"... stunt garnishes (i.e. skewered cheeseburgers on a Bloody Mary) and hot buttered rum, overrated because... 'the butter often leaves a slick.'... Among the things this book admires: Laird’s Bonded Apple Brandy; using dense, very cold ice; knowing how to 'spank' an herbal garnish; understanding the variety of ways to shake and stir and roll and toss; having a firm handle on muddling, layering, swizzling."
From
"An Encyclopedic New Guide to Cocktails Stirred, Shaken, Rolled, Tossed, Swizzled, Muddled..." by Dwight Garner (NYT)(reviewing
"The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails").
I read this article because the teaser on the front page was "
A new book helps you convince yourself 'that your interest in getting wasted is an academic pursuit,' our critic writes."
Don't read beyond the jump if you care about
today's Spelling Bee puzzle and haven't finished with it and don't want a hint....
... but I feel as though that mention of
Laird’s Bonded Apple Brandy is an intentional tie-in with the somewhat difficult pangram.
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16 comments:
"things at which this book looks askance"
That's prescriptive bad writing. You can't correctly guess what to do with "at" until you get to the last word. Should be
"things which the book looks askance at."
At a party of graudating college students my wife and I hosted, I made some adult-style margeritas, on the rocks, and was amused that the college kids thought (1) real margeritas had to be slushies, and (2) real margeritas had to be really, really watered down by the slush ice to almost zero alcohol.
Ahh, I remember when as a poor college student with a nonexistent alcohol budget and a blender I thought the same thing. The young adults loved the discovery of a real cocktail, which also made their use of our kids' Hungry Hungry Hippos game an hour later quite enthusiastic.
So much work.
I'm happy to have a well-made Manhattan with decent bourbon and Luxardo cherry.
If it's only a maraschino cherry then it's not a serious bar or bartender...
I feel the mention of Dwight Garner is an intentional troll for an Althouse blog post.
Cocktails are one of those things you thought you had to learn about when you were younger, but now realize you can get through life knowing nothing at all about. So is whiskey. So are the different brands of tequila, and -- going out on a limb here -- so are beer and wine. I'm not a teatotaler -- far from it -- but I no longer have all the brain cells necessary to contain all that information.
Didn't have to read beyond the jump. Went immediately to SP and advanced from Amazing to Genius.
Thank you, it's 4:45am and i can now go to sleep.
@George
That pleased me!
Unless you’re an historian you don’t want an encyclopedia. You want to learn some skills and acquire some observations of a master. Then have at it.
I refuse to give even a penny to the NYT, so I have to content myself with just finding the pangram every day.
I love reading novels set in moderately upper-class early 20th-century England in which "cocktails" are something at which down one's nose one decidedly looks (it was also fun to write that clause) - too, too Bloomsbury, don't you know, like the term week-end and the idea of a leisure suit at dinner (!).
So I'm entertained by the way cocktails have been rehabilitated. (Or should that be just "habilitated," since they were new back then?) I doubt that the former snooty classes would have drawn much distinction between a frozen mango margarita and a proper one, or a strawberry daiquiri and a proper one, or a chocolate martini and a proper one. I'm part of the problem, if there is one - after the first (proper, gin) martini, I'm pretty likely to hold forth about the fact that serving something in a "martini glass" doesn't make it a martini.
I've been subscribing to Peter Suderman's Substack newsletter on cocktails. It's been a lot of fun.
On his recommendation I bought Cocktail Codex. Best cocktail book (and one of the best food books) I've ever read. It organizes recipes around six core recipes. (Old Fashioned, Martini, Daiquiri, Sidecar, Whisky Highball, Flip) Somewhat arbitrary, but a useful way of thinking of families of drinks. Well written. Great pictures.
More than anything, a good cocktail depends on high-quality ingredients, including excellent liquor. (When I was younger, and could only afford cheap alcohol, I would dilute it heavily with equally cheap soda, because that was the only way to make it palatable.) And once you have those good ingredients, all the muddling and layering and herbal garnishes really aren't so important. Great liquor is like a beautiful model in an Old Navy ad -- the clothes don't really matter, because she'll look good in anything.
>>real margeritas had to be slushies
I try to be judicious about even asking, but I cringe every time I order a daiquiri (love a good daiquiri) and get a response about not having a blender. A different story, though, if there are strawberries involved . . .
And who is this "George" who is trying to steal my quasi-secret identity? Not the usual blank Blogger profile, but somebody with a *lot* of twenty-year old links.
--gpm
I buy some coke. I buy some rum. I combine them. Then I drink the concoction. Maybe I'll eat some cheese.
I ordered a scotch and soda in Montreal on time. They brought me a shot of scotch and a bottle of Perrier. Ok, I thought it was something done in Canada. Later, I ordered a scotch and soda at Red Lobster, in the US. The wait person asked as she was leaving with my order, "Will Coke be OK?". Now, I always order a scotch and CLUB soda.
Grammar Note: Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.
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