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I’ve been wanting to make this cocktail for months, ever since I scheduled my Midwestern roundabout (Mtl –>StL –>CHI –>TOR –>Mtl) for late April and knew I’d get the chance to revisit The Matchbox, that sliver of a Chicago watering hole that is basically the greatest bar on Earth. To sate myself in the weeks prior, I read through Matchbox’s Yelp reviews and saw that, time and again, opiners were recommending the pineapple gimlet. Doesn’t that sound ah-mah-zing? A pineapple gimlet!
And then the PhoBlograpHusband and I finally went to The Matchbox and got the last two seats at the bar during happy hour. It seemed foolish for me to order and pay for an entire cocktail that I could only take one sip of (per my own pregnancy rules) so I asked Sean to order himself a pineapple gimlet and he said no. He was in the mood for a Manhattan. I suppose I could choose to call my husband a big, fat jerk at this point but it’s really OK. I pouted for a moment and then moved on.
Something that may or may not surprise you: I’m one of those people who likes to scour the Internet for various DIY tutorials and then implement them all over my house, oftentimes to the mild chagrin of the PhoBlograpHusband. (Two nights ago, our kitchen table was occupied for 12 hours by our crockpot, wrapped in a beach towel, ‘cuz I was making yogurt.) If I were born fifty years earlier, I would have been a devout Hints from Heloise kinda housewise. As it stands, since the start of summer my freezer has contained a big Ziploc full of banana peels and eggshells, so I can spend my weekends making nutritious, eggshell-and-banana peel fertilizer for my outdoor plants.
Also in my icebox are whole, way-overripe bananas whose peels have turned brown. The peels will inevitably see the inside of the aforementioned Ziploc; the bananas themselves are there because a few weeks ago I read online about making a soft-serve, ice cream-like dessert using nothing but frozen bananas and a blender. Given that pregnancy has kicked my ice cream addiction into disgusting overdrive, I thought this was worth a shot. I also thought, frozen banana daiquiris.
There are oh, so many things that are inappropriate about the Fort Washington Flip at the time of this writing. One: It’s clear from a quick scan of the cocktail’s ingredients — nutmeg, people; nutmeg – that it ain’t really meant to be quaffed in hot weather. (And it is hot up in herre, good people of places other than Montreal. It is so hot in Montreal today.) Two: Then I actually bothered to read the write-up this drink got on Serious Eats, like, four years ago (a time lapse that, while not outright inappropriate, surely gives away my occasional, self-loathsome tendencies towards procrastination) and, turns out, it was invented by a Cambridge, Mass. bartender in honor of Easter. Easter four years ago. An Easter that was an “early Easter” that year. So again, faux pas sur moi. (If anyone else was surprised to read “Easter,” because the nutmeg made you think Thanksgiving/Xmas… me, too!)
The Easter connection was represented through the use of a whole egg — hence, this cocktail’s proper nomenclature as a flip. (Flip = a whole, raw egg in the drink. There isn’t a term for when you just use raw egg white, like in my World’s Greatest Cosmopolitan.) I made this drink the other day, I made it myself and I made it diligently, not half-assed, and I poured it for the PhoBlograpHusband and for our next-door neighbors and then I poured some for myself (a teensy portion, I swear) and then I drank my teensy portion and then I went home and like 30 minutes later I said, “Oh God, Sean. I’m pregnant and I just drank raw egg.”
Time moves more slowly in Canada. I move more slowly with child. Put ‘em together and what’ve you got? A 35-day month, but one that’s worth the wait, for at the end of it lies the Month-Old Manhattan.
When I first mixed this drink in May, having gotten the recipe’s inspiration from a restaurant‘s cocktail menu in St. Louis, I commended its use of old-school rye whiskey instead of bourbon as a base and marveled at the inclusion of curacao, which gave it a more playful (but still not juvenile) flavor. I’m paraphrasing myself here, but I described its unaged taste as appealingly scratchy-smooth-sweet on the palate.
Well; what a difference a five-week month makes. After spending that span of time sealed tightly in a Mason jar, the Month-Old Manhattan now boasts a shooting-out-of-the-gate upfrontness, like it couldn’t wait to get down somebody’s gullet, pronto. What may surprise you most, though, is which parts of its original profile are doing the tastebud-grabbing and the ass-kicking. This cocktail is, first and foremost, orange. Like, woah, orange. Like, oh!-range. And that’s despite that fact that I’d subbed rail-quality triple sec for top-shelf curacao.
So the Triple Crown wound up being a big bust this year. And even though the news is kinda bittersweet/poignant/ironic for us alkies who thought we’d finally found our spirit animal in a horse named I’ll Have Another, it’s no bigs. Let’s keep sippin’ juleps all the same. Let’s just make ‘em stiffer to take the edge off.
Came across this recipe from so-awesome-I-must-slay-him-in-order-to-become-him David Wondrich on Liquor.com and knew we had to try it. Have I ever done a white julep before? Wait… have I never done a white julep before?!? Where’s my brain? (Blotto’d on moonshine, obvs.)
MmmmmMMMMmmmmm nom nom NOM NOM NOM NOM
Now, I have never started a post with such gustatorial, guttural nonsense. So you must realize, people, me reeeeeally likey this cocktail.
And how could I not, as it contains the greatest food known to man: Mint. Chocolate. Chip. Ice. Cream. Zomg. (Mark Bittman would argue it’s not a “food” at all. Mark Bittman can suck it.) Srsly, I could live on mint chocolate chip ice cream, in either of its two glorious hues: au naturel white or 50s-sci fi green. It’s my ambrosia and my manna rolled into one. It’s my manbrosia!
The following all actually happened.
I was watching TV a few days ago when on came a commercial for the new Bud Light Lime Mojito. My first reaction was to groan, and to recall the cases of Coors Light Iced T that have been stacked near the checkout lines at my local supermarket for weeks; those also make me groan, anew, each time I must sidle by them to pay for my thrice-weekly pint of ice cream habit groceries.
But my second reaction to the mojito beer was, shockingly (shocking I say!), this: That sounds pretty good, actually.
Last week:
PhoBlograpHusband: “What do you want to do for our [second] anniversary [on June 5]?”
Blogtender: “Let’s, like — let’s go out and see Montreal, some part of the city we keep saying we should see but haven’t yet. Not anything too crazy, obvs [because I'm seven months pregnant] but something different.”
PhoBlograpHusband: “Yeah, we need to get off our couch this summer.”
Two nights ago:
Blogtender: “You know what I really want to do for our anniversary? I want to make cocktails and eat junk food and watch TV. On our couch.”
Ah, yes, while I believe the traditional second-anniversary gift is something like clocks or coffee or leather, chez Lorre it was a much more sublime trifecta. Smiley face-shaped chicken tenders and Mad Men (we just subscribed to this season on iTunes, NO SPOILERS LA LA LA LA) and, among other libations, this Lemon Raspberry Mint Ouzo-Ade.
Damn you, St. Louis! Damn your exploding cocktail scene, three-and-a-half years after I move away. Damn you and your 150-libations-long cocktail menus and your Tales of the Cocktail award noms, your Ted Kilgores, your envy-inducing, membership-only cocktail boites that just happen to be housed in the most awesomest speakeasy-style restaurant space EVER.
And damn the recent cover story in Alive Magazine (a local lifestyle rag for chicks with meticulously maintained blonde highlights that I make fun of a lot in my head, but still) listing the top 20 cocktails in the city, which just so happened to be the current issue when I swung through town a few weeks ago, reeling as I customarily do from the timewarp-mindfuck that comes from revisiting my once-hometown, coupled with the fact that I’m still pregnant and can’t shouldn’t really no damnit can’t drink anyway. You are killing me Saint Louis.
The second time I lived in Manhattan, which was for about 30 months, I had an annual ritual (you do the math) of meeting up with m’gays at the Knickerbocker Bar & Grill in the West Village and drinking a big, fat, dirty vodka martini. This ritual was perfect for a number of reasons — for two, the Knickerbocker is a bona fide throwback of a joint, its prices equally retro — but I guess the main one was that this was the only time I would ever allow/fancy myself a dirty vodka martini; it had to be with these friends, sitting at this bar, where the bartender, whomever it was on a particular evening, would always serve the cocktails oversized, even saving the little extra in the bottom of the shaker to top off my glass after I’d taken a few sips.
Now, one could argue that there’s a lot that’s less than perfect about this scenario. All-booze cocktails ought to be stirred, not shaken, lest you “bruise” the liquors (I believe purists are particularly strident in their anti-bruised-booze stance when it comes to gin); you’re not supposed to want any diluted-down “extra” besmirching your drink; martinis are passe and dirty-anything is an abomination on par with Red Bull or drinks that approximate birthday cake.
