Let me set the record straight, I don’t cook. Any piece you see under this category, “The Boozy Chef”, is due to my wife’s efforts to marry the flavors I introduce her to by way of the bar into the kitchen. And, since she makes money doing this sort of thing, the results are almost universally positive. And, in the spirit of the holidays and given that pumpkin pie is my OMGITSMYFAVORITESTTHINGEVER dessert, this one, I wanted to share – especially with Craig Hermann’s “MxMo: Spice” theme. After all, we’ll be looking at how to add spice and zing to cooking by way of what’s behind the bar.

The basis of this dessert is, of course, a simple pumpkin pie; cinnamon, nutmeg, and the usual blend of spices blended with pumpkin puree and baked in a wonderful crust to create a heavenly aroma and warm memories. But, when I first served Joana a Corn n’ Oil (pictured on left) after making my first batch of Falernum last year, she instantly recognized the potential of the blackstrap as a molasses/rum combination and the Falernum as a way of adding to the spicy twang of a traditional pumpkin pie. Me? I handed her the bottles and enjoyed the bounty of her efforts. I hope you will as well:

Blackstrap Pumpkin Pie

• 3 1/4 cups brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 15oz pumpkin puree
• Pinch of sea salt
• 2 1/2T Blackstrap Rum
• 1T Pimento dram or Falernum
• 2t cinnamon (Vietnamese cassia used)
• 1t ground ginger
• 1t ground clove
• 1/4t fresh ground nutmeg
• 1 1/4 cup cream

Mix eggs and sugar and once blended add pumpkin puree and continue mixing until well-blended. Add cream and spices and continue mixing.
Once blended, add rum and falernum or allspice and whisk and then pour into a pie shell.

Bake at 350° for 50 mins. or until center is just barely set.

I’ve had both versions, the allspice dram and the Falernum, on numerous occasions and both ingredients lend their own natures on top of the Blackstrap’s rich molasses profile. The Falernum creates a welcome tart and deep clove character to the back of the pie’s taste and the pimento/allspice dram lends a much more focused spicy edge to the dessert. Both have their merits and, as you’d expect, I’d recommend trying both side-by-side. Rick recently posed the question, “I wonder how many mornings in-a-row I could eat pumpkin pie before tiring of it?” I would say with these at your disposal that number would be lofty indeed. As for the drink that inspired Joana to develop such a wonderful variation on an old stand-by dessert the guilty party is, of course, the Corn ‘n Oil (pictured on left of photo above):

Corn ‘n Oil

• 3oz Blackstrap rum
• Squeeze of half a lime
• 1oz Falernum (or whatever your preferred ratio is)

Build in an old-fashioned glass in the order given, stir well, and drop the spent lime hull for garnish. Serve.

I was introduced to this drink by way of Paul after I’d found a bottle of Blackstrap rum, got it home, and then wondered what in the hell to do with it as it’s referred to extremely rarely in the books i own. The Corn ‘n Oil features the sweet rich depth of Blackstrap well and lets the lime and Falernum bring a bright twang to the drink that, if kept well-stirred, will have you asking for seconds.

How much Falernum you use relative to the Blackstrap will depend heavily on the character of your Falernum. My falernum¹ , which is a blend of Morgenthaler’s and Paul’s techniques, is very heavy, spicy, and rich and so a little goes a long way. I keep it at a 3:1 ratio though I’ve heard rumor of those pushing the envelope at 2:1 and even 1:1 (egads!). That’s just too much Falernum in my boat.

I will say this about the Corn ‘n Oil, it goes great with pumpkin pie.

1. I’ve tried about 6 different variations and *still* find that this one is the best I’ve had [↩]

This particular Mixology Monday is hosted by Dinah at bibulo.us with the theme “19th Century Cocktails” and, I’ll admit, it was a bit of a daunting task trying to find something that was both eligible AND looked tasty. I tend not to go in for trying 20 things in the interest of curiosity. I’d rather find five cocktails that look divine and four end up earning time in the pantheon of cocktailnerd’s regular rotation than go through 20 as an academic exercise and come out wishing I’d just gone ahead and made another Dead Reckoning instead of feeling like I need to brush my teeth long and vigorously…like 20 times in a row. That being said, after a disastrous Morning Glory Fizz (from Harry Johnson’s Bartender’s Manual), with which I was sorely disappointed and will try again, Joana stumbled upon the Hendrick Cocktail and it hit exactly the right notes emphasizing how bitters, a slight touch of sweet, and slight touches of absinthe and citrus can be used to create a simple drink that invokes the style and tastes of the era. The Hendrick Cocktail also provides me a specious excuse to run through my new bourbons¹ for comparison. Read More »

1. Knob Creek, Blanton’s, Bulleit, Eagle Rare, Booker’s [↩]

I started out this project with watermelon in mind¹ . See, watermelon is Oklahoma’s state vegetable² and grows exceptionally well in our long growing season. The thing is, I hate watermelon. The texture, mealy; the flavor, insipid; and the messiness, a problem, it’s never been among my top five favorite forms of torture. But, try to use it as a cocktail ingredient, I did, and came up short. Rather than muddling it as at least one TotC tasting room did, with somewhat not unpleasant results, I created “watermelon water” by dicing half a watermelon and letting gravity strain it through cheesecloth. The result has a beautiful color without much else to recommend it. Try to make a watermelon-based cousin to the margarita and you get a fairly good use of tequila in a non-offensive way, but nothing that features watermelon as a flavor or makes one take notice. Try using it with citrus vodka instead and you get a watered-down effect that makes one neither fond of watermelon, or vodka³ . So, screw it, I’m moving on to peaches and raspberries, dammit. Watermelons, and the state legislature, can go to hell.
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1. part of the reason for this post’s delay [↩]
2. these are the sorts of things that get us International attention, folks [↩]
3. more on this soon [↩]

Hello, Mixology Mondayer-ers! My fine and esteemed friend Jay, at Oh Gosh, is hosting this month with a broad topic much-beloved by me, Gin. Instead of posting yet another gin recipe to which I’ve applied my addled expert palate (because you’ll get plenty of those visiting here with any regularity) I’ve decided to whip up another ‘Fight Night’ involving premium gins; where I blindly purchase and try many overpriced gins so, hopefully, you won’t have to without being at least somewhat informed.

In honor of Jay I considered featuring gins exclusively from the U.K. but since I’ve covered many fine samples already I found myself staring at three bottles from the United States’ West Coast. The two from Oregon include Desert Juniper Gin from Bend Distillery in Bend, Oregon and Rogue Spruce Gin from the Rogue Distillery in the coastal area of Newport, Oregon. I also invited a guest from the south (San Francisco, California) in the guise of No. 209 Gin, the sole product of 209 Distillery (so far as I can tell). In these gins we’ll see how gins influenced by readily-available ingredients in the US compare to more traditional London Dry gins and/or bring their own character to the game. Not surprisingly, I’m consistently finding that there is a higher degree of variation between American hand-crafted gins than between London Dry-style gins from overseas, even when an ‘innovative’ product such as Tanqueray Rangpur is introduced it has more similarity to competing London gins than these American small-batch gins to which I’ve recently exposed myself (not like that, you pervs).

I decided to follow the same review, tasting, and testing process I did in Vol. II, evaluating the gins based on ‘cupping’, a neat tasting, and a mixed drink. The mixed drink we used was, once again, the Gin & Tonic with White Rock tonic water (fairly high on quinine and low on the sugar, giving it a more tart and bitter character than most grocery store tonics). I’ve kept with the G&T because I’ve been drinking the hell out of them recently and so I’m very familiar with how different gins affect the character of it as 1: I always make them myself and I always measure, 2: I’ve rotated about 4-5 gins on a regular basis, even within the same night, and 3: I know I’ll be able to finish whatever I mix. All three of these gins are high-quality and you can tell they’re trying to justify their price tag, but one falls just short of being worthy of regularly stocking on my shelf. Let’s find out which, and why… Read More »

Since acquiring Punt e Mes last week I've been tinkering with it and chose it as my focus going into Mixology Monday 19. Punt e Mes is an apertif that is frequently used in place of Campari to create smoother, less bitter, but still strongly herbal edge to a mixed drink. A classic example is the Negroni. By replacing the Campari in a Negroni with Punt e Mes, you still have a strongly bitter and herbal drink but the sharpness is taken down a few notches and instead of that instinctive puckered face and shiver-down-the-spine reaction most people have when first encountering Campari you get a 'Hmm, that's interesting', and then they shiver. See?, much better.

For the end of Summer I wanted to explore a tall drink, and while the Punt e Mes Negroni was nice, it just wasn't different enough to get me excited enough to write about. So, I went back and thought about the Tart Gin Cooler I wrote about a couple of months ago for inspiration and came up with the 'Point and a Half Cooler' (get it? 'Punt e Mes' = 'Point and a half'… Hah!). It turned out very nicely, even if Joana did say it tasted like 'moldy wood'.¹

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1. I didn't have the inclination to tell her wormwood is a primary component of Punt e Mes' flavoring [↩]

First off, this was a lot of fun and I appreciate everyone who participated and gave their support. It seems like most people had a very good time, injured themselves in the process, or were simply baffled by having such a Summer-ish theme when it’s Winter where they’re at (sorry to those of you down-under) or it’s early-onset Fall season (I miss it up there in the Northwest). However, wher I roam it’s a balmy 90° all week and it may be in the 80s through October, so, I still got some Summer-sippin’ left to do and selfishly mined your brains for fantastic concepts. And, fantastic they were; from the realm of Molecular Mixology to champagne-opening advice to simple (and always delicious) classics like the Champagne Cocktail and the French 75 you all came at me with many wonderful ideas, techniques, and experiences to share. I think I’m the better for it, and after reading these, I believe you will be too. Salut, shall we?

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Greetings, winos and wingnuts! As you may already know, yours truly is hosting Mixology Monday XIX next Monday for which the theme is ‘Fizz!!’. Once Paul contacted me to see if I was interested in hosting an MxMo (to which I think it took me about 6.23 seconds to respond with a ridiculously emphatic, ‘Yes!!’) I ran through several possibilities, each of which were either too restrictive, too obscure, or too specific to encourage participation (though I thought ‘Equinox’ (drinks with equal parts) showed some promise, but then I considered how few Negronis I can handle in one sitting).

Fizz is close to my heart because, as I’ve mentioned before, I spent about an entire year and three months drinking nothing but Champagne and sparkling wine, much to the chagrin of my financial planner who promptly deemed me hopeless and quit for a career in ice trucking, apparently a much more sane and stable occupation. After leaving the world of the sparkly I quickly found myself drawn to gin fizzes, tom collins(es?), and mojito variations which seemed liked fine and warm cousins to the roommate who’d moved away and was now only occasionally stopping by and crashing in my wine refrigerator.

So, as we watch the warmth of Summer seep into earlier and earlier evenings I’d be honored to have you share your favorite fizzy recipes, be they based on cola, soda, tonic, champagne, or any other myriad of possibilities so we give a final huzzah to Summer and anticipate Fall and her cool blanketed ways. And remember, school’s back in session and I know the lot of you got high marks, so I expect only top-notch work. Mark your calendars for next Monday, do all your homework over the next week, and bring your ‘A game’ folks; just post your entry no later than Monday, September 17th, and trackback to this post. Also, please fire me an email with your name and a hyperlink to your post (gabriel at cocktailnerd dot com).

I can’t wait to see what you come up with, you glorious bastards you.

Now that I have both Beachbum Berry’s Sippin’ Safari as well as a new and fancy-lookin’ camera, I couldn’t resist making my MxMo entry this month a Tiki cocktail. The trick is to find which one I have the ingredients for and to make sure I don’t try to tackle anything that; 1: makes me break my new camera in frustration, 2: convinces me to never attempt another Tiki drink in my life, or 3: isn’t orange. Thus, on page 78 I found a fairly friendly novice-level Tiki drink called the Sleeping Giant.

According to our esteemed expert, Jeff Berry, the Sleeping Giant derives from the name of a hilltop nearby the Coco Palms resort in Kauai where the drink was developed in the 1950s. From the recipe this looks to be an offshoot of the Bahama Mama recipe I use, sans grenadine and Coconut Rum; with which both exclusions I’m just dandy¹. Read More »

1. tricky structure, that [↩]

This Mixology Monday, as you’ve probably already read, Paul at The Cocktail Chronicles invites all of us partcipating to select and discuss a drink from a site we frequent that we’ve enjoyed, discuss our favorite drink blogs, and perform a little self-reflective metablogging about what made us ‘cross our cocktail shakers with our keyboards.’ Happy to, Paul!

The drink I’ve selected is from a blog of the old guard that isn’t updated as frequently as it used to be, but still has plenty of value in visiting and perusing its archives, and, when it is updated, always has an interesting take on cocktail or bar culture as well as any drink it posts. Plus, it’s a little ranty, which endears it to me all the more. I selected the ‘Golden Age Martini‘ as created by Brad Ellis, self-proclaimed ‘Bar Mix Master’ at www.barmixmaster.com. Brad hails from New Orleans, has a deep love of Manhattans, and has a wonderfully designed layout and feel on his site; the photos are always top-notch and it’s obvious he has an eye for design, something I always appreciate in a blog. Read More »

This is my first time participating in a Mixology Monday and for me it was quite a challenge. I'm not a huge cream liqueur fan as I tend to find them too muted for my taste and I tend to favor the sours and highball families of drinks. However, you dance with them what brung you and it was an interesting experience to experiment with the various cream-based liqueurs I have available; namely Bailey's Mint Chocolate, Cask & Cream Caramel, Amarula, Bailey's Irish Cream, Dooley's Toffee Cream, and several others. So, where to start?

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