seems to focus on serious, classic cocktails. The author, Joshua Hoffman, writes out of New York, which seems to give him some extra cred. ;-) I took the extra step and added the blog to http://spirits.alltop.com, so you can also look for it there. I look forward to trying out many more drinks from this blog.

The Briar Patch and Lady Clover

There is really no adequate introduction for drinks by master mixologist Toby Maloney. His cocktails have never failed us, whether at his thoroughly delightful bar in Chicago, The Violet Hour, or using his recipes at home.

And, most amazing, Mr. Maloney is a generous man who freely shares his knowledge and recipes online, all in the name of celebrating the craft. I was perusing the thread today and became excited by his instructions on making your own blackberry cordial, especially since it’s berry season. So after work, Josh and I headed to the market around the corner and bought two beautiful boxes of blackberries.

Mr. Maloney’s instructions were as follows:

Take 2 pints of blackberries, and 2 cups of simple, muddle the bejesus out of the berries, and add simple. Stir. Wait a while, stir. Repeat. Repeat until the liquid is very dark. Strain through a chinois. I like to add a dash or two of Angostura. If you think that it will be hanging around for awhile, add a splash of gin.

The instructions were straight-forward enough, and we seemed to survive the making process. But what to mix with it?

So tonight we tried two new recipes by Mr. Maloney, which use blackberry syrup: The Briar Patch and Lady Clover (both featured at one time at TVH).

Here are his instructions (we didn’t have any Plymouth, so we used what we had on hand—Tanqueray).

Lady Clover

2 oz Plymouth

.75 oz House Blackberry Syrup

.75 oz Fresh Lemon Juice

Egg White

7 drops Peychaud’s Bitters

Top: Soda Water

Glass: Collins

Garnish: 5 drops Angostura Bitters

Ice: 3 KD cubes

Combine all, mime shake. Add ice, shake, strain over fresh ice, top with soda, garnish.

Briar Patch

1.5 oz Plymouth Gin

¾ oz Fresh Lemon Juice

½ oz Simple Syrup

¼ oz Home made Blackberry Cordial

Glass: Collins

Garnish: Blackberry and Knotted Pigtail Lemon Twist

Ice: Crushed

Build in shaker. Shake hard 3 times with Kold Draft Ice. Strain into Collins Glass filled with Crushed Ice. The crushed ice will recede. Top with more crushed ice then lace with blackberry cordial.To make the Cordial take one pint of blackberries and muddle in a non reactive container.

Grand success!!! The Lady Clover was especially delicious. The egg white lent a special lightness to the cocktail. It’s smooth, but layered. Lots to entertain your tongue. The Briar Patch was also tasty, but I think our lemon is a bit tart, so it came out slightly sour. Since we made that one first we were able to adjust for the Lady Clover.

Hope you can enjoy these recipes as much as we did!

Kitchen Concoctions: Gin and Grapefruit Cocktail – Success!

A few days ago, I blogged about the new grapefruit I bought and thought about how I could make a gin cocktail with it. I tried it last night, and it was a great success!

Here is the recipe:

2 oz Tanqueray gin

¾ oz grapefruit juice

½ simple syrup

¼ oz campari

one egg white

Shake hard with large ice and garnish with angostura.

The result was a light and fluffy cocktail, almost creamy because of the egg white. The campari gave it a deeper finish and prevented the simple syrup and grapefruit from overpowering the cocktail. The grapefruit seemed to accentuate the gin without washing it away. I loved the smell of the angostura at the beginning and how it tasted with the last bits of the drink.

Josh liked mine so much that I made one for him, too!

Summer Cocktails

Yesterday I wrote about an article by Gary Regan on 10 Essential Cocktails. There's another noteworthy link on that same page: Summer Cocktails. Some great ideas there.

Note to self: Gin:Grapefruit :: Ham:Eggs

I bought two gorgeous grapefruits, all dark pink and heavy, from the market for only $1.50. So now I'm thinking of some sort of grapefruit and gin cocktail. My roommates are quite fond of gin slings--they use Bombay, fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, sweet vermouth (I think), angostura bitters, and soda water.

I think I want to try something simpler. Tanqueray, grapefruit juice, simple syrup (Demerara), and angostura. I could throw in an egg white for texture. A kind of variation on a sour, I suppose.

I also noticed a recipe that calls for gin, grapefruit juice, and maraschino liqueur. Something else to think about...

Does anyone else have favorite grapefruit cocktails?

The Classic Caipirinha and the Caipirinha De Uva

We made a lovely bunch of cold afternoon drinks today: The Classic Caipirinha and the Caipirinha De Uva.

Just this afternoon, after all, we had picked up a bottle of Cachaca, a type of rum from Brazil. We were looking for something affordable that would also make some solid cocktails. The store employee pointed us toward this bottle: Prassununga Cachaca 51.



He said that it’s the standard label in Brazil, and that many of his customers come in and say they buy the exact same thing when they’re in South America. And at $17, it wasn’t terribly expensive—although when the employee told me that you can usually get it for $9 in its home country, I felt less smug. Ha!

So we mixed up two drinks, using Dale Degroff’s recipes:


CLASSIC CAIPIRINHA

1/2 lime, quartered
3/4 oz. brown sugar syrup or 1 teaspoon brown sugar (we used Trader Joe’s turbindino, which worked great. Demarara sugar is also highly recommended)
2 oz. cachaca (or if you can't find any, use a really good rum)

Chill a rocks glass with cracked ice. Place the lime quarters in the bottom of a mixing glass, add the syrup, and muddle, extracting the juice and the oil in the skin from the lime quarters. Add the cachaca to the mixture in the mixing glass, dump the ice from the rocks glass into the mixing glass, and shake well. Pour the entire contents of the mixing glass back into the chilled rocks glass (yes, this is one of the few drinks that retain the ice used while shaking the drink) and serve.

Note: If you use rum for a caipirinha, it's suddenly a caipirissima.


CAIPIRINHA DE UVA (my favorite of the two)

1/2 lime, quartered
4 seedless red grapes
3/4 oz. brown sugar syrup (see recipe below), or 1 teaspoon brown sugar
2 oz. cachaca (or if you can't find any, use a really good rum)

Chill a rocks glass with cracked ice. Place the lime quarters and grapes in the bottom of a mixing glass, add the syrup, and muddle, extracting the juice and the oil in the skin from the lime quarters. Add the cachaca to the mixture in the mixing glass, dump the ice from the rocks glass into the mixing glass, and shake well. Pour the entire contents of the mixing glass back into the chilled rocks glass (again, one of the few drinks that call for this) and serve.

Note: If you use rum for this, it's suddenly a -- you guessed it -- caipirissima de uva.

Delicious! Cold, refreshing, fruity, but not too sweet—the perfect afternoon drink.

Enjoy!



(The Caipirinha De Uva)